Alexander Jennings

The Major Mascot Controversy

Mascots: they are everywhere! You can find them at all kinds of places, from schools, to
sports arenas, and companies. In fact, there are so many mascot types which are already taken,
that finding a unique one can be difficult. Sometimes it doesnt come out too nicely, sometimes
they become controversial as a mascot may be considered inappropriate by certain groups. But
are these claims of inappropriateness even justified? You could actually accuse any mascot of
being inappropriate. For example, an animal rights activist could say that our beloved CSUN
mascot Mattie the Matador promotes animal cruelty, because bull fighting is considered a cruel
sport and is only really practiced in Spain. The most common mascot objectors are Native
American tribes, mostly because Native American sports mascots are very popular among sports
teams. With religious schools, there are similar accusations by Islamic communities that it is
offensive to call your team "The Crusaders." If people are still upset about things like the
crusades, then the human race may never get beyond disagreeing with each other and fighting.
Can we all just get along already? Have we not been upset with each other for long enough?
Can people look back on the things others have done to wrong them and forgive them? In the
end, I believe that mascots which are controversial should not be replaced. This is because we
already are discriminatory when it comes to mascots and very few complain.

Now, to truly understand mascots, you need to know what goes into making them. For
example, Even Ronald McDonald, aka sinister clown (How). Yes, Ronald is a good subject

to look at. Many kids love clowns. So McDonald's restaurants decided to use him. Then he
really caught on. It helped that McDonald's actually became a big chain, while competing with
other fast food restaurants. Colors are also extremely important, because they provoke certain
habits. Ronald is a perfect of this phenomenon. The colors red and yellow are used a lot on
restaurant signs, because they make you hungry. It's advertising at its finest. Look at Ronald.
He is coverd in red and yellow, since white is a nutural color, it actualy is a perfict base. Yellow
also evokes the feeling of happiness and friendliness as well, while red evokes a feeling of
strength and power. Also, that smile is extremely disturbing if you look at it long enough. Well,

it is targeted towards kids

Even better, lets look at the Mr. Clean mascot. He is a strong cartoon man, who helps the
helpless women clean the house with his extreme sun tan that rivals that of Donald Trump. And
his cleaning powers come in the form of a product that the company can market. Many people
remember the commercials, because he is a good mascot. For this very reason, it is almost
impossible to give a good example of a bad mascot, if you do not dig deeply into history.
However, to understand this major mascot controversy, we need to look at what it is that people
feel makes a mascot seem inappropriate.

Helen A. Neville and Jeffrey G. Yeung and others decided to make a study in which there
was a campus that had the mascot called Chief Illiniwek for their mascot. Neville, Yeung, and
others decided to survey a portion of the student body. The results showed that out of 1,200 of
the students surveyed, many of them said that the Mascot was not offensive or racist, or said it
was a symbol that stood for pride and honor. Similarly, with our "Matador Mattie" here at
CSUN, I bet you will find many people feel he is inoffensive as well.

A small percentage of students surveyed did not feel the removal of their Native
American mascot was very significant to them. Since the Native American tribes are usually the
most offended by these mascots, this has become the major problem with Native American
mascots. This is, of course, why a moderately large percentage of those surveyed empathize
with the Native Americans. A very small percentage found the mascot politically incorrect, and

an even smaller percentage said they found the mascot racist. There are only 78 Native
Americans enrolled in the campus out of the whole student population. The right thing to do is
serve the needs of the many and less so, the needs of the few. If a small percentage of the
college campus starts to complain, do we really need to accommodate them and change
something the whole school was happy with?

Civil war themed mascots? We have those. Colonial Reb, is a

good example. He used to be the mascot for the University of
Mississippi, until he ran into a problem. He looked like an old
fashioned Southern plantation owner, and before that, a Confederate
officer. He is shown complete with a cavalry sword and a white horse.
Note, the universitys symbol on the flag. It is strikingly similar to the
Confederate flag.
Luckily, he was recently changed to rebel the black bear, after
the whole university realized that the controversy could keep potential
students from attending the university. So they replaced the white,
Southern man with a black bear. He even has clothing similar to that of
Colonial Reb. It seems kind of like a cut and paste job.
Of course the memory of the Civil War is extremely important
to the Southern states like Mississippi. The Northern states do not
really like the idea of a college that is technically supporting the
Confederacy which is technically not there anymore. So, is this really
fair to the Southern states? Taking the last vestiges of pride from the
civil war, in the form of "Colonial Reb" away from the University of
Mississippi.

If people want to replace controversial mascots, they need to consider every mascot,
because most mascots are male, not female; meaning that the creation of all mascots is generally
sexist, and should therefore be objectionable to at least fifty percent of the population. There is a
reason for this masculinity as well. Emily Dane-Staples did a study about why most mascots are
not female. The mascots studied were Mittsy and Spikes. They are mascots for the Redwings, a
baseball team in New York. She explains that many schools seek out gender neutrality, while
others want to embody the spirit of the school team, which is usually a male team. Recently,
since our country has started to become more aware of gender equality, some sports and school
teams have two mascots, one male, and one female. In the study Emily Dane-Staples did, she
found that kids that interacted with the mascots preferred the mascot of their own gender
(Mascot). This means that the reason why most mascots are male, is that males are the ones who
most often watch and play sports. She then concluded, after all the data was collected, that it is
beneficial to use the duel mascot ideology which has started to come into fashion. And those two
mascots look so good together. Oh look; there go the colors again. The red is perfect to show
the strength of the team and the yellow is used to show that the mascots are friendly and not the
opposite.

Additionally, there are already too many mascots that have been considered controversial
out there. There are so many, that no person could list them all. So, mascots really dont need to
be replaced. Most of the racial slurs or political incorrectness is usually unintentional. People
these days just have a problem letting go of the past, both good and bad. That is why many of
todays events are happening. If people cannot get over controversies as trivial as mascots, how
are we ever supposed to get along and work on more important matters such as global warming,
terrorism, or world peace?

Works Cited
Colonel Reb Is Dead and He Has Left No Offspring. The Journal of Blacks in Higher
Education, no. 41, 2003, pp. 124124.
Bever, Megan L. "Fuzzy Memories: College Mascots and the Struggle to Find Appropriate
Legacies of the Civil War." Journal of Sport History, 38.3 (2011): 447-463.
Dane-Staples, E. , & Dane-Staples, . (2012). Gendered choices: Mascot interactions in minor
league baseball. Journal of Sport Behavior, 35(3), 286.

Patterson, Anthony, Yusra Khogeer, and Julia Hodgson. "How to Create an Influential
Anthropomorphic Mascot: Literary Musings on Marketing, Make-believe, and Meerkats."
Journal of Marketing Management, 29.1-2 (2013): 69-85.
Neville, Helen, Jeffrey Yeung, Nathan Todd, Lisa Spanierman, Tamilia Reed, and Michael R.
(editor) Stevenson. "Color-Blind Racial Ideology and Beliefs About a Racialized University
Mascot." Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 4.4 (2011): 236-249.