[Kathy]

There were two student votes on the mascot issue during the 1975-76 school year. I believe the votes were conducted by the Daily, but it might have been the ASSU. The first vote was on restoring the Indian. That lost by a large margin. The second vote was on a new name. As I recall, the names on the ballot were Robber Barons, Sequoias, Trees, Cardinals (plural), and one or two others. The final vote ranked them in pretty much that order, I believe. The vote was pretty close among the top four choices. If Sequoias and Trees had not split the vote, it seems likely that one or the other of them would have won, and we might have a different mascot today. Of course, Robber Barons had no chance of approval by the university. So we continued to be known unofficially as the Cardinals until Kennedy chose the Cardinal in 1981.

That 1975 mascot vote was conducted by ASSU, not The Daily. The student referendum in December 1975 included two mascot questions. One asked for a vote on returning the Indian mascot (defeated 69-31 percent). The other mascot question offered seven new mascot names. Robber Barons won with 1,664 votes, followed by Sequoias (1,598), Trees (1,530), Cardinals (1,309), Railroaders (317), Spikes (250) and Huns (207).

The Band had already introduced the Tree as a mascot for the 1975 Big Game the month before the vote. Supporters of Sequoias had pushed their choice on three points: 1) the connection to El Palo Alto; 2) the pro-Indian mascot contingent liked the similarity in name to revered Cherokee chief Sequoya; and 3) the possibility of calling the team Seqs for short with the anticipated aural mischief that could result for game announcers ("Seqs recover the ball").

Of course, the administration ignored the referendum results and continued to refer to teams as the cardinal color. The athletic department decided to shun all mascot names for the time being and referred to the teams simply as Stanford.

[Kathy]

There were two student votes on the mascot issue during the 1975-76 school year. I believe the votes were conducted by the Daily, but it might have been the ASSU. The first vote was on restoring the Indian. That lost by a large margin. The second vote was on a new name. As I recall, the names on the ballot were Robber Barons, Sequoias, Trees, Cardinals (plural), and one or two others. The final vote ranked them in pretty much that order, I believe. The vote was pretty close among the top four choices. If Sequoias and Trees had not split the vote, it seems likely that one or the other of them would have won, and we might have a different mascot today. Of course, Robber Barons had no chance of approval by the university. So we continued to be known unofficially as the Cardinals until Kennedy chose the Cardinal in 1981.

That 1975 mascot vote was conducted by ASSU, not The Daily. The student referendum in December 1975 included two mascot questions. One asked for a vote on returning the Indian mascot (defeated 69-31 percent). The other mascot question offered seven new mascot names. Robber Barons won with 1,664 votes, followed by Sequoias (1,598), Trees (1,530), Cardinals (1,309), Railroaders (317), Spikes (250) and Huns (207).

The Band had already introduced the Tree as a mascot for the 1975 Big Game the month before the vote. Supporters of Sequoias had pushed their choice on three points: 1) the connection to El Palo Alto; 2) the pro-Indian mascot contingent liked the similarity in name to revered Cherokee chief Sequoya; and 3) the possibility of calling the team Seqs for short with the anticipated aural mischief that could result for game announcers ("Seqs recover the ball").

Of course, the administration ignored the referendum results and continued to refer to teams as the cardinal color. The athletic department decided to shun all mascot names for the time being and referred to the teams simply as Stanford.