This school's mascot situation is ridiculous. Honestly, what happened? During my first two years here, there was a whole mess of competition and controversy over what our mascot should be. In the past two years, that debate seems to have completely died out, and we appear to be satisfied with leaving several pseudo-mascots (Dartmoose, Keggy, nothing) on the proverbial and literal playing field, without actually coming to a decision. This needs to change.
Let me first explain why I don't back either of our mascot candidates. First, the Kegs. This one is tough, because I like Keggy's roguish charm and, more importantly, his rebellious, media-getting personality the fact that we have an unofficial mascot is pretty cool. But let's put it this way: You know the kid in high school who, after a big house party, would spend the next few days telling everyone how many beers he totally drank and how many shots of Kahlua he crushed from the bottle he so totally just stole from his parents without even caring?
I feel like with Keggy, Dartmouth is being that guy, except on the college scene. Sure, we drink, but so does every other college kid, just like every other kid did at that house party. The only difference is, we're the kid that's running around telling everyone, hoping that they'll think we're cool. The only thing that could possibly be less cool than telling everybody how much you drink is actually creating a mascot for a Division I school that basically yells that to the entire country.
Not to mention that the Kegs isn't even representative of us at all. Getting a keg into a party on this campus is the biggest ordeal ever, and it's completely not worth it. Kegs have great benefits they slow down beer output at a party and they save tens of thousands of wasted, unrecycled cans. Yet the administration makes the Greek houses jump through endless hoops and deal with countless regulations to get one. At best, we should be the singular Keg, since we can't tap more than one at a time at a party, even though we can just buy cases and avoid the situation entirely.
But I digress.
As for the Dartmoose, I don't even want to talk about it. First off, that's not a word. I refuse to have our mascot be a corny mashed-up pun on our school name and a goofy animal. Second, the costume it's terrible. The body looks like the body of a gorilla suit that anyone can buy at iParty, only it's been spray-painted brown. The face, I assume, is supposed to be intimidating, but it just looks evil and off-putting. Third, there is no association between Dartmouth and the moose, except that one showed up on campus one time a few years ago. It's a horrible mascot with a corny name, a terrible costume and an arbitrary, if any, association to the school. Our mascot should represent our school it should not be a joke.
So what could our mascot be? The Beer Goggles? That goes for both genders, by the way. Walk into any basement at 3 a.m. after a party and look at the couples dancing together. You'll see what I'm talking about. And, it's pretty representative of the school population.
If we want something even more representative of the population, though, we should go with the Apathetics. Our mascot should be a totally normal-looking guy. We'll name him John Doe. He'll walk into whatever game about 30 minutes late, dressed in zero Dartmouth apparel. He'll sit in the fifth row and chat with whomever is around him and not really pay attention to the game. Once in a while he'll look up and say, "Did we did we score? No? Oh, 10 minutes ago? Cool."
And then he'll go back to whatever he's doing. He'll leave during the third quarter, ignoring the important drive or comeback that's happening on the field or court, and high-five everybody he knows on his way out. He wants to stay, he says, but there's a killer game of harbor that's about to start that he needs to get in on to get his buzz right for tonight.
That, I think, would be the most representative mascot of our student body.
All right, so I don't have any great ideas either. Maybe we don't need a mascot. We're a school with a ton of history, and it's tough to create a mascot that's not sickeningly corny and dumb. I can stick by being the Big Green, proud in our color and devoid of dancing, flipping costumed idiots parading around on our fields.
Or, we could have Green Man be our mascot. I think that's an idea that everyone can get behind.
