OKEMOS, Mich. — The Okemos Mascot Committee and Superintendent John Hood have a recommendation for its new mascot: The Okemos Wolves.
“The Okemos Schools is really excited to announce today a recommendation from me, the superintendent, that aligns with both the district committee and student committee's recommendation that the official mascot of the Okemos Schools will be the wolves,” Hood said.
After the choices were narrowed down from ten to four, third through twelfth grade students in the district voted.
The Student Mascot Committee made up of four students from each grade in the high school then sorted through the votes.
“They tried to prioritize the secondary school vote a little more heavily, because there's just more of a tie to a mascot in terms of sporting events and things of that nature as students get older,” Hood said.
In the end, the vote was unanimous.
“The students called the question themselves, and on their first vote, they could have voted for any of those four. They all unanimously voted for wolves,” Hood said. “I think it was the first unanimous decision they had as a group, which I think surprised them. But I think the data and the criteria spoke really loudly to them.”
The student recommendation went to the District Mascot Committee made up of school staff, parents, community members and other students, who also unanimously voted to recommend wolves.
Hood and the district committee will present the recommendation to the school board on Jan. 24. A vote on whether to adopt the new mascot will take place Feb. 14.
Hood said if the Wolves gets approved, they’ll begin working on a new logo to go with the Carolina blue and maroon colors and hope to have that selected by April.
“We'll use another inclusive process,” Hood said. “We'll get some students submissions, probably some professional submissions, and do a similar process. Reach out to the community and reach out to our students to narrow it down and then come up with a recommendation for the board of the official logos of the Okemos schools that will coincide with wolves.”
Hood said looking back on the process he’s proud of the community involvement and the students willingness to work together and make this decision for the district.
“They took the change away from the Native American themed mascot very seriously. They understood the why behind that, not only for the Native American community, but also for other marginalized communities, and felt a great sense of responsibility but also excitement,” Hood said. “The kids are really excited about this. They think their classmates are going to really rally around it and it's going to be a fun new identity for the district.”
And he is happy they can honor Chief Okemos in a different way moving forward.
“There's an explicit difference between naming our schools after Chief Okemos and having a mascot or likeness,” Hood said. “We have Native Americans within our communities in Michigan and want to make sure we're honoring them and putting the best foot forward for our district and for our students.”
The Native American Heritage Fund gave the district $213,000 to help with the estimated $427,000 cost of adopting the new mascot.
The grant will help replace uniforms, scoreboards, gym floors and other equipment with the old mascot name.
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