The incoming residents of brand-new Therese Mary Grojean Hall will call themselves the Penguins next academic year after concluding with 20 ”Shark Tank“-inspired pitches for prospective mascots in a two-hour hall government meeting last Tuesday.
Howard Hall’s executive board hosted the event in “The Pond,” a communal space alluding to the dorm’s own mascot, the Ducks. Howard Hall rector Anna Kenny presided over the meeting and presented two of her own options: Puffins and Foxes.
The name-picking process is the first of a few student-chosen elements of Grojean Hall’s identity. A new crest, hall colors and motto will add to that identity in coming weeks.
The new community will include most non-senior Howard Hall residents, who had their building retired as an undergraduate dormitory by Residential Life on Nov. 19 last year. The new hall also has room for upwards of 120 other women who request a transfer from their current residence.
The pitches operated on a two-minute time limit, and presenters were encouraged to explain how their name would impact aspects of life and culture in the new dorm. Signature hall events, color schemes, mottos, merchandise and even hand signals accompanied the names.
Speakers prepared PowerPoints and staged dramatic walk-ins. For the Grojean Gold, the eventual runner-up, sophomore Taryn Wilson and five other Howard residents came in blasting “Gold Digger” by Kanye West.
Wilson and sophomore Megan Ebinger also pitched the Penguins in the winning presentation, which was the first pitch of the night.
“Resilience, affection, loyalty: all words commonly used to describe penguins; all qualities I think of when I picture the residents of Howard Hall, our soon to be Grojean community,” Wilson said in her opening statement.
The presenters argued the name embodied the strength to overcome finals and winters at Notre Dame. They proposed a hall-wide field trip to Shedd Aquarium in Chicago to see real penguins, replacing Howard's trip to watch ducks around Lake Michigan.
“We are not erasing the Ducks,” Wilson said. “We are simply turning the page. We owe it to the new members of the Grojean community, and to ourselves, to let Grojean have its own legacy; its own heartbeat. Let us not be the dorm that used to be Howard. Let us be Grojean. Roll Guins.”
The two proposed a big-little mentoring event that involved giving rocks to incoming residents, a practice male penguins do for female penguins. Their slides included merchandise mock-ups and multiple examples of Penguins in popular culture, featuring the four penguins in the animated movie series “Madagascar.”
After learning her proposed name had been chosen to represent the new Grojean community, Wilson commented on the team’s level of preparation. “We took it very seriously, rehearsing pretty extensively beforehand,” she said.
Pitches for Glove Compartments by Ellie Kingston and Flat Earthers by Kaitlin Ryan were among monikers that drew cheers and applause from the audience, but did not succeed in voting.
“We need a mascot that obliterates the mold,” Kingston said in her presentation.
“Who’s to say, the world doesn’t end just after the construction site,” Ryan said in her own. “The flat earthers aren’t claiming to be right, they’re claiming to be Grojean.”
Later, the two seniors reflected on the seriousness of their proposals.
“We each assigned each others’ topics,” Kingston said. “We were competing to see who would get more votes, and she gave me more competition than I wanted.”
Students from other women’s dorms who filed to transfer into Grojean Hall next semester joined Howard residents in selecting the new mascot. Some transfer students offered up their own names, such as senior Bernice Antoine, who gave the final presentation of the evening, advocating for “Sharks.”
An initial round of voting immediately followed the meeting, culling the number of available names from 20 to four: Penguins, Ducks, The Grojean Gold (Lighting Bolts) and Jaguars.
A second round of voting eliminated the Jaguars and the Ducks, denying the Howard mascot a chance to follow its residents to the new dorm. On Sunday, a narrow 51.5% of the 130 voters chose Penguins over Gold.
“The new mascot is an opportunity for not only Howard residents, but transfer students and first-year students to leave their own legacy, and come into Grojean as one community,” Wilson said.
