Mascots On Their Minds

By Arthur J. Monaco | Wednesday, October 23, 1996

Unsatisfied with the sole name 'Big Green,' a small group of Dartmouth students decided they want a college mascot. This has touched off the latest, and perhaps most serious, effort to find a new mascot for Dartmouth since the Indian symbol was banished from campus in 1974.

Early last January, Matt Sechrest '97, Jay Lavender '97, P.J. Halas '98, and Hank Brier '98 were eating lunch when the conversation turned to the 'Big Green.' All four are varsity athletes, and they agreed that a tangible mascot would increase support for their various teams. The four then decided to take it upon themselves and lead the campus in a new mascot campaign.

Shortly thereafter, Brier wrote an article for The Sports Weekly asking students to consider a new mascot. The Dartmouth soon began printing columns supporting the Dartmouth Moose, Mountain Men, and Yeti as possible mascot candidates. While still other students called for Dr. Seuss characters such as the Lorax, copyright laws made the Seuss mascot an impossibility.

The four students formed the 'Dartmouth Mascot Committee,' and soon arranged a meeting with Athletic Director Dick Jaeger to gauge the Athletic Department's opinion. Jaeger cautioned the students that previous mascot attempts had failed due to lack of effort. Yet he saw their enthusiasm and voiced his support, reasoning that a new mascot would boost team morale, merchandise sales, and recruiting.

The Committee approached Class of '97 Dean Teoby Gomez and Dean of the College Lee Pelton. Both Deans supported the idea, but Committee members say the reception was unenthusiastic. So rather than start from the top down, the Committee set out to gain support from students and alumni.

Since the Athletic Committee of the Alumni Council played a major role in the abolition of the Indian symbol, the Mascot Committee hoped they might well receive the idea of a new mascot. A meeting was arranged through Nels Armstrong, the Director of Alumni Relations, and on May 18, 1996, the four students went before the Alumni Athletic Council with their mascot proposal. The Council of about forty alumni, consisting mostly of older Dartmouth graduates, accepted the proposal, even offering some specific mascot suggestions.

On the same day, an article concerning the new mascot movement appeared in The Valley News. According to the article, 'schools across the country are falling over each other sprucing up their mascots to tap into the $2.5 billion national collegiate licensing market.' Heartened by the Alumni Council's support and spurred by the Valley News article, the Committee contacted Chris Stowe of the Dartmouth Co-Op. Stowe too was excited about the idea and offered to help out with some free T-shirts.

An initial plan to speak to the College Trustees was abandoned and the Committee decided to focus their campaign on the student body. The four students founders contacted Student Assembly President elect Jon Heavy in the late spring, and he soon became a member of the group. With the Summer term impending, the Committee entered into an intensive planning stage. The strategy for the fall term was to rally as much support as possible in the student body and decide on the new mascot. Once the students selected a mascot, the proposal would eventually go to the alumni as a whole. The Committee hoped to have the whole issue resolved before the start of Winter Carnival in February.

On Monday morning, October 14, the plan was set in motion. Early that morning students found small cards advertising 'Mascot Survey' in their Hinman boxes. The text of the card read, 'In celebration of homecoming week, please enter your idea if you want to add to 'The Big Green' at the following web site: http.//www.dartmouth.edu/~assembly/mascot.'

The group had also established their own e-mail address: mascot@Dartmouth.edu.

This past Monday, articles in The Dartmouth and The Sports Weekly advertised that any student could now sign up to be on the Mascot Committee, now renamed the 'Big Green Backers.'

The group is set to meet for over forty hours next week after Homecoming in an attempt to narrow the various mascot choices to four. The mascot leaders then hope the entire student body will vote on these four choices sometime in the near future and the winner printed on a T-shirt. This T-shirt would be distributed to the entire student body. Finally, the leaders hope to bring a vote to the alumni, possibly through The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine.

According to 'Big Green Backers,' they have already received nearly three hundred responses on their web site. Popular suggestions are the Indian, Moose, Mountain Men, and Yeti. Yet students have proposed ideas as strange as the Dartmouth Fish, the Wall, and the Granite.

The design firm SME has been contacted preliminarily about the look of a new mascot. SME has created logos for the NFL Jacksonville Jaguars, the NCAA St. John's Red Storm, and the NCAA Villanova Wildcats. After work with SME, Jacksonville's merchandise sales went from the bottom third in the NFL to the top ten. St. John's and Villanova saw merchandise sales increases of 593% and 450% respectively within one year. However, a merchandising firm such as SME does not come cheap — roughly $30,000 depending on the scale of the design.

Nor is it cheap to change the uniforms for all of the various Dartmouth sports teams. Indeed, these practical concerns could be the greatest obstacle in the effort to create a new mascot.

As for resurrecting the outlawed Indian symbol, 'Big Green Backers' have asserted a pragmatic attitude. Regardless of their own convictions, they believe the Indian could never return officially to Dartmouth within the current cultural climate. So to them, any tangible mascot is better than a mere color.

Mascots On Their Minds

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