Huskies may make a comeback.
Student Ambassadors are working to reintroduce MCCC’s mascot, the Huskies.
Student Ambassadors are student leaders who commit to attend college events and reach out to prospective students.
Jessica Ryder, the former vice president of Student Ambassadors, began the challenge of reviving the mascot and Katie Vandenbrink, the current president, is continuing Ryder’s efforts.
“I thought it was a great idea to get more students involved and happy and peppy about something,” Vandenbrink said. “It would give us the opportunity to say, ‘I am a Husky of Monroe County Community College’ and not, ‘Oh, I’m just a community college student.’ ”
Student Ambassador adviser Tom Ryder agreed. “I believe it gives our students an identity. ‘We are the Huskies,’ ” he said. “And I think it lends itself to some great marketing and advertising possibilities for MCCC.”
The Ambassadors have incorporated the Husky into their club. They have a Husky on their club shirts, Vandenbrink said.
Ryder said the Ambassadors hope the clubs, bookstore, and Marketing Department adopt
the Husky as well.
Joe Verkennes, the head of the Marketing Department, said they designed a Husky logo last year at the request of the Student Ambassadors.
“We thought it couldn’t hurt, so we had to kind of reintroduce it,” he said.
Currently, the Student Ambassadors are the only club using it, but Verkennes said it could be used for anything student related.
There is no timetable for using the Husky logo in any traditional marketing tools, Verkennes said.
He said the Husky could be a recruitment tool. They could use the logo on shirts, pens, and any material they pass out at high schools.
“We are scheduled to revise our college viewbook this spring, so that might be a good piece in which to feature the logo,” he said.
Since the Marketing Department does not have a timeline, Vandenbrink is not sure how much they will do.
“That’s why we kind of dialed back on the outside of the campus community aspect. We are focusing on here,” she said.
She wants the students on campus to know they are Huskies.
“A lot of us don’t even know that we were the Huskies,” she said.
“Frankly, I didn’t know until we brought it up.”
The Ambassadors plan to incorporate the Husky into future campus events.
Vandenbrink said she could see the Husky logo in emails and slogans that advertise the events.
She would love to have Ambassador members dress up in a Husky costume and attend campus events.
She hopes their marketing efforts will catch students’ eyes and raise awareness of the mascot around campus.
The Ambassadors are not the only ones who have had a hard time getting people to identify with a mascot.
Ron Campbell, the first president of MCCC, said the Agora was in charge of finding a mascot for the college.
“They did have a contest for getting the name for the mascot the Huskies,” Campbell said.
According to newspaper records, the Agora staff also had a hard time getting students to choose a mascot.
In the February 22, 1968, edition an article reminded readers that within the last year the Student Council had set up two committees to pick a mascot and both had failed.
“Do we want to be known as the ‘Soy Bean Patch’ or the ‘Farmhands’? Don’t get me wrong, farming is a vital part of this world, but I think we could be a little bit more glamorous,” Agora reporter Mark Wittenberg wrote.
“I think the problem is the lack of communication between the Student Council and the students,” he said. “If the Student Council would put a little more concentration towards the problem and if the students would cooperate a little more, I think we could lick the problem before the spring semester was over.”
In the April 1968 edition, the Agora reported that Student Council gave them the job of finding a mascot.
“Since we are sure that there will be no objections from the students of the Student Council, ‘Colts’ will be the official or unofficial mascot for MCCC,” the article said.
It appears that the Agora did not have a unanimous vote from Student Council or the mascot was unofficial, because the December edition published a voting tally for the school mascot and Huskies won by a landslide.
Thus, the Huskies were born.
