Before Athena, there was ... the goat

Circa 1950, the mountain goat served as MSMU's mascot. We have one
in the Archives thanks to Sister Rose Adrian Peukert, CSJ '54.

WELCOME ATHENIANS! A large sign on the proscenium in front of Mary Chapel today welcomes our incoming students to Chalon for Orientation and the start of Fall 2018 two months from now. (Yikes!)

In another era, the sign might have said, "Welcome Mountain Goats." All we can say is, thank goodness that mascot didn't stick!
 

1956: The collective name for Mount
teams and students alike was Mountie.

Colleges and universities with big sports programs usually have well-known mascots, like the Bruin or Tommy Trojan. For a very long time at the Mount, decades, there was no actual mascot.  The university (then a college) fielded plenty of competitive tennis teams, runners and swimmers, even equestrians, but Mount students collectively were known simply as "the Mounties," a name that stuck until the late 1960s.

For a few years in the early 1950s, there was a genuine cute and fuzzy mascot. One arrived in the archives in person the other day, a little stuffed animal of faded purple wool felt, with floppy ears and horns and MSMC appliquéd in orangey-gold on both sides.

The mascot was donated to us by Sister Rose Adrian Peukert, CSJ, '54.  She was a Mountie herself for three years until entering the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in 1951. With that time frame, we consulted our yearbooks and newspapers to see if there were any mentions of stuffed goats.

Our friendly Mountie Goat inspects an art
book in the Porch at Chalon library.

According to the 1950 and 1951 yearbooks, the Women's Recreation Assn., a campus athletic club, was responsible for selling athletic gear in the bookstore. The yearbooks mention the "W.R.A. store -- goats, sweatshirts, tennis balls..."  That must be our mascot.

When you think about it, the Mountie Goat was an obvious choice of mascot for the intrepid women who had to make the climb from the bus stop on Sunset Boulevard to the college, back in the days when regular shuttles didn't exist and few students had their own cars.

Beyond the 1950s, the little Mountie Goat didn’t catch on. Once the Doheny Campus became part of the MSMU in 1962, the mountain-oriented mascot didn't work for everyone. In the 1980s, when the Mount started promoting competitive sports, Athena was finally adopted as mascot. The Greek embodiment of bold, intelligent woman truly captured the spirit of the school.

On the other hand, mountain goats are known to have that special grit we call {Unstoppable}, and this little critter is pretty cute. Think about mountain goats and our Mountie Goat next time you have to hike from Chalon Road up to the Circle.

Mount logo through the ages

The new university logo.

ON JANUARY 1, 2015, the Mount became Mount Saint Mary's University and, among other changes, retired its logo of the last 20 years. The new logo incorporates themes from some earlier symbols, which we'll explore below.

Prominent in the new logo is a shield - or is it a book?  The top of the book has pages, or are they petals of a lily?

The ambiguities are intentional, inviting us in to think and reflect. But embedded in the suggestions of images are some real symbols from the original seal of the school.

The original 1931 seal.

This "formal" logo was created by Baker Heraldic of London in 1931 and will continue to be used on official documents like diplomas. The center of the logo is a quatrefoil of four shields, each enclosing a symbol representing some aspect of the Mount's foundations: the wings of the Our Lady of the Angels Archdiocese, the fleur de lis of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (see below), the "lily among thorns" of our namesake, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and last but not least, a book with the Mount motto, Deus Illuminatio Mea, God My Light.

At the top of the new logo is a bird, which in animated versions takes flight. Watch this:



Some people will see represented the aspirations of our students, the hopes and dreams of generations of Mount graduates taking flight. Christians will see the Holy Spirit emerging from the sacred texts.

The 1966 dove logo.

The dove is making a return to the Mount's iconography. In 1966, the college commissioned a new logo to replace the image that had been used for decades, Mary Chapel. With two campuses as of 1962, the iconic tower no longer represented the whole Mount, and so Mitsuru Kataoka of the Art Department faculty created something more inclusive.

A View article in the fall of 1966 explained the change. Note the other subtleties that sound familiar today:

This fall, the Mount adopted a new logo, replacing the long-familiar chapel tower. The logo, in the form of a bird with wings extended, symbolized the spirit of the Mount in an artistic and poetic form. Spirit immediately suggests soaring wings, unfettered, pointing upward and forward. The designer, Mr. Mitsuru Kataoka, an art faculty member, explained that one wing points toward the past with its heritage and the other sweeps to the future. The discerning eye may also recognize tongues of flame symbolizing the Spirit of the Word; another may detect elements of the fleur-de-lis, reminiscent of the French origin of the Sisters of St. Joseph.

In some versions, the College Seal was incorporated.

The first stylized M, 1993.

The next major change was the familiar script M that has prevailed until now. Originally created for the Admissions Department in 1993, the ribbon-like calligraphy in black and brown was adapted for college-wide use  in 1995.

The improved version, 2004.

The logo was overhauled in 2004 to incorporate the word "Mount" into a more direct manner; the announcement of the change noted that people often overlooked the word Mount altogether and "confused the Mount with 'that other college' in the Bay Area," (St. Mary's in Moraga). The historic college colors of purple and gold (dating to the 1920s) were incorporated into the new one.

That brings us to January, 2015 - a new name, a new logo, and exciting year ahead of rebranding the new university. And the seal is getting a face lift, too,  "college" becomes "university" and "St." is de-abbreviated to Saint.

For those of us accustomed to typing the name every day, remembering to write "Saint" instead of "St." is probably the biggest challenge of all.

Seal of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet,

Doheny logos then and now

THE SLIDE TROVE mentioned in yesterday's post turned out to be copies of pictures assembled for the 30th Anniversary of the Doheny Campus celebrated in 1992. Among the treasures was the logo from 20 years ago (in pink). We've placed it next to the 50th Anniversary version above.  Both feature line drawings of the Doheny mansion.