Students voted to express their support for removing Lord Jeff as the college’s unofficial mascot in an Association of Amherst Students poll conducted on Tuesday, Nov. 17.

Eighty-three percent of students voted in favor of removing the Lord Jeff, and 17 percent against. The AAS released the poll’s results on Thursday, Nov. 19. In total, 1,606 students voted, which exceeded the AAS’s hopes for at least 1,200 responses and made for a 90 percent response rate.

The text of the poll specified that a vote to remove the mascot would not be equated to a vote in favor of a specific replacement mascot. The poll also gave students the option of leaving comments regarding the vote, which were released along with the results of the poll.

In the comments section, many students proposed potential new mascots. Some commenters express\ed support for a moose mascot, while others argued against the moose. Another popular mascot suggestion was the Amherst Frost.

The poll follows recent events at the college such as the placement of posters advocating for a change of mascot as part of the Amherst Uprising movement and a straw poll at a faculty meeting in which the faculty unanimously voted in favor of changing the mascot. At the Amherst-Williams football game, students held posters clarifying their support for the Amherst athletes and not the mascot. In October, the AAS had released a letter in The Amherst Student detailing its stance against the Lord Jeff.

According to senator Sam Keaser ’17E, the vote in order to remove the Lord Jeff means that the AAS will initiate discussions about a potential new mascot next semester.