Holy cow: Here’s why a UC Davis student group is pushing for a new mascot
Mick Hashimoto is a visionary, a tireless good soul who doesn’t lose steam while taking 16 units of courses and working part-time at a restaurant.
He is a double major in economics and statistics at UC Davis, his brain full of data, but Hashimoto keeps adding to his plate. On campus Friday, he looked skyward, with an assuring grin, and described the glee of a new wave of spirit someday engulfing Jim Sochor Field, home of the school’s storied football program. Hashimoto is a football fan but he’s really into the idea of generating more school spirit.
That can happen, he insists, with a change of mascot. He is the driving force as the founder of the Instagram page cow4mascot, a good follow if you’re into fun posts and compelling ideas. He and a loyal crew of 30 UCD students, a virtual melting pot of diversity and ideas, are pushing to change UCD’s mascot from Gunrock the mustang to a cow.
Yes, a cow. Beware the bovine, if you will.
Hashimoto and friends present sound arguments as to why a cow better fits the identity of the school over a mustang. Really, what’s a campus without a mascot, or sports teams without one, right? This group doesn’t want to drop the “Aggies” part of UCD lore because that’s tradition, and it’s catchy to belt out, “Go Ags!” But away with the blue horse with blue high-top shoes, Hashimoto says, and usher in an udder mascot. Or a cow. All sorts of options. Steers, longhorns, jersey cows. You get the drift. It is, as they word carefully, their GRASS-roots MOO-vement.
“This isn’t a controversy, but it’s about fun, leaving a legacy,” Hashimoto said. “We need a unique identity, a new mascot that fits. I went to school for one year in Boulder, the University of Colorado, with the Buffaloes mascot and a buffalo would rush onto the football field. Wouldn’t it be great to see a cow do that before a UCD game here?”
Well, sure, but one thing about cows. They don’t run well. They do not do anything especially fast, except perhaps to swish their tails to shoo away flies on their backs. Cows are not swift creatures. They’re plodders. Having grown up on a cattle ranch in the eastern Oregon mountains, I herded my share of plodders. Slowly. You don’t make plans the day you bring the cows home.
But cows can be cool, and Hashimoto and crew have interesting ideas on how to market cows with sunglasses. You know, make this a cash-cow idea. This is an agriculture school with cows on campus, even. On UCD’s online alumni page, there is a run down of “the Aggies traditions checklist,” which includes a stroll through the Arboretum, a botanical paradise, and “visit the dairy cows.”
“People love to pet cows here because it’s fun,” said Reece Kuramoto, who is part of the mascot effort. “Some think that a cow mascot will make the school feel more rural. We’re already a cow town. We already have cowbells at football games. This makes sense.”
Hashimoto and his crew set up shop on campus, starting May 9, with a table and brimming optimism, handing out stickers and pins. They answer questions. Some students are on board for mascot change. Others have no idea what the school mascot is, or what it should be, nor do they care. Fair enough.
At the least, this group wants to be herd, or heard.
See, I’m getting into the spirit of this.
This movement is run by the students and is for the students. The campus elections run through Sunday, and “we’ll know a lot more on Monday,” Hashimoto said.
“I made an Instagram post on Jan. 31, to change the mascot, and it went viral in a week,” Hashimoto said. “I was shocked. I was thinking, ‘Holy Cow!’ Literally.”
Hashimoto got his work ethic from his parents, who 30 years ago moved from their native Japan to open restaurants in Colorado. They have five of them. They work around the clock. They urged their son to go to college, to get degrees, to make a difference. He’s doing his best.
UCD students voted for the cow in 1993
Hashimoto knows that students have voted for mascot changes before in this state. In 1986, students voted in a referendum to declare the banana slug as the official mascot for UC Santa Cruz. Predictably, the school administration soundly rejected the idea, but relented after school-wide support. Fortunately, UC Santa Cruz doesn’t have to stress about the speed of a slug inching across a football field before kickoff. The school doesn’t play the sport.
Hashimoto also knows that this sort of mascot movement happened at UCD. In 1993, UCD students voted for a cow to become the school’s official mascot. It passed. It won, but then-UCD chancellor Theodore L. Hullar and the administration rejected it. Imagine that. You invite students to be engaged and involved and then reject ideas that pass.
“They ignored students then, turned them down, and that’s ridiculous,” Hashimoto said. “I hope it doesn’t happen again.”
The movement to change the mascot needs 60 percent of the votes to be in favor for the referendum to pass. Gunrock has been the UCD mascot for nearly 20 years, winning a student vote over retaining decades-long Ollie Mustang as the mascot.
Origins of UCD’s mascots, debunking falsehoods
I reached out to my dear friend Bob Dunning, the Davis Enterprise columnist since about the time horses were a main means of transportation. No one has a better finger on the pulse of Davis the town more than Dunning. What’s more, Dunning has covered every UCD football game for The Enterprise since 1970, home and away, so Dunning has seen and heard and smelled his share of mascots.
Bonus points: Dunning is an Aggie to the core, having played tennis at the school in the late 1960s, when coaches had a cow if athletes sought out water between matches. Allowing a cow to plod across the field might not work, Dunning told me Friday, but kudos to spirited good thinking. I concur with the chipper cow chatter.
“I appreciate what those students are doing but don’t know if the chancellor has the veto power or not,” Dunning said with a chuckle. “I read somewhere that Gunrock has been the UCD mascot for the last 90 years or something. That’s just flat-out false. When I was a kid going to Aggies games in the 1950s, Ollie Mustang was our mascot, a guy running around with a horse head that was a little more goofy than Gunrock now. Then one day, 10 years ago or so, it’s Gunrock. That was the new mascot. The school invented that.”
Gunrock is rooted in tradition at UCD for more than 100 years, a thoroughbred, the offspring of a Triple Crown racing winner. And what a prolific animal. According to UCD’s website, Gunrock was “bred with 476 mares, some of them from the university herd and the rest from Northern California farms. Gunrock died in 1932.”
“We now have Maggie the Aggie run out onto the field before football games, and it’s a horse, not a mustang,” Dunning said. “You can’t ride a cow out there. Oh, and correct me if I’m wrong. Isn’t a cow a female? Bull is the male? Maybe a bulls mascot? Some schools that have Huskies as a mascot use Lady Huskies for women’s athletics. Lady Cows? Lady Bovine? That doesn’t work.”
I’ll go a bit deeper in helping better understand the mascot debate. Yes, a cow is a female. A heifer is a female cow that has not had any offspring. Fortunately, no one is suggesting UCD embrace a heifer as a mascot. Cow is so much more broad.
Dunning weighed the options and added with conviction, “I say we go back to Ollie!”
Dunning’s campaign would be, “Long live Ollie.” And bring back the Bossy Cow Cow yell. Yes, that’s right. The Bossy Cow Cow yell. I mean, if we’re going to have a cow, let’s make it a bossy cow, right? I need to circle back around to chat with Hashimoto on this. Dunning has that fight song memorized.
It goes like this:
Bossy Cow Cow
Honey Bee Bee
Oleo Margarine
Oleo Butterine
Alfalfa, Hay!
“That never got banned, and old alums know the bossy cow cow yell,” Dunning said. “It was goofy, but it was fun.”
Dunning closed with this, “I want Ollie Mustang back! They stole Ollie from us, changed it to Gunrock, something more macho, I guess. But Gunrock isn’t intimidating. The costume isn’t intimidating. It’s cute. I’m such a traditionalist. But won’t a cow be a tough sell?”
Not according to Hashimoto. Though he senses UCD athletics would not embrace a cow mascot, he does envision a cash cow of marketing ideas. The first step to see if this passes, and if the school administration takes it nearly as seriously as the students.
This story was originally published May 15, 2022 at 5:00 AM.