Name-a-Day Calendar, August 10: St. Bonaventure Bonnies

Page 277 of 365

Chosen in: Unclear (became official in 1992)

Chosen by: University administration

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St. Bonaventure’s College was founded in 1858 and began playing football in 1895.¹ The school’s first teams were known as the Alleganies, which looks like a misspelling of “Allegheny”, the river that flows along the southern limit of the campus, but is actually based on Allegany, the town immediately west of the school.

Within a few years, this nickname was discarded in favor of “Brownies”, based on brown being the primary color in the school’s branding.

In 1927, the university changed their sporting nickname yet again, this time to “Brown Indians”. This, decades later and following a school name change to St. Bonaventure University in 1950, would bring about the school’s first mascot: the Brown Indian, who debuted in 1961.

Perhaps more unfortunately, it’d also give way to their first female mascot, whose name I will not type because it is a rare slur that manages to be both sexist and racist. This five-letter word that begins with an S debuted in 1967, and the St. Bonaventure women’s sports teams took the same nickname when they became popular at the school following the passage of Title IX.²

St. Bonaventure likes to claim that their usage of Native American nicknames, imagery, and mascots was always out of respect for (and with the blessing of) the local Seneca people, that the only reason they even considered transitioning away from this branding was because “political correctness” poisoned everyone else’s brains to the point that they’d all look at St. Bonaventure funny if they didn’t.³ But the mascots were almost always white people dressing up in vaguely Native American garb, the Native American logo wasn’t even drawn accurately,⁴ and the female mascot’s name was a slur.

They can say what they want about why they dropped the Native American nickname in 1992, but the simple fact is that usage of Native American nicknames, imagery, and mascots—especially as St. Bonaventure did it—was offensive, full stop.

The replacement nickname for both sexes was “Bonnies”, which had already been in use as a secondary nickname for at least a couple decades. Its exact origin is unclear except that it was a natural shortening of “Bonaventure”. The St. Bonaventure Bonnies might sound redundant, but this moniker is certainly better than the alternative.

So why’s the mascot a wolf? Well, the first mascot wasn’t! It was a weird brown fuzzy lookin’ thing called the Bona Fanatic, a name I can only assume came from the similar-looking Phillie Phanatic. That lasted from 1996 until 1998, when the school formed a committee to think up a new mascot and they decided on the wolf.

The Bona Wolf, which debuted in 1999, plays on the school’s Franciscan roots. Saint Francis of Assisi, who founded the Franciscan order, is said to have once tamed a feral wolf simply by making the sign of the cross and commanding it to stop in the name of God, then striking a truce by promising to feed it every day as long as it didn’t kill any more humans.⁵ And wild animals never killed anybody ever again.

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1. This football team was disbanded in 1951.

2. For clarity’s sake, the women’s teams were nicknamed the Brown <Slur>s.

3. Read it for yourself. This is on their own .edu website.

4. Until 1991, the logo was incorrectly based on the tribes of the Upper Midwest known as the Plains Indians. They had a local Seneca artist draw a more accurate logo in 1991, just a year before they moved away from the branding entirely (spoilers!).

5. Whether I believe this story is true is for you to decide.