SAN ANTONIO — San Antonio College has a new mascot!
The college announced on Thursday that following several rounds of voting, the Armadillo has been chosen as the new SAC mascot.
After months of recommendations and the forming of a committee to find a new mascot, the Armadillo stood out of the nearly 400 suggestions.
The Mascot Committee tallied up the most popular recommendations and vetted them. A top ten list of potential mascots was created and emails were sent to the SAC community to vote on their favorite.
The top three were: the Armadillos, the Scorpions, and the Stars. Students and alumni were sent emails for another round of voting to make their final pick.
Final voting closed Monday, May 10, and the Armadillo received 55 percent of the votes.
“Our committee has worked diligently over the past several months to ensure a fair process that would result in a great mascot of which our SAC community can be proud, and we were definitely able to accomplish that,” said Christina Horton, director of Strategic Initiatives in the President’s Office, who chaired the SAC Mascot Committee.
In July 2020, the Ranger, which was the former SAC mascot that had been around for nearly 100 years, was removed. The decision came before the college's 95th anniversary.
It was a unanimous decision made during a special session of the College Council, a group consisting of college administrators, department directors, faculty chairs and program coordinators.
For more than a year, groups on campus held discussions on the fate of the Ranger as the school mascot. Earlier in 2020, SAC conducted a survey on the mascot asking students, faculty, staff and the community whether to keep it or remove it from campus.
The majority of respondents supported removing the Ranger.
SAC President Robert Vela said their Ranger mascot was named after the Texas Rangers. He said the law enforcement agency has had a controversial history with minorities.
"From the 1850s to the mid-1900s or even later, they had a very checkered, notorious past. They demonstrated violence and racism toward people of color," Vela said. "So, for me, this is a step in the right direction."
The SAC community will officially welcome the Armadillo to campus at the start of the Fall Semester.
See the Facebook post here.
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