Big Chungus loses SU election, campaigns to be mascot

By Frankie Hart, March 15 2019 —

Although school mascots are not normally an elected position, campaign posters in favour of a new one have been plastered all over campus. Some posters question the current mascot, Rex O’Saurus, with messages such as “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom sucked” and “Our school spirit is dead because our mascot is too.”

Students are starting to question the authority of Rex as a campus icon and are giving serious consideration to replacing him as mascot. Third-year student Ruby Rahser has organized a petition for Rex to step down.

“It’s important to make sure that students keep the university accountable and representative of student interests,” Rahser said. “What’s more representative of us than our mascot? I don’t see any good reason for us to call ourselves Dinos. Dinosaurs kind of suck now that we know they had feathers. And what does having an extinct mascot say about our resilience?”

Other posters propose a solution to the discontent. After a devastating loss in the campaign for SU president, Big Chungus has shifted focus to filling the role of University of Calgary mascot. The Chungus campaign organizer is a second-year student who would only speak to the Gauntlet if they were only identified as B.C.

“To be honest, this whole thing was a joke at first,” B.C. admitted. “I figured I would just print off a few funny posters, put them up, post pictures of it on Reddit, have a chuckle and that’s it. But people really liked it. So I did it again. Students actually seemed to be pretty receptive to the idea of Big Chungus as our president. I got my hopes up too high and was really crushed by the loss.”

However, B.C. didn’t want to put all their hard campaigning work to waste, and posted stickers that said ‘mascot’ over where the posters originally said ‘SU president.’ They also painted Big Chungus onto the campus rock, which has been well-received by students.

“Sometimes, when you get too close to the meme, it stops being ironic,” B.C. said. “You fully embrace it with all your being and feel both its joy and its sorrow. I do genuinely believe now that this is the right decision. We are all Chungi.”

This article is part of our humour section.