The <FISH>< is a symbol designed on a whim.

Really. That's it.

I can tell you about the whim, I guess. It was my junior year of college, and I was hanging out in the ?Allen Hall Commons when they decided to put up a new bulletin board - "Everything I need to know about like I learned from fishing." In my wisdom, I took down one of the fish and wrote up a fish symbol in its place ; as an afterthought, I put the word "FISH" into it, partially as a reference to the whole Darwin/Jesus/Cthulhu fish controversy but mostly because I was just bored. I proceeded to not think very much of the board, because it wasn't very interesting.

Then, one day, the letters for "fishing" had been changed to "Skirv".

That sign gained me more notoriety on this campus than just about anything else. When the ?Uni High seniors came to visit a few days later, they all saw my name on the board, and immediately assumed that the entire building was mine (not all that far from the truth, but still odd). As such, 20% of the class decided to move into Allen the next year. Also, the rest of the building noticed it, and began to fear me just a little bit more. And here, all of my contribution had been a little fish with a FISH in it...a fish-fish, that was all...

I learned to draw that symbol quickly and easily.

There wasn't really too much more to the story than that, though. Other than its personal importance and any meaning you can try to give to the <FISH><, its history isn't all that interesting. But it is cool.