SCCS Mascot Voting Results

Dear Southern Cayuga Friends & Families,

The Southern Cayuga CSD Board of Education has released the mascot voting results.  First of all, I'd like to thank the members of the SCCS Mascot Committee who led the process to identify a new school community mascot for Southern Cayuga CSD.  Thank you for volunteering your time.  

The Results
The final results for mascot voting have been tallied and the results are:

Cougars - 235
Knights - 199
Red Dragons - 188

Next Steps
The SCCS Board of Education approves the new mascot/nickname.  
The committee consults with a professional graphic artist to develop imagery specific to Southern Cayuga.
The committee 'reveals' the new mascot image/logo to the community (Spring 2024).

The Process

• The mascot committee, composed of students, staff, and community members, met to determine criteria for the new mascot. They created a list of four items they felt our new mascot should embody.
• All students, staff, and the community were invited to nominate a new mascot which embodies the criteria from the committee.
• The student committee met to narrow down the list initially. They focused on taking out any mascots they felt they would be made fun of. They moved twenty mascots on to the community/staff committee.
• The community and staff committee then went through and listed pros and potential drawbacks for each mascot. They narrowed the list down to eleven mascots.
• The student committee then looked at the pros and potential drawbacks list from the community and staff, and added their own. They narrowed the list down to 5 mascots. Community and staff members had the opportunity to hear from the students why they selected the 5 they did.
• The community and staff committee met again to review the pros and potential drawbacks, and add any other thoughts to the list of pros and potential drawbacks. They narrowed the list down to 3 finalists.
• All students, staff, and the community were invited to vote for their favorite mascot. A filtering process was applied to ensure each individual only voted one time.
• Voting ended on Monday, November 27 at 3:00 pm. The final tally happened on Friday, December 1 in order to ensure we had all paper ballots mailed in on or before the close of voting. 

Patrick Jensen
SCCS