TPMom: Here's a history of the Anteater that I have cut, pasted from various sources...
UC Irvine Anteater
HISTORY OF THE MASCOT (ZOT)
The year was 1965, a year marked by political upheaval, war protests ... and a brand new UC campus in Irvine.
Rising from the middle of the green fields that once sustained the buffalo herds of James Irvine was UCI, a campus soon to become distinctive for its high quality of programs, faculty and academics.
But something was missing: The new school lacked a mascot. The Administration decided to let the students choose the animal that would represent UCI. Students were to submit their candidates, and the favorites would be voted on in a campus-wide election.
The following were on that list:
• Bearcats
• Seahawks
• Golden Eagles
• Anteaters
• Roadrunners
• Bison
• Centaurs
• Unicorns
The Anteater was nominated based on Johnny Hart's comic strip B.C. and won by a landslide, partly due to a one-man political campaign by a student named Schuyler Hadley Basset III, and partly due to two of Irvine's first Water Polo players, Pat Glasgow, & Bob Nealy whose idea it was to use the Anteater. The Anteater had all the makings of an ideal mascot for the infant university. It was original and slightly irreverent.
Basset used his ingenious marketing skills to get the student body to vote for "Peter the Anteater". Soon the campus was filled with pro-anteater literature and Basset created the anteater logo that is still seen today all over the campus. Bassett borrowed the war cry "Zot" from the Anteater in the "B.C." comic strip and established his own fraternity, Zeta Omega Ta (ZOT).
A water polo game against San Luis Obispo took place just before the mascot election and shortly thereafter, on Monday, November 29, 1965, the student body voted 56 percent to adopt the anteater as the official mascot.
A stuffed Anteater named Myrmey, measuring some seven feet long, resides in a glass case in the Administration building, and in the Class of 1987 commissioned New Mexico artist Billy Fitzgerald, who had created the UCLA Bruin, to cast a 430-pound bronze sculpture to stand in honor in front of the Bren Events Center.
The plaque on the statue states the essence of the exercise:
"Although some skeptics argued that the Anteater lacked dignity, most students were taken by the gentle anti-hero nature of the mascot. In a spirited election, the anteater easily defeated its closest rival, 'None of These'."
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Sorry FBMom: Nowhere in the title:
University of California-Irvine do I see the WORD State.
Bullwinkle has just stuck up his nose and with much gusto....hurfumbed.....I am inebriated with exuberance with of my own verbosity.
