If you’ve been to a basketball or football game at Marist College over the past four decades, you’ve seen him.
He’s the one in the faux fur, wearing over-sized sneakers and a big smile, handing out high-fives to fans and dancing through timeouts.
He’s the Red Fox everyone knows, though you may not know his name, anymore.
Amid a growing epidemic of gun violence and mass shootings across the country, the Marist athletics department decided to rename its mascot from “Shooter” to “Frankie.”
The change, made quietly last month, comes in a year that has seen 212 fatalities caused by mass shootings, according to USA TODAY data, and at a time of growing awareness nationally of the significance of the names and figures depicted on buildings and monuments.
“Frankie” officially debuted as the name on the back of the mascot’s jersey this past weekend during the Marist women’s and men’s basketball teams’ opening games on Friday and Saturday, respectively. Fans’ opinions on the renaming have covered a wide spectrum, ranging from acceptance and apathy to disagreement.
“We had a couple people who have commented,” Marist Director of Athletics Tim Murray said, “but many of them frankly have been positive. They understand. They get it.”
Murray first understood the connotation of the name on the morning of Oct. 2, hours after a gunman opened fire on the crowd at a Jason Aldean concert in Las Vegas, killing 58 and wounding more than 500. On the news that morning, with the name of the gunman not yet revealed, Murray said he kept hearing the assailant referred to simply as “the shooter.”
And though Marist’s “Shooter” was named in reference to shooting hoops, the name took on new meaning for Murray.
“Unfortunately, in our culture today, there is a negative stigma to that term ‘shooter.’ And I just didn’t think it was appropriate for us at this time to perpetuate that term,” Murray said.
HT: JWF