BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS – APRIL 27, 2012- When the final voting for The University of Texas at Brownsville’s new mascot officially ended at 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 25, 3,509 students and 416 faculty and staff voted for their choice.

The five finalists for the new mascot were the ocelot, the jaguarundi, the bull shark, the parrot and the vaqueros. Now that the votes have been cast, they will be tallied by the Mascot Search Committee and other officials. The winning mascot will be disclosed during UTB’s Welcome Week at the beginning of the fall semester.

This final round of student voting began Monday, April 23 on Blackboard in conjunction with the elections for the Bougainvillea Ball king and queen.

As part of the community outreach campaign that coincided with the mascot voting, the Office of Student Life hosted a Mascot Door Decorating Contest that began on Wednesday, April 11 and also ended on Wednesday, April 25.

With more than 900 likes on their door, the university’s Center for Civic Engagement won the door decorating contest. The winner was decided at midnight Thursday, April 26 by door photo has the most number of likes. The office will receive a pizza party for their department for up to 10 people.

All campus departments and registered student organizations were encouraged to participate by decorating their door in the theme of the preferred mascot of their choice. The community was also able to vote for their favorite door via the official UTB Facebook page. In all, 21 university groups submitted their photos to Facebook page.

“Great team effort! We got over 440 votes today. Imagine what we could accomplish with face to face campaigning,” posted Estela Martinez from the Center for Civic Engagement on Wednesday.

An open forum was held Friday, April 20 at the Student Union Veranda. The results of the community outreach polling, which took place earlier that week across several school districts in the surrounding counties and the community at large, were revealed during the Mascot Open Forum. The polls were meant to gauge public opinion and support for the mascot finalists.

The ocelot swept each demographic polled, according to the published SurveyMonkey results. In the alumni poll, where 1,036 people responded, the ocelot won with 48.8 percent voting for it. Sixty-one school children were polled with 36.1 percent of the votes going toward the ocelot; bull sharks were close behind with 34.4 percent of the vote. Finally, among the general community who participated in the poll, the ocelot was also the most popular mascot with 49 percent of the vote among 161 individuals.

Even children from the Raul J. Guerra Early Childhood Development Center were given the opportunity to preview the new mascots. At an impromptu sit-in, they were provided an explanation about each mascot and then chose which mascot they favored. The students then posed for photos next to the image of their favored mascot.

The Mascot Search Committee is comprised of representatives from several UTB departments and includes members of the Division of Student Affairs, the Office of Student Life, staff, students and alumni.

The official Mascot Search webpage on the UTB website updates regularly with news regarding the search for the new mascot.

For more information, visit utb.edu/mascot or contact the Mascot Search Committee at mascot@utb.edu.