**This article has been updated.**
Students and Champaign-Urbana community members gathered at Siebel Center for Design on Thursday to witness the reveal of a new costume design for the Kingfisher, an unofficial University mascot.
Donning a jersey clad in blue and orange, the revitalized Kingfisher took photos and shared high fives with attendees as the King’s Guard, the RSO behind the adoption campaign for the mascot, encouraged students to brainstorm names for the female bird.
During student elections this February, 76% of voters supported adopting a University mascot.
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A 2020 referendum asked if students would favor adopting the Kingfisher as the Universityʼs official mascot — the non-binding referendum passed, 4,222 to 3,597. Later that year, the University Senate passed a resolution, 105-2, recommending the University officially adopt the Kingfisher as its mascot. The University has yet to officially adopt any mascot.
Since the retirement of Chief Illiniwek in 2007, the University has yet to install a replacement, a void that the King’s Guard has been aiming to fill for the past several years.
“We have tried to get meetings with Chancellor Jones, and his office has said he does not even have five minutes to spare with us; we are hopeful that this new chancellor will be a little bit more willing to be a changemaker on campus and in the community,” said Averhy Sanborn, junior in LAS and president of the King’s Guard. “We actually have a lot of new students that already believe that we are the mascot … Really, what’s standing between us and becoming official is just administrative action.”
The new costume was produced in collaboration with Maydwell Mascots, with King’s Guard fundraising a little over $8,000 from students, alumni and faculty to support the process.
The redesign took several months and a large group of brainstormers to finalize. It retains the feathered arms and striking orange streak across the torso from its previous iteration, albeit now emblazoned on a fresh jersey and wiggling a new pair of unmissable orange eyebrows.
Many students, including Lucas Hennessey, sophomore in FAA, believe that an official adoption of the Kingfisher will revitalize school spirit for the student body.
“There has been so much art, so much advocacy, so many discussions that have gone into this,” Hennessey said. “Weird, goofy mascots are a very, very cultural thing and it’s a big hole that’s been blowing in our side for nearly two decades now.”
Hennessey and his friends, who claimed to have cried three times in anticipation of the costume reveal, said they would like the Kingfisher to be named Doug.
CORRECTION: March 31, 1:15 p.m. — A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that University students voted in support of adopting the Kingfisher as the University’s mascot. The referendum asked voters whether they support adopting “a mascot to represent the University for use at Illinois Athletic and other relevant events” — not the Kingfisher, specifically. This article has been updated to accurately reflect the result of the February referendum.
CORRECTION: March 31, 3 p.m. — A previous version of this article stated that three referenda “passed in support of a mascot” in the last five years. There have only been two such referenda in that time — one in 2020 and a second this spring. This article has been updated to accurately reflect the outcomes of the 2020 and 2025 referenda and note the outcome of a separate Illinois Student Senate non-binding resolution which passed in 2020.
