Mascot Selection Process

Mascot Selection Process

Amherst Mascot Background

Board Decision January 2016 The College will ask a joint group made up primarily of alumni and students to create and oversee a process that will consider a variety of mascot ideas and whether the College should officially adopt one The aim will be to generate as much engagement as possible, and to find something something organically associated with Amherst, reflecting our collective history that we can all rally around. That is what mascots are supposed to provide. - Cullen Murphy 74

Mascot Committee 10 alumni 10 students College Archivist Director of Athletics Professor of American Studies Guided by Chief Advancement Officer, two directors in alumni and parent programs, with two administrative support staff members.

Mascot Committee Management We conducted behind-the-scenes research to identify resources, potential challenges, and questions that we shared with the group. We took careful notes that summarized all decisions made in language recognizable that reflected the committee s deliberations. These notes were used to craft response statements and FAQs. We handled all feedback received on their behalf and sharing digests as needed.

We do need a mascot. The Committee concluded that Amherst should move forward with selecting an official mascot for the College. Students have demonstrated overwhelming momentum and support for selecting a new mascot to strengthen school spirit and pride. In the absence of an official mascot, an unofficial (and potentially undesirable) mascot could emerge but without the shared input of the entire college community, as has occurred at other institutions.

Guiding Principles Ensure a transparent process and decision-making. Maximize constituent participation and feedback. Advance community-building, particularly between students and alumni.

Criteria the new mascot should Be unifying for the Amherst campus and larger Amherst community; Represent positive qualities, ideals, or associations around which people can rally; Be broadly relevant across the Amherst community, student body, and among generations of alumni; Be representative of the Amherst experience or history, either generally or specifically; Work equally well for women s and men s sports teams; and Have the potential to translate in a visually pleasing manner.

Process Timeline 2016 Spring 2016: Criteria, process development. Summer 2016: Process promotion, communications and sequencing. Fall 2016: Call for suggestions, October 24 November 30. December 2016: Committee reduces more than 600 unique suggestions to 30 semifinalists.

Process Timeline 2017 February 2017: The Mascot Committee sought input from a representative group of 441 alumni and student delegates, who were asked to rate the semifinalists according to the criteria and alumni feedback. The Committee then used the ratings to identify the top five mascot ideas. March 2017: Community-wide voting period, March 20 31. April 2017: Mascot winner announced on April 3. Homecoming 2017: Mascot logo launch.

Communications Plan Website. Spring 2016, mascot webpage is created and promoted. Receives 6 updates through April 2017. E-news. Process updates mentioned 5 times in our bi-weekly newsletter. Magazine. Process updates featured in alumni magazine 4 times. Emails. Sent 4 emails to 22,570 alumni, students, faculty and staff, open rates on these ranged from 52 65%. Print pieces. Sent 3 print pieces to alumni without email, received around 100 idea submissions and 200 votes on paper ballots.

We are the Mammoths Mammoths win, by a tiny percentage. Ranked choice voting was key to this process and finding a majority winner. Mammoths won in April, spent summer working with Pentagram and college communications on branding which led to the exciting logo reveal at Homecoming.

Lessons Learned

Supporting Effective Decision Making Criteria. Shaping thoughtful criteria early in the process and using it throughout was a key ingredient in ease of decision-making. Technology. Use of Qualtrics software to measure committee and delegate support of suggestions enabled the committee to focus their evaluation, and more easily reduce the suggestions. Consistency. We learned that it is important to make decisions early that allow a process to be consistent throughout. Robert s Rules of Order. Efficient decision making of this magnitude requires an agreed-upon protocol for governing discussion.

Balancing alumni participation with acceptance of final results. Broad alumni participation would be critical to acceptance of a result. Broad alumni participation in reducing mascot suggestions would be hard to achieve, and would not yield representative results. We solved for the problem by: Maximizing participation at the beginning and end of the process. Using a small group of representative delegates in the reduction process. Presenting a large slate of 5 candidates for the final vote.

Alumni, students and staff care deeply about the mascot. 2,046 mascot suggestions by alumni, students, faculty and staff. 9,295 alumni, students, faculty and staff voted during the election. 12,562 alumni, students, faculty and staff engagement with the process. Volunteer hours: About 750 = 10+ conference calls; 10+ meetings; 400+ emails.

Positive Outcomes On-campus events built community among alumni, students and staff. Immediate use of the mascot across a range of classes. Executive Committee has asked the Board for more assignments like this. Alumni engagement was 73% and Annual Fund reached record dollar amount with 52% participation. Staff felt very involved and attached to mascot, entire campus received shirts. People LOVE Mammoth swag.

Questions