From Ichthyosaurus to Today’s Bearcat
By Alex Gelfand (’04)
Most of Baruch’s students believe that the Bearcat is and always has been the mascot of the College. Few know that throughout its existence—first as City College, then as City College’s downtown business school, and finally as an independent college of the City University of New York—Baruch has rallied behind three other mascots. The Bearcat, in fact, made his first appearance in 2002, less than a decade ago.
A Prehistoric Mascot
For the earliest and frankly oddest of Baruch’s parade of mascots, one has to travel back in time to the Free Academy, which occupied the site of Baruch’s current Field Building at 17 Lexington Avenue.
The Free Academy was the nation’s first institution of free public higher education, a hybrid high school/college founded in 1847. In 1866 the academy retained its mission but was renamed the College of the City of New York.
Around this time, the College’s first mascot, associated with the football team, appeared: the Ichthyosaurus. How a prehistoric marine reptile with a fish-shaped body and porpoise-like snout became a mascot is unknown. According to records (or legend), the mascot measured about 30 feet in length. Not unlike its prehistoric predecessor, the Ichthyosaurus mascot became extinct. The reasons for its disappearance, at least according to The Ticker, was the difficulty pronouncing its name and the ignorance of the public as to what it was (The Ticker, Sept. 27, 1949, 7).
Bennie the Beaver, The First Official Mascot
For decades after the disappearance of the unofficial Ichthyosaurus mascot, City College had no mascot. College teams were nicknamed “Lavender,” in honor of the school song, and “the St. Nicks,” in honor of St. Nicholas Terrace, the neighborhood uptown where the college relocated in the early 20th century.
In 1934 the school’s student life department endeavored to change all that by running a mascot contest. The beaver was chosen as the official mascot. The explanation given: “Besides being a symbol of a busy, industrious animal who would sink his teeth into a job until he finished it, the beaver is also found on the New York City seal” (The Ticker, Sept. 27, 1949, 7).
Of course, beavers have a time-honored relationship with New York City and State (the beaver is the official state mammal—no kidding). Beavers were populous in the city’s waterways up to the early 1800s, when the advance of human civilization—fur trappers and then pollution—drove them away.
A second version of the origin story, although admittedly false, took place on a football field:
The Lavender squad was four touchdowns behind Columbia, but kept fighting to the last. This was supposed to have prompted the Lions’ coach to remark that the City team “keeps gnawing and chewing away at our lead like a bunch of beavers.” The tag was supposed to have stuck from then on.
(The Ticker, Sept. 27, 1949, 7)
The beaver—who soon acquired the name “Bennie”—became an immensely popular mascot, his image frequently gracing the pages of The Ticker and The Lexicon, among others. He was so popular that, at one point, a student group calling itself the Beaver Party secured a victory in the student elections. A statue to the beaver went up in the student center on East 22nd Street in the 1960s.
Bennie the Beaver was at the peak of his popularity when Baruch became an independent college, splitting from City College, its mother institution. City retained Bennie, and a new mascot had to be found for Baruch. (Postmortem: Bennie remained the mascot of City College until his retirement in 2004.)
Struggling with a New Identity: The Statesmen
Baruch teams came to be known as the Statesmen, a nod to the College’s namesake, Bernard Baruch, a graduate of the Class of 1889.
Bernard Mannes Baruch (1870–1965) had a fabulously varied and successful career. For half a century, from World War I through the 1960s, he was regarded as one of the nation’s premier citizens. His expertise ranged from finance to domestic politics to international policy-making.
Upon graduation from the then College of the City of New York, Baruch sought and found his fortune on Wall Street, amassing his first million by age 30. A young, energetic, and wealthy man, he devoted much of the remainder of his long life to public service. He was America’s beloved “park bench statesman” (famous for conducting business on a bench in Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House). At his death, Baruch left the bulk of his estate—$8 million—to his alma mater.
Therefore naming the College’s teams for this beloved graduate was both logical and honorable. What it wasn’t was practical. The difficulty of portraying a “Statesman” as a mascot resulted in a dearth of images. There is only one known attempt in more than 30 years of the mascot’s existence (shown above).
Time for a New Mascot, the Bearcat
Baruch’s campus underwent a transformation beginning in the 1990s with the opening of the Information and Technology Building on 25th Street. In 2001 the Vertical Campus, across the street from the library building, opened and changed the Baruch College experience forever. Among the building’s many amenities were extensive athletics facilities, giving Baruch’s intercollegiate sports program new life. It was an ideal time to revisit the mascot issue.
In 2002 Baruch’s Athletic Department polled over 300 students, asking whether the Statesmen should remain as the teams’ name or whether a new name should be chosen. Among the options advanced were the Bearcats, Dragons, Bulls, and Bobcats. Bearcats carried the day by a slim margin of approximately 10 votes over the Dragons.
Today the Bearcat—who doesn’t have a name other than Bearcat—enjoys increasing popularity on campus. Seen not only at sporting events but at important ceremonies, he’s rapidly building his own history at the College.
About the Author: Alex Gelfand graduated from Baruch College with a degree in history in 2004. For the past four years, he has been working in the Baruch College Archives, collaborating with Professor Sandra Roff, the College archivist, developing exhibitions that chronicle the history of Baruch College. Some of the past exhibitions may be found here. Look for the mascot exhibition in the near future.Related Article: Want to know more about the Bearcat mascot—from the inside out? Read this Ticker article: Bearcat-suit honcho Camille O’Brien passes the furry torch to fellow student Jonathan Haviv.