Students push school board for one SHS logo
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Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 9:31am
Three high school students' marketing project has the town talking about how to brand the Blue Knight mascot with a consistent logo while maintaining a sense of tradition.
Southington High School students Tyler Calvi-Rogers, Dillon Ritchie and Matt Roncaioli presented the project to the board of education this week making the case for a single Blue Knight logo to represent all of the school's sports teams, which they said would build school pride through a visual medium.
They began their presentation with a skit. Each wore a shirt with a different school logo and acted confused, arguing briefly about whose was the real logo.
"Our problem is that at Southington High School, we don't have a common image," Roncaioli said to school board members Thursday. "We have too many logos and we have different color schemes."
The students said the school needs a single unifying logo and color scheme around which the student body and the town can rally. The brand would be synonymous with the product, like the Nike Swoosh is with sneakers and apparel.
In this case the product is Southington High School.
"A unified image creates more pride, school- and town-wide. School colors, logos and physical mascot helps create school spirit. Unity sends a strong symbolic school, town and statewide message," Calvi-Rogers said.
After the presentation, board members expressed concerns and had questions about going from a marketing project to making actual changes to the school's identity. Board member Terri Carmody said she always thought the school's official logo was the familiar image of a blue knight sitting on a horse.
"I always thought that Southington had a blue knight, the knight that is on the front of the school. That blue knight has been in existence since Southington High School was in existence," Carmody said. "When I see all the examples on the shirts you are wearing, how did that ever come about that one team has one shirt and another team has another?"
Roncaioli said he thought that some students, unhappy with that logo, began experimenting with different schemes and over the years it snowballed. School Principal Kathy McGrath was unsure of the original logo's origins but thinks it may have been easy clip-art to use on letterhead.
As such, it had never really been accepted by the different teams or clubs in the school. Athletic Director Eric Swallow said he has already been working on streamlining the look of many of the athletic uniforms.
Since the scheme he has been working with, a block-letter S, works well with the design chosen by the students, it would not conflict with uniforms that have been coming from his office.
"A lot of the organizations were using variations. Everything has been streamlined into the scholastic S. Anything that has been coming out of my office has had it," Swallow said. "The logo that they came up with has a scholastic S in it so I really wouldn't have to do too much."
Carmody said she likes the new logo, but was afraid of losing the tradition behind the old logo. School Superintendent Joseph V. Erardi Jr. said there will not be any immediate changes to the logo this year.
"There needs to be a recommendation from the high school administration to the central administration to you," Erardi said to the board members. "If there is going to be change, Ms. McGrath will get back to you and give you a chance to voice your concerns."
As part of their project, the marketing students polled high school students, DePaolo Middle School students and community members on a few different logos to gauge what logo they prefer.
Their research indicated that only 7 percent of students liked the more traditional knight on a horse. The majority of students, teachers, community and middle school students liked a logo that incorporated the word Southington with a knight's upper body above the letters holding a sword that makes up the letter T.
The three students presented their research recently at a statewide competition and placed second.
