Trying out new mascot
Cal State Long Beach gets public involved in choosing successor to Prospector Pete.
Cal State Long Beach has asked the public to help select a new mascot for the university, a move that comes months after the school decided to send its former mascot — Prospector Pete — packing after years of outcry that he was offensive to indigenous people.
A university committee narrowed the options to six: Stingrays, Sharks, Pelicans, Giraffes, Kraken ( a mythical sea monster) or Go Beach ( essentially a vote for no mascot).
Anyone other than students, who will have their own official voting period next month, could cast a ballot online for their favorite. The deadline for the community vote was Wednesday.
The results will be announced May 9 before they are recommended to President Jane Close Conoley, who will have f inal say over the mascot.
Prospector Pete evolved from the creation of the campus in 1949 and founding President Pete Peterson’s reference to having “struck the gold of education” by establishing the college. However, students have seen it for years largely as a commemoration of prospectors and their participation in the violence inf licted on Native Americans and others during the state’s Gold Rush.
Last year, university leadership retired the Prospector Pete mascot and moved its bronze statue, formerly named the FortyNiner Man, to a less prominent place on campus.