Name-a-Day Calendar, May 1: Monmouth Hawks
Page 176 of 365
Chosen in: 1939 (shortened in 1956)
Chosen by: Student body vote (shortened by school administration)
Monmouth Junior College was founded in 1933. They first selected an athletic nickname in 1939, when they had their students submit suggestions for a student body vote. Students had several great ideas,1 but the final vote was between just three entries. Two of them, EmJaCees and MaJiCians, played on the school’s initials; the other, Nighthawks, played on the fact that most of the school’s classes were held at night. “Nighthawks” won by six votes.
Monmouth became a four-year school in 1955 and changed their name to Monmouth College in 1956, making it convenient that they didn’t pick an athletic nickname based on the school’s initials 17 years earlier. In any case, the school was no longer primarily centered on night classes, so administration deemed the “Nighthawks” branding obsolete and shortened it to “Hawks”.
Monmouth College became Monmouth University in 1995, this time keeping their athletic nickname after the switch. They introduced a costumed hawk mascot, Shadow, in 2003. Here he is getting ready for class in one of the most 2008 videos ever created.
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Missing the final cut: Bearcats, Bees, Bisons, Commuters, Orange Fliers, Trojans, and several others
Nighthawks is cool no matter when your classes are smh
They should be the afternoonhawks though if they care so much about not being the nighthawks