{"id":1459,"date":"2010-04-01T21:30:23","date_gmt":"2010-04-02T02:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ezing.me\/transfer\/?p=1459"},"modified":"2014-09-23T08:34:41","modified_gmt":"2014-09-23T13:34:41","slug":"mascotfocusgroups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/mascotfocusgroups\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Mascot Committee Begins Work, Plans Focus Groups to Solicit Ideas and Concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

OXFORD, Miss. – A student committee charged with helping select a new mascot for the University of Mississippi is making arrangements to get input from a broad range of Ole Miss supporters and then report on the group’s progress via a new Web site.<\/p>\n


\nThe Student Mascot Committee is working with the Ramey Agency, a Mississippi-based marketing firm, to organize focus groups of students, alumni, faculty and staff members. Committee members met with two student focus groups Wednesday and briefed staff members from the Ole Miss Alumni Association and University Foundation on Thursday.<\/p>\n

“We were selected Monday night at 10, and we have been in meetings virtually ever since,” said Ty New, one of the committee’s co-chairs. “We want to make sure this process is open and inclusive, and that we listen to everybody’s ideas and come up with a mascot that can represent all Ole Miss fans.”<\/p>\n

Members of the committee were chosen from a pool of 97 applicants, many of whom were interviewed by members of the Student Leaders Advisory Committee and the Student Athlete Advisory Committee. The Student Mascot Committee includes 15 members – three freshmen, three sophomores, six juniors, one senior and three graduate students – and two co-chairs: New, a junior finance major from Olive Branch, and Margaret Ann Morgan, a freshman journalism major from McComb. Twelve of the committee members are from Mississippi.<\/p>\n

The committee plans to post progress reports at http:\/\/mascot.olemiss.edu<\/a>, which launched Thursday. Fans also will be able to submit their ideas for a new mascot at this site soon.<\/p>\n

Although no deadline has been set for unveiling a new mascot, the committee hopes to finish its work soon, New said<\/p>\n

“We’re really hoping for the beginning of football season because that would be a great time to bust out a new mascot, but we don’t want to lock ourselves into a definite timeframe,” he said. “We want to make sure we take the time to do this right.”<\/p>\n

Lee Tyner, the university attorney and an adviser for the committee, praised the group for its dedication and vision.<\/p>\n

“This is an inclusive, transparent process led by students that seeks input from all parts of the Ole Miss community,” Tyner said.<\/p>\n

“They are putting a lot of effort into this work, and I’m confident they will do a great job.”<\/p>\n

The committee plans to conduct several focus groups on campus during the weekend of April 9-10, and then conduct others in Jackson and other locations in the following weeks. Getting ideas from alumni is critical to the project’s success, New said.<\/p>\n

“Their input is a top priority for us, and we intend to listen to their ideas and concerns because they are as important to this process as we students are,” he said. “We want the new mascot to be something that everyone can support and be happy with.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OXFORD, Miss. – A student committee charged with helping select a new mascot for the University of Mississippi is making arrangements to get input from a broad range of Ole Miss supporters and then report on the group’s progress via a new Web site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[222],"tags":[345],"yoast_head":"\nStudent Mascot Committee Begins Work, Plans Focus Groups to Solicit Ideas and Concerns - Ole Miss News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/mascotfocusgroups\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Student Mascot Committee Begins Work, Plans Focus Groups to Solicit Ideas and Concerns - Ole Miss News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"OXFORD, Miss. – A student committee charged with helping select a new mascot for the University of Mississippi is making arrangements to get input from a broad range of Ole Miss supporters and then report on the group’s progress via a new Web site.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/mascotfocusgroups\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Ole Miss News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"-0001-11-30T00:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-09-23T13:34:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@OleMissRebels\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@OleMissRebels\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/\",\"name\":\"Ole Miss News\",\"description\":\"The official source for University of Mississippi news\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/mascotfocusgroups\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/mascotfocusgroups\/\",\"name\":\"Student Mascot Committee Begins Work, Plans Focus Groups to Solicit Ideas and Concerns - Ole Miss News\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"-0001-11-30T00:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-09-23T13:34:41+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#\/schema\/person\/4515cb1b4f8a759552c0827c3df56430\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/mascotfocusgroups\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#\/schema\/person\/4515cb1b4f8a759552c0827c3df56430\",\"name\":\"admin\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/0.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3e8e7562bf6d779d771ad8ce4cecd7ef?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"admin\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41769,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions\/41769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}