Mascot Madness, the votes are in

There is a new mascot for ACC, but students won't know what it is until later this month. As of Friday, April 2, voting for the Mascot, which was open to both students and members of the Austin community, officially closed.  The four final ideas were Starblazers, Blazers, River Bats, and Bbhoggawacts.

As of April 1, 3,500 votes had been cast, 78% of which came from students, according to Brette Lea, the executive director for the ACC District's Public Information and College Marketing department.

Legal, disclaimer, and trademark checks are going to be made by ACC marketing and legal departments before the winner of the ACC Mascot Search Contest is announced.
The Mascot Search Committee consists of Lea, Avy Gonzalez, president of ACC's Center for Student Political Studies, eleven members of the faculty and staff and one other student.

According to the mascot search web site, the committee's goal is for the mascot to become a "symbol of ACC's pride, tradition and character."

In September 2009, phase one of the mascot search began with suggestion submissions being accepted and the first appearance of the pink bunny anti-mascot. The Committee received nearly 1000 suggestions, and the pink bunny toured ACC campuses with a "Don't let it be me" sign.

Phase two of the plan consisted of research and elimination. The committee shortened the stack of suggestions by removing any already in use in Texas sports. One suggestion, the Watusi, a breed of cattle known for their massive horns, was removed from the list of possible mascots because of its similarity to other long horned mascots. This elimination process brought the number of possibilities down to 20.

Phase three consisted of nine focus groups: three current ACC student focus groups, one alumni group, one future students group, one faculty, one staff, and two community groups, and a total of 65 participants. These members of the focus groups were given twenty possible Mascots and asked to come away with their favored ten. Of all these top ten submissions from the focus groups, the search committee took the top ten combined, and then narrowed the selections to the final six.

"Dr. Kinlsow looked at the committee's top six mascot choices. He was presented with the research used by the committee to base its decisions on and approved the top four committee selections," Lea said in an e-mail.

"I was surprised that a school like ACC with over 40,000 students didn't have a mascot," Gonzalez said. "I want ACC to build a well-established, college-going culture, and a Mascot seemed like a great way to do that."

Editor's Note-
Paul Theobald is a member of a Facebook group called  10,000+ for the ACC Bbhoggawacts.

The Accent supports no particular mascot and divulges this information in the interest of being open and honest with our readers.