The College of William & Mary has a new mascot, and it’s not a pug. For that, students at America’s second-oldest college seem to be overjoyed.
The Griffin was the winner of William & Mary’s mascot derby, and news of its selection was disseminated last week in customary 21st-century fashion: on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and at a live rally at the college’s Kaplan Arena. Terry Driscoll, athletic director and chairman of the 22-member mascot search committee, said that the announcement culminated a 14-month process of soliciting ideas, sifting through 22,000 comments, winnowing the nominees to five finalists, and recommending a mascot to President Taylor Reveley, who made the final decision.
At times “it was very tedious,” says Mr. Driscoll. “But some of the comments we read were absolutely hysterical, and it lightened things up.”
The selection process gained momentum in December after the committee released preliminary sketches of the five finalists: a griffin, a phoenix, a wren, a king and queen, and the Napoleonic pug.
Through a blog that invited comments, “people started telling us what they really wanted to see in a mascot,” says Mr. Driscoll. “We moved away from picking just one and started looking at which ones embodied the attributes people were asking for.”
As early as 1916, William & Mary’s teams were known by the nickname “Indians,” and by 1924 the current term “Tribe” was being used. In the 1930s and ‘40s a rider dressed as an American Indian often rode the sidelines atop Wampo, a pony whose name was short for “William and Mary Pony,” and Native American symbols continued to be used in the mascot and logo designs for many years.
“The last Native American mascot was in the early ‘90s,” Mr. Driscoll says. “It was a young woman who was of Native American descent ... dressed in Indian garb.”
From 2001 to 2005, the college was unofficially represented by Colonel Ebirt (“Tribe” spelled backward), a cartoonish green blob in a tricorn hat who was only slightly more popular than the proposed pug. Four years ago the NCAA ordered the college to strip its logo of the last remnant of Native American imagery: a pair of feathers.
In last week’s introduction of the new half-eagle, half-lion mascot, the editorial board of William & Mary’s student paper, The Flat Hat, saw a subtle nod to those missing feathers: “Poking out behind the Griffin himself are two wings—one green, one gold—that harken to the logo we lost in 2006,” the paper’s editorial stated. “It’s probably the most clever aspect of the Griffin’s design, allowing that, down the line, the feathers might again be incorporated into the symbolism of the college.”
Mr. Driscoll says that the one thing the NCAA left intact was the team nickname, which William & Mary continues to use and has incorporated into its new Griffin logo.
“We’re still the Tribe,” he says. “We’re not becoming the Griffins."Elsewhere in mascot news, Standing Rock Sioux leaders dealt a blow last week to the University of North Dakota’s effort to keep its Fighting Sioux nickname when tribal leaders declined to schedule a vote on whether to endorse the name, the Associated Press reported. One Sioux tribe has already approved the nickname’s use, but the Standing Rock tribe must agree by November 30 or the NCAA will impose a penalty.
