Iowa City-area residents asked to submit mascot ideas for new North Liberty high school

NORTH LIBERTY - Mascots do more than jump around in furry suits; they can unite a merged student body, provide an identity for sports, music and other activities and promote community spirit.

And now the Iowa City Community School District has an opportunity to weigh in on the mascot and school colors for the new Liberty High School, slated to open in August 2017 in North Liberty.

The district is soliciting ideas through Oct. 20 at www.engageiowacityschools.org. Suggestions in more than 500 posts so far include the patriotic (Eagles, Patriots and Generals), naturalistic (Bison, Raptors and Prairie Dogs) and alliterative (Lightning and Liger - courtesy of the movie 'Napoleon Dynamite”).

'The mascot of a school is important because it will represent the image and identity of that school,” said district spokesman Chace Ramey.

A 24-person committee that includes students, parents and district staff will use online suggestions to make a recommendation on mascot and school colors to Superintendent Stephen Murley by the end of November, said Ann Feldmann, assistant superintendent and committee chairwoman.

SVPA Architects, which is designing the school, needs to have the colors and mascot by that time to include them in the building design. Construction will begin next spring.

Students have had a larger role in selecting mascots and colors at some of Iowa City's other new schools.

At Borlaug Elementary, which opened in August 2012, Principal Celeste Shoppa solicited ideas from students and parents who attended community events before the school opened. She tallied up the five most-repeated mascots and colors to make a ballot from which students slated to attend the school chose their favorites.

The winning mascot was a bulldog in black and gold.

'For kids, a mascot is an easy way to give the school an identity,” Shoppa said. 'We were trying to help them have positive feelings about the move to a new school.”

Students also chose the mascot and colors at North Central Junior High, which opened in August 2006 in North Liberty. The former principal met with students at Northwest Junior High, the school most North Central students previously attended, to get mascot suggestions, North Central Principal Jane Fry said.

North Central staff picked a list of finalists that were human figures, rather than animals or other mascots, to mirror the mascots at Northwest and West High, Fry said. Students voted on a knight in purple, silver and black.

Viola Gibson Elementary, Cedar Rapids' newest school, opened in 2002. Secretary Diane Busch recalls staff collecting mascot suggestions and letting students vote after the school opened. They became the Gibson Gators with blue and yellow as school colors.

The Clear Creek Amana Community School District won't have mascot and color voting when a new elementary school opens in Tiffin next year because all the schools in the district use the Clipper mascot in blue and white.

Mascots - from high schools to professional sports - have been under scrutiny in recent years as civil rights groups and citizens have criticized names that could be considered racist or insulting. In June, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office voted to cancel the Washington Redskins federal trademark registrations, saying they were 'disparaging to Native Americans.”

The Iowa City school district has an equity statement and a non-discrimination policy that would likely weed out names that could be offensive, Ramey said.

Iowa is among states with the highest percentage of high schools with mascots that reference Native Americans, with 10.5 percent, according to a Sept. 5 article on ESPN's fivethirtyeight.com.

The data in that story came from mascotdb.com, a searchable database of more than 40,000 sports team names and mascots at the high school, college and professional level.

'There were a lot of interesting mascots where I lived growing up,” mascotdb.com founder Terry Borning told fivethirtyeight.com. 'But those have mostly fallen by the wayside. Some of those things of the past were definitely offensive, but also more interesting than the generic mascots we have now.”

Adam Bonner, owner of the Mascot Organization, a Columbus, Ohio-based mascot talent agency, agrees.

'People take the safe route,” he said of mascot selection. 'The sterile nature comes out of the lack of depth people are giving characters. You've got to create a back story for it.”

So, go ahead. Submit an idea to engageiowacityschools.org for Liberty's new colors and mascot. And don't forget the back story.