College Selects Mammoth as Official Mascot
Issue   |   Tue, 04/04/2017 - 23:30
Photo courtesy of Isabel Tessier '19
The college’s new mascot, the Mammoth, pays homage to Amherst history. Since 1925, the Beneski Museum of Natural History has housed the skeleton of a mammoth discovered by Amherst Professor Frederick Brewster Loomis.

The college announced that its first-ever official mascot is the Mammoth on Monday, April 3, marking the end of a six-month mascot selection process that began in October.

In total, 72 percent of the student body, 31 percent of eligible alumni and 35 percent of staff members voted for their mascots of choice, for a total of 9,260 votes.

Official data shows that the number of alumni votes amounted to three times that of student votes.

Voting was conducted online, and an outside party of alumni volunteers oversaw the process. Voters had the option of ranking each of the finalists in their preferred order, or to mark it as “no vote.”

After an elimination process based on the results, the Mammoth took first place 4,356 votes, and the Purple and White was second with 4,134 votes.

According to Alejandro Niño Quintero ’18, co-chair of the Senate Mascot Committee, the Office of Communications and the Office of Advancement underwent a process of filing the trademark and buying relevant online domains related to the new mascot.

Regarding the surprise announcement, Niño Quintero said, “We were going to have a more formal launch sometime this week, but as we were figuring out the formal steps, we realized it was impractical to keep it secret for so long.”

“Once you file for [the trademark], it becomes public record, so people would find out anyways,” he added. “People are good at finding these things, so we decided it was better to announce it on our own terms and announce it early.”

For the Office of Communications and Office of Advancement, the next step is to create visual aspects of the mascot and its branding. Panels of students and alumni will be organized to participate in this branding.

A formal celebration of the new mascot will be held on May 5.

“For now, my big part is done,” said Niño Quintero. “I’m just really happy with the process, and I think there was a great turnout.”

“Overall, the process was really fair and everyone had a voice in it,” he added.