The mascot change FOIA results are in!
By: Courtney Elisech
Hopefully you’ve heard the news that Delta College has made a change to their mascot. Delta Pioneers are here to stay but will also be represented by a physical mascot of a duck. But why the change? How come not many students know about it? Well, the results of the Collegiates FOIA request about the mascot change are in!
The Collegiate staff has just begun to dive into the FOIA documents and a few interesting things have been found so far, some of them quite comical.
The first thing to share is that some of the survey results do not show the duck as the winning mascot. In fact, the whitetail deer came in with 33% while the ducks followed with 29% in the final survey. The second survey was set up to rank your top three choices out of nine total options. The jackalope won the first choice with 60%, the ducks followed for voters second choice, and bullfrogs were the third choice.
The Collegiate reached out to President Gavin for an update on how the process of adopting the new duck mascot is going via email. Director of Marketing at Delta College, Leanne Govitz, was able to answer a few questions. She shared that the college is finalizing the launch plan for the official announcement of the duck mascot to happen this semester.
Is there an idea for what the new mascot will look like yet?
“The preliminary illustrations are amazing!” Govitz shared. “The designer is finalizing different poses, fonts, and colors now and we’re very excited to reveal Duck to students.”
It is also important to note that the FOIA request was completed and all documents were presented to the Collegiate in a digital format on a flash drive. No paper copies to sort through, just files and folders.
Some of the documents are very hard to read, formatted oddly, and some are duplicates of others in different fonts or with slight grammatical changes. One document that holds all the email communications has 3,058 pages because of the formatting. Some of the pages contained only a single character in one column for the entire page, the content spaced so it was unreadable. Close to 2,000 pages are formatted like this. A small number of pages had enough character on each line to make out at least one or two words per column. It makes the information very hard to read and process.
Another fun fact is that Delta hired an outside marketing and advertising company to consult on the mascot change.
“Delta College paid Extra Credit Projects (ECP) $21,726 to lead an in-depth process to research other mascots within the area and National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA).” said Govitz. “They also assisted with the process to seek inclusive input from stakeholders on possible new mascots and to seek input on those nominations. We then began working with an artist to develop the drawings and a comprehensive identity graphic package.”
According to an email in the FOIA documents, on Jan. 31 Govitz notified the ECP that the new mascot would be the ducks. On Feb. 20, Govitz alerted them that because of pushback on the idea of discontinuing the Pioneers name that the college changed their mind, and would be keeping Pioneers but with a physical mascot of the duck.
Why did the college hire an outside marketing company?
“Developing custom illustrations requires a very specialized skill set and is very time intensive,” Govitz said. “Although Delta’s marketing team are all talented individuals, we didn’t feel that mascot drawings were a specialty that any of use had in our past experiences, therefor we sought that expertise externally.”
Interested in a laugh? Check out some of the original suggestions for the new mascot. You could make a suggestion no matter if you were a student, faculty, or community member. The survey also provided an opportunity to give comments on the suggestions made.
Three of the four mascot finalists appeared on the suggestion list except for the imaginary lumbercat. The highest suggested name was a variation of deer, with Pioneers following, and then ducks, followed by different tree variations. Jackalope had only one suggestion. Other suggestions included dragons, bears, wolves, a phoenix, and Sammy the Salmon.
One suggestion was thorough and thought out. A current student named Stefan Brissette suggested the idea “Phineas the Fox.” His reasoning? “Michigan is very much a nature state. Delta offers many geography classes and trips. A fox I think fits perfectly for our school. A fox is small like delta but in no way shy or uncharismatic. A fox typically lives for about one to three years, similar to the amount of time a student may stay at Delta.”
The FOIA timeline
The Delta Collegiate has been trying to find out more for you since December 2022 after a survey was completed that narrowed down mascot options from nine to four. The next survey was to vote on the final four mascot candidates: the lumbercats, the ducks, the jackalopes, and the deer. That survey ended on Jan. 24, 2023.
The Collegiate staff started with email inquiries regarding why and what the results were for the surveys. After not getting far with simple requests the staff moved on to making two separate FOIA requests on April 3, 2023.
FOIA stands for Freedom of Information Act, which guarantees the public access to undisclosed or unpublished records from the government and those who represent the public.
One FOIA request was for survey results and another was for internal communications related to the mascot change. After being told the college needed 10 days to review, both FOIA requests were denied.
The reasoning the survey results request was denied was that the request did not “sufficiently describe the public record to enable Delta College to identify the public record you are seeking, as there have been multiple surveys concerning the Mascot.” For the internal communications, the request did not “sufficiently describe the public record to enable Delta College to identify the public record you are seeking, such as a timeframe and what groups are included in “internal” communications. After reviewing and modifying the wording a third official FOIA was submitted on June 19.
President Gavin emailed the Collegiate on June 22 to request a video meeting regarding the request. That meeting was held via zoom on June 28, where the president asked for the FOIA request to be rescinded. In exchange they would provide a condensed and easy to read format of only “pertinent and relevant” information to the request, otherwise it would be a media “dump.” The Collegiate held firm and requested the FOIA be fulfilled. The president also asked the Collegiate to wait to publish any articles until they were able to announce it at the Fall Learning Days in August.
On July 11, the college requested $559.52 to complete the FOIA request. The Collegiate received word on July 18, that the requested deposit was received, and the college would begin processing the request. It was not until Sept. 20 that the FOIA request was fulfilled.
What was the real reason for the change? What were the results of the surveys? Did the ducks really win? Have no fear, the Collegiate is still on the case and will be looking more into the documents to learn all about the mascot change and will keep you updated. There are still so many things to be uncovered, if you have any questions about the mascot change send them to deltacollegiate@gmail.com! Stay tuned to find out more.
