“It’s some­thing you assume your col­lege has. And I feel slighted that we don’t,” said Jes­sica Maistro­vich, Stu­dent Sen­ate Trea­surer, in explain­ing her drive to cre­ate a mascot

for Met­ro­pol­i­tan State Uni­ver­sity. “Mas­cots cre­ate a sense of com­mu­nity and belong­ing. Hav­ing one can add that sense of fun that some­times we’re miss­ing as a more adult col­lege,” she said.

Maistrovich’s motion to cre­ate a mas­cot task force was passed unan­i­mously at the Sept. 8 Stu­dent Sen­ate meeting.

“I wel­come this, and I want you to have all the infor­ma­tion you need,” said Met­ro­pol­i­tan State Uni­ver­sity Pres­i­dent Ginny Arthur at the meet­ing. She offered to con­nect the task force with the Vice Pres­i­dent of Mar­ket­ing and staff mem­bers con­duct­ing a brand­ing study of the university.

Alysia Lajune, Coor­di­na­tor for Stu­dent Life and Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment, advised the new task force to review past years’ Stu­dent Sen­ate min­utes for dis­cus­sions of a mas­cot. “It’s come up before, there have been ebbs and flows,” she said. “You’ll want to see if there’s an appetite for [a mas­cot] on campus.”

All uni­ver­sity com­mu­nity mem­bers are wel­come to par­tic­i­pate in meet­ings. Maistro­vich will chair the task force. “I need input from stu­dents. We will be ask­ing for sug­ges­tions and then maybe do an all-​school sur­vey of the top five ideas,” she said.

Meet­ings will be held in Stu­dent Cen­ter room 201, from 5 to 6 p.m. on the third Tues­day of the month. The first meet­ing is Oct. 17. The task force will con­tinue to meet until they cre­ate a mas­cot — or opt not to.

Maistro­vich acknowl­edged the breadth of opin­ion on cam­pus about a mas­cot. “We don’t have sports teams so there­fore we don’t need one? I don’t think that’s nec­es­sar­ily a valid argu­ment,” she said. “I would still like a day where we wear school col­ors and have that feel­ing of com­mu­nity that that cre­ates. It’s espe­cially impor­tant at our school where we don’t always have that sense of unity.”

The task force will take into con­sid­er­a­tion the pros and cons of hav­ing a Metro State mas­cot, and why two major pushes for a mas­cot in the past “fiz­zled out,” said Maistrovich.

“A mas­cot is some­thing you can rally behind. The same way you would rally behind a sports team. Just hav­ing it gives you that lit­tle com­mu­nity boost,” said Maistro­vich. She hopes the task force will be suc­cess­ful in pulling Metro State together around a sin­gle emblem. “What a last­ing accom­plish­ment that would be, to do that for the school,” she said.