Well, New Miss has gotten its new mascot. It's a black bear!
<div><div style="overflow: ; color: rgb0, 0, 0; : transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;"><div id="mi_story_detail_top"><div id="story_er"><h1 id="story_line">Ole Miss picks bear for new, un-Confederate mascot</h1>
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By SHELIA BYRD and DAVID BRANDT</span> - Associated Press</span>
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Some of the colonel's faithful staged protests earlier
this year and attempted to derail the search for a new mascot in the
last few weeks by gathering signatures to make Colonel Reb one of the
choices.
"I think it's hypocrisy. I think the fans of Ole Miss
still want Colonel Reb. We have a petition with 3,500 signatures of
students who still want Colonel Reb as their mascot and that's the way
it should be,"Â said Brian Ferguson, a 2007 graduate who is a member of
the Colonel Reb Foundation.
Brittany Garth, a student from Dallas,
said she wished the school didn't have a mascot. "I just think it's
kind of dumb. Why is our mascot a bear when we're the Rebels? It doesn't
make a lot of sense to me. That's why I didn't vote. None of the three
choices made any sense,"Â Garth said. Athletic director Pete Boone
acknowledged the vote "was an emotional process"Â and his department
would begin the long process of marketing the new mascot.
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
This artist's rendering released by the University of Mississippi shows the Rebel Black Bear.
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"It's been a passionate topic and it's often evoked an emotional
response â€" right or wrong," he said. "Change is certainly difficult. But
I appreciate the passion from our people. They say indifference is the
worst emotion out there, and I don't think we're guilty of that."Â
Symbolism of the bear
The
black bear is connected to Ole Miss through Faulkner, the Nobel
Prizeâ€"winning novelist who penned "The Bear." In it, Old Ben stands as a
symbol of pride, strength and toughness. The tale of the "teddy bear"Â
originated with the story that President Teddy Roosevelt refused to
shoot a bear on a Mississippi hunt in 1902.
Earnest Harmon, a freshman fullback from Macon, said he's fine with the bear.
"A
lot of the guys on the football team liked the land shark just because
it was the sign our defense made after a big play, but the bear is fine,
too,"Â he said.
Though licensing of Colonel Reb's image ended this
summer, he can still be found on bumper stickers, lapel pins and other
merchandise on display at Rebel games. A variation of the colonel first
appeared in the 1930s in a yearbook. The image of the white character in
a wide-brimmed red hat and tuxedo, leaning on a cane, is believed to
have been based on a black man named Blind Jim Ivy, who attended most of
the school's athletic events, according to school historian David
Sansing. The colonel made the official transition to the field in 1979.
Jury still out on acceptance
Renderings
of the new mascot show the burly black bear wearing a blue sports
jacket for appearances on the campus and a dressed in a football jersey
or a basketball uniform for games.
Whether Rebel Black Bear will be accepted is unknown.
Roy
Yarbrough, a professor at California University of Pennsylvania who
consults with schools on choosing new mascots and symbols, said Ole Miss
could spend $100,000 or more for costumes, letterhead and marketing
fees.
He said there's still a risk the bear will be rejected,
citing the example of a school in Pekin, Ill., that once had a racial
epithet for Chinese people as its mascot.
They changed it in the 1980s, but it's still a sore issue.
"If no one accepts the new mascot, Colonel Reb could make a comeback,"Â he said.
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