Wizard the Lizard, the official mascot of Truckee Meadows Community College, has been identified as a gender neutral mascot.
The TMCC Student Government Association (SGA) voted to declare Wizard gender neutral on Wednesday after discussing other colleges and universities who are making their mascots more diverse.
Locally, the University of Nevada, Reno currently boasts female mascot wolf, Luna, along with male mascots.
“Having a gender neutral mascot makes TMCC progressive and inclusive to all gender types,” says YeVonne Allen, specialist in TMCC’s Equity and Inclusion Office. “Wizard now promotes this inclusive environment to support our diverse students.”
Wizard is gender neutral in all aspects. Instead of using any gendered pronoun (such as he/she) to refer to the mascot, the suggested gender neutral terms are "the lizard," "the mascot" or just "Wizard."
Wizard the Lizard became the official mascot of TMCC through a series of SGA votes, beginning in 2013 when a lizard was chosen as the animal. The name “Wizard” and the logo design became finalized following a student vote in 2014, and TMCC purchased the mascot costume for appearances in early 2015.
Prior to recent years, TMCC did not have an official mascot, though the lizard was considered by many to be an unofficial mascot. For a brief time after its founding as a satellite campus of Western Nevada College in the early 1970’s, TMCC shared the Wildcats mascot. When TMCC became its own institution in 1979, no official mascot was chosen.
(Truckee Meadows Community College contributed to this report.)
