Throughout CLU athletics marketing there is no sign of the Kingsmen and Regal logos.

In their place, you can find the letters C-L-U in an interlocking font.

Many students have thought that perhaps we are getting a new mascot, one that is unisex.

Christie Harper, assistant vice president of University Marketing, said that this rumor is not true.

“Kingsman and Regal are still the team name and mascot,” said Harper. “Just the athletics logo is changing to a gender-neutral logo.”

According to Harper, this new logo is still being developed.

“We’re going to be doing some focus groups in the spring,” said Harper.  “These focus groups will help California Lutheran University’s marketing team design what will be a more recognizable logo to the outside community. Sometime probably in the next six months we will have a logo to present to the Board of Regents,” said Harper.

Amelia Daniels, a student at CLU, said that perhaps the university should consider switching to one mascot, rather than just changing the logo.

“I think there should probably be one mascot.  When you look at other schools, they only have one mascot,” said Daniels.  “It’s better to have one so that the school is more united.”

According to Daniels, explaining to other people that there are two mascots is too complicated.

“They ask, ‘why are there two?’ and then you have to say ‘well the Kingsmen is only for boys and the girls needed one, too, so they added in the Regals,” said Daniels.

The marketing department is also working on other changes to the branding of the university.  These changes move towards the goal of creating a “stronger identity for Cal Lutheran,” said Harper.

According to Harper, the university marketing office’s goal is to rebrand the university to be “Cal Lutheran” or “Cal Lu” and stray away from the usage of “CLU.”

Harper said that being branded as CLU makes the university less recognizable than its competitors.

“When I’m in the community and I say ‘I work at CLU,’ people say, ‘what is that?’” said Harper.

Many students have thought that a change in the university email system was to do with university branding.

“I’ve noticed that I will send an email to someone using ‘clunet.edu’ and they’ll come to me and say ‘I never got that email from you,” said Daniels.

Julius Bianchi, associate provost -information services, said that any problems with the clunet.edu domain are not intentional and do not have to do with university marketing or branding.

“We have no plans to relinquish that domain,” said Bianchi.

According to Bianchi and Harper, there has been a push by marketing to use “callutheran.edu” rather than “clunet.edu” since 2006.

“All business cards, printed literature, and directories say “callutheran.edu,” said Bianchi.

Kaitlyn Guilbeaux
Staff Writer
Published Oct. 31, 2012