Edmonds Community College’s Mascot – the proud, ocean haired, bare-chested symbol of our school, or a disturbing and creepy costume design? Some students are under the consensus that it is time to redesign the costume of our EdCC’s mascot. Ideas regarding how the Triton should look are pretty limited. However, it’s widely agreed that whatever he looks like should bring pride to the Edmonds community. 

I conducted a poll on Twitter in which I provided images of the mascot in the thread below, and tagged #EDCC in it, asking what people thought of the Triton. 18 people voted, but sadly, the results were inconclusive. 50 percent of voters said that the Triton was an appealing mascot, while the remaining 50 percent felt that he was creepy. When directly asking students, alumni, and teachers about their opinion on the mascot, the results showed that they were 100 percent in agreement with one another that our Triton mascot is, in fact, creepy.

Several people who had allowed me to interview them were at first unaware of what the mascot actually looked like. “His expression is kind of soulless,” said Ahnamarie Nixon, a former student here at Edmonds. “He’s scaring me really badly,” she told me, demanding that I put away the image of the mascot on my phone. Reactions to the Triton were all similar to Nixon’s. His bright red, beady eyes accompanied by his muscular, nearly nude body evoked feelings of discomfort. 

According to the audience, humanoid mascots are more difficult to visualize. People tend not to think of mascots as a human in a suit made to resemble a larger, meatier human. “When I hear ‘Triton’, I think of Poseidon from Greek Mythology, and not a really jacked dude with a soulless face and vacant eyes,” said Nicholas Crouse. 

When asked what improvements could be made to the costume, Nixon suggested that if we “changed his head, he would look friendlier… His face is something I’d see during an episode of sleep paralysis,” she explained.

“You should look and immediately get that it’s a reference to Poseidon,” Kasie McCarty believes. A number of students agreed that the mascot should do more to parallel Poseidon, or even Ariel’s dad from The Little Mermaid. To achieve this sort of appearance, the Triton would likely need a beard. He’d also need to hold a trident, and possibly have legs that resemble a fishtail, if possible. Perhaps if the Triton looked more like a wise, old Sea God, more than a fraternity member, people would react better to him.