Colonial Phil is missing. To be clear, that’s a good thing.
At St. Joseph’s University, sports are repped by the Hawk. Temple Athletics has Stella the Owl. Drexel teams get support from Mario the Magnificent, a giant purple dragon. And as of this week, athletes at the Community College of Philadelphia will hear the rallying roars of a lion.
When CCP students arrived on campus this fall, all signs of its former mascot — a Caucasian drum major wearing a tricorne hat — had been erased. On Tuesday, its replacement will be unveiled in a grand ceremony that aims to break a Guinness World Record.
The event marks the culmination of a two-year effort to do away with a symbol many saw as outdated and inappropriate.
“The institution felt that perhaps Colonial Phil was no longer representing the rich diversity that we currently have today compared to the 1960s,” David Asencio, CCP dean of students, told Billy Penn.
The movement to replace the symbol of colonialism, an era of slavery and other oppression, started within the 28,000-member student body, when a petition to replace the “offensive” symbol drew hundreds of signatures.
A committee of faculty, staff and students was soon established. They voted in the fall of 2017 to not only change the school’s mascot, but to also hold a vote on what the new mascot should be and how it would best represent the school.
Dominique “Peak” Johnson is a North Philadelphia journalist and is one of the founding editors of the North Philly Metropolis. Currently, Peak practices kickboxing, freelances for Generocity.org, and occasionally tweets about “The Walking Dead.” Click here to learn more about Peak.
