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Purdue Pride is Forever

Purdue tattoos

These featured Boilermakers wear their Purdue Pride permanently in the form of unique tattoos. Tattoos featured: Brittany Blackford (left) and Nolan Sharples (right). (Purdue University Photo/Rebecca McElhoe)

What’s more permanent than a tattoo? The answer: Purdue pride.

Tattooing — an artistic technique for marking one’s body — has been around for thousands of years. It’s a practice that has become increasingly common, creating personal symbols of status, identity, love, religious beliefs and more. The function of tattoos is to make a statement or share part of oneself with the outside world — what defines you, drives you or maybe even inspires you.

Samuel tattoo
Firefighter Samuel Kornicks’ realistic tattoo of the Boilermaker Special. (Purdue University Photo/Rebecca McElhoe)

Since its founding in 1869, Purdue University has garnered many students, alumni and fans of the institution they call home. Purdue helped make a permanent impression on these individuals’ hearts and souls. Each person’s Purdue story is unique, but they usually share one defining factor: Boilermaker pride.

Purdue is for the innovators, the dreamers, the bold and the persistent. Boilermakers can be found worldwide and are happy to say “Boiler Up” to any fellow Boilermaker they see. This is a university where shared Boilermaker stories turn acquaintances into family. And these individual stories of people’s shared passions and memories at Purdue only make our pride burn stronger.

Read more about the individuals whose love of Purdue inspired them to permanently adorn their bodies with their own ideas of Purdue pride.

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