When I enrolled here at DU I was told that our nickname was the Pioneers.
I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about this name, but I accepted it as my identity for the next four years.
I was to be a Pioneer.
It wasn’t until the preseason hockey game against the University of Calgary that I realized a major flaw in our school’s identity.
We have no mascot.
We have the unofficial alumni and student-favorite mascot, Boone, and we also have Ruckus the mascot provided to the student body by the administration.
The problem with Ruckus is that he has feathers and is a bird. He is by no means a Pioneer.
Now I am not against Ruckus. I think it’s a semi-decent looking mascot and pretty intimidating looking.
The fact remains that he is a bird and we are not the Denver Eagles or the Denver Hawks.
We are the Pioneers.
That’s supposed to be our identity, but besides Boone, there is nothing on our campus that hints that we are.
Why is identity so important anyway? Why do we need a relevant mascot when we have a nickname and a logo?
My answer: why do humans need water to live? We just do.
As a student populace we must unite together to produce school spirit, which is lacking right now.
I see the only reason behind this deprecation in spirit is due to the absence of a fundamental, tangible mascot to act as a banner to symbolize DU.
The DU arch fails at doing this.
It is clear that Boone will never be allowed by the administration as the “official” mascot for the university.
Ruckus is failing miserably, mainly because he has no significance to our school’s nickname.
At this moment our school’s identity is at huge jeopardy.
What do we do? Create an alternative.
Ditch the previous mascots, symbols, logos and ideas that have gotten us to the situation.
Abandon the old ways that are responsible for the deterioration of school spirit and start anew.
First order of business: select a nickname.
We can be the Eagles or the Hawks and keep Ruckus, but most likely this won’t happen. The University of Denver will remain the Pioneers for years to come, sorry it’s just out of the student body’s control.
Step two: accept our current nickname and create a logo for it.
Right now our Pioneer logo is eerily similar to that of Pioneer © the electrical company.
The Denver arch, although extremely popular with the administration for looking prestigious, is outdated.
A Pioneer is someone, or in this case something, that leads the way to a change. So let’s make that change.
Instead of having our logo go in one direction, left to right, let’s make it go in two directions—left to right and up and down—with the words Denver and Pioneers intersecting at the “e.”
This is not only fresh and creative it also hold significance to our school’s name, the Pioneers, because it creates an allusion to a compass—having a north, east, south, and west.
Step three: choose a mascot based upon our new logo.
After completing steps one and two, this seems easy.
Our new mascot should do something with exploration.
After all isn’t that what college is? An elongated exploration to try to find one’s identity, or purpose.
This exploration idea in a three dimensional, tangible representation should consist in some form of a galloping horse and an explorer on it pointing in a direction.
I think this mascot makes sense and is worth a shot.
After all, it can’t get any worse from what we have now—Ruckus, Boone and the Denver arch.
None of these old logos or mascots gives us a true identity. Mainly because we don’t know, as a student body, which one to accept as our real identity.
It’s almost as if we are a group of teenagers and young twenty-something’s trying to figure out how to define ourselves, but can’t seem to be able to do it.
Oh wait, that is what we are.
So let’s make a stand as a student body and select an identity to rally around, a distinctiveness that sets us apart from other learners.
Because we are the Pioneers and we are never done exploring ourselves.
