Mascot Task Force Minutes From 4/30/2013

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The Minutes from the Mascot Steering Committee Meeting on 4/30/2013 has been posted on line.

42 comments:

dggoddard said...

This process will cost DU donations, Athletic Department revenue and Alumni/student/fan disengagement.

What are acceptable losses?

What does DU gain my introducing a politically correct mascot?

VS.

Lets say you brought Boone back.

What are the losses? Very small.

What are the gains? Potentially very large.

Anonymous said...

Not one mention of a potential mascot in 8 pages of minutes. They probably spent an hour discussing PR issues, and no discussion of what mascot would represent a Pioneer. Can't wait to read the minutes where they perform the mental gymnastics to try to make an elk make sense.

Anonymous said...

There are 76 people on the committee, and most of them are pretty smart and engaged. The people on the committee represent every part of DU, and every angle of the controversy.

Acutally, that night we did much of the time watching a presentation of the seven finalists from the research firm.

The job in front of them now is narrow the concepts for testing. They need to cut from 7 concept to 2-4 for public testing. The hope is to get the concepts into public testing this month, but it may take a bit longer.

On balance, they are doing pretty well given the charge.

Anonymous said...

12:21: Thanks for the insights. Any more insights as the process goes along would be appreciated.

UDenver20 said...

Cowards, more concerned about their names being released than the validity of the issue.

The reason that people think it isn't "a community thing" is because IT ISN'T A COMMUNITY THING. It's chancellor Ahab's white whale.

What intelligent people we must have on this committee that they talk about Facebook "Poles" (sic).

You can say all day long that people are actually unaware that we will be getting an "official" mascot and that that's really what they want. Well guess what, Boone does more as an unofficial mascot than any crap that ANY official mascot DU has EVER had has been able to do.

You can change the messenger all day long - but regardless of who does the Chancellor's bidding, the message is still the problem.

Anonymous said...

It is good that they recognize the shortcomings of the communication process. But they aren't addressing the fact that if the selection falls flat ala Ruckus and fails to convey a "Pioneer" that brings in and engages fans - that they are going to be competing with a somewhat beloved Disney Cartoon image that IMO hardly conjurs up images of the Sand Creek Massacre. And they will be back to square one trying to do damage control over why they got rid of Boone in the first place - and the process and hidden agendas behind it that they have failed to address over and over again. As they say in the minutes - "it's time to move on" - and they continue to gloss over the fact that the tradition of Boone is what they are up against - not sure that is going to work without recognizing that this cartoon character never had a damn thing to do with political correctness or a image of "hatred". They need to drop the facade and admit this was done because only a handful of people had any issue with it.

DU '96 said...

Wow, the comment about "this is how marketing works so just be patient" made me cringe. This isn't marketing that they are doing. This is a fraudulent process with pre-determined outcome. Coombe and KC have already decided what the thing is going to be and now they're using the consultants to fix the data to "prove it" to us. I'm sorry that the committee members are being used in this way. What a waste of their time.

Anonymous said...

My about 3rd posting of this comment:
The corner gets tighter and the hole gets deeper. Keep digging selection committee!

Anonymous said...

Anybody hear where Gage Asmus went?

dggoddard said...

Keeping to the marketing theme, Boone is an iconic brand and despite every effort to slander, belittle and label it "racist" DU just can't kill it.

Sure is fun to listen to the Marketing Task Force leadership refer to to the "1998 decision to eliminate Boone" as some sort of binding referendum.

Boone is stronger today than ever before.

Anonymous said...

BOONE LIVES!!

Anonymous said...

Ausmus...

miller said...

At least once every hockey game, I am asked where I got my Boone shirt. The gentleman that runs the souvenir stand at the north end of the arena has said how fast Boone items would sell, that is if he were allowed to sell them.

At this point, I could care less what the committee comes up. I will continue to wear my Boone shirt and not waste my money on a shirt with a robot, elk or moose.

This whole process is a joke. Coombe and his buddies have backed themselves into a corner.

5BWest said...

I cringed reading the John Evans comment, "In a sense we are boxed in if we only view this as a human figure. I mean John Evans, for example, is a complicated man; he had a dark side. He didnʼt kill himself, but created an atmosphere and appointed people who carried it
out as a territorial governor."

Trust me "Pioneers" is next. The crazies want to eliminate the past. John Evans should be treated with reverance - not investigated.

I want to throw up!

Anonymous said...

Yeah, John Evans founded the university. If we want to disassociate with the past, we are going to have to get rid of our 1864 founding date, and start over with a 2013 founding date. Maybe call it something other than "the University of Denver" too.

I try not to get too snarky about this topic and the lameness of PC run amok. But if some individuals on the committee are now talking about disassociating DU with the territorial governor that FOUNDED DU, they have reached a new level of ridiculous.

Anonymous said...

The "religion" of inclusiveness is a contradiction. it preaches from it's academic alter that from a large group you can not hurt even one persons feelings. With any large group of people that is theoretically possible but realistically impossible. There are ALWAYS going to be a few offended by something. The "religious" inclusive goal is unachievable and our present Boone controversy is exhibit one!

Anonymous said...

The other day I asked this girl out on a date to Del Frisco's. She accepted. I picked her up to go eat and then told her that plans had changed because I'm from LA and the word Frisco offends me. It didn't make sense to her but I told her to just accept it and that our three news options for dinner were Taco Bell, McDonald's, or Wendy's.

Weird, she was pissed off and didn't want to participate in the dinner.

old pio said...

Too bad Alan Breck can't show up at a meeting of this committee of house mice dressed up like John Evans. He might give them some much needed respect for our history and traditions.

Anonymous said...

AHH!! Alan Breck! What memories that brings up. What a great guy.
Man, could he rip these inclusive idiots a new a hole on this one.

old pio said...

Meanwhile, at Northwestern, a "latino" student group sent an e-mail to all students claiming that eating tacos and drinking tequila--especially on May 5th, is insulting to Mexicans and Mexican culture, or something. The e-mail was signed by the two anglo el presidentes of the organization. Many students, actually from Mexico, strongly disagreed. Identity politics can be s confusing.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/09/latino-student-group-says-eating-tacos-is-offensive-to-mexicans/

Anonymous said...

Right now the women's softball game is on ESPN between Tenn. and South Carolina. The S C team has Seminoles across their jersey and have war paint on their faces. I find the war paint offensive.

Anonymous said...

The hardest thing to believe is that 5:22 got a date.

Anonymous said...

7:42 ... why does the South Carolina team have "Seminoles" on their shirts? They're the Gamecocks ... Seminoles is Florida State ..

Anonymous said...

War paint is war paint. As someone who talked to an Indian years ago I'm offended

Coach said...

After this silliness of picking a new mascot is over, I predict sales of Contra-Boone apparel will outsell the new official souvenirs by 10-1.

Does anyone know where Mega-Boone is? Next hockey season, it needs to be at every game. Let`s find someone who is reliable to make sure it gets to every game and is displayed after every goal.

The four students who don`t want to bring back Boone can bring their Mega-Elk, and see if the other students will help them unfurl it after a goal.

Anonymous said...

A friggin insipid elk. I can't believe it. True pioneer spirit in that grass eating animal. Watch it chew. real inspirational.

old pio said...

Elk are ruminants. Does that mean we can look forward to the thrilling "regurgitation" and "cud chewing" between periods or at halftime? Boy howdy, talk about firing up school spirit! And wait 'till he goes on the rut!

dggoddard said...

The three finalists for Mascot:

1). Elk - 39 votes
2). Jackalope - 30 votes
2). Mountaineer - 30 votes

The composition of the Mascot Task Force is 38 students, 20 faculty & 18 alums.

miller said...

Are you kidding about the finalists? This is pathetic.

dggoddard said...

Faculty is pro-animal. So as long as the Mascot Task Force continues to hold votes its going to be the jackalope or elk.

One might ask why 500 or so faculty and administrators have such a large representation?

Anonymous said...

One might ask a lot of things, but it probably won't do any good.

Anonymous said...

DU has 1200 faculty and 20 committee members who are faculty .

There are 120,000 living alumni and 18 alumni on the committee.

Of those 120,000 alumni, 102,000 are reachable by the university and 5,220 of them are donors.

Average donor gift: $2,290

Anonymous said...

Of course the faculty is pro animal. Most of them did not go to school here, and most of them don't go to athletic events.

It's so easy for them to pick an elk and be done with it. They don't care about sports tradtitions.

dggoddard said...

Thanks for those updated numbers.

Cartman describes the Mascot Task Farce perfectly...

"I don't make the rules ma'am, I just think them up and write them down.”

Anonymous said...

It appears that the faculty not only attends more athletic events than the people posting here, they also donate more monetarily to the University.

Anonymous said...

Faculty is 25% of the Committee.

Anonymous said...

Contra-Boone apparel sells better out of state to people who don’t actually attend hockey games.

Anonymous said...

10:17/10:10, etc. etc. Does trying to aggitate people ever get boring to you? I'll be very impressed if you can keep this up all spring and summer. Don't let me down.

Anonymous said...

The people driving this crap are not representative of any of their groups, student, faculty or alumnus. they were picked to be on this anti-boone committee

Its the elected current student government, not the faculty, driving this garbage. This student government may well not represent the majority, but none of the current pro-Boone students gave a crap enough to run for office in the recent elections. Apparently most current students don't care that much, probably most faculty don't care (if they are even aware its an issue), so I guess time will tell if more alumns than the ones on this site care

Anonymous said...

Not only would choosing the mountaineer as the new mascot create significant confusion about the team name (Pioneers/Mountaineers?) but it would doom DU to unflattering comparisons with West Virginia, a much larger and more visible school in the Big12 conference that has the Mountaineer name and a highly visible Mountaineer mascot. Check out this ESPN profile: http://espn.go.com/blog/playbook/fandom/post/_/id/21312/mascot-memoirs-w-virginias-mountaineer

Appalachian State also is known as the Mountaineers and have a cartoon mascot who was originally named after Daniel Boone and a Daniel Boone statue on campus.

Anonymous said...

to Sunday 10:48 Anonymous: Not totally correct. Adam Hammerman won a student senate seat. He seems to be pro Boone more then anyone in the school.

Bunny Faber said...

Research Firm? Public Testing? I weep for the future.