Mystery Mascot: The forgotten legacy of the Hofstra Duck
Photo courtesy of The Hofstra Chronicle
Long Island is home to upwards of 7 million people. From its sprawling towns and cities to the cold, windy, flat campus many Hofstra students call home, this place is riddled with absurdity. The highways don’t make sense, everything is expensive and it’s impossible to know where the border between Queens and Nassau is.
But the most shocking revelation – while it is certainly jarring – is sure to fill the incredulous void within the modern college student’s heart, a void they didn’t even know existed.
This is the Long Island Duck – Hofstra’s long lost, but now rediscovered, mascot. The Ducks are not well-known by most Hofstra alumni or professors, but are as integral to Hofstra’s history as the beloved Kate and Willie (with the added benefit of intense artistic value).
The Duck raises many questions. Why do its piercing eyes evoke the auteur of great philistines like Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and other Italian classics? How do its legs, slender and contoured, support such a bulky and righteous chassis?
The utter awesomeness of the Hofstra Duck is lost to the tale of time, as it seems its prime has waned. Evidence of the Ducks is scattered, and its beauty is gone from public memory.
A Hofstra Chronicle article from 2014 detailing the history of Hofstra’s many mascots featured the only remaining – easily accessible, rather – photo of the Duck and the tragic story of its untimely demise. Apparently, Long Island was once home to many duck farms, and Hofstra had kindly decided to endow students with homage to its aviary past. Those students, so distraught with the outright beauty of the Duck, stole its head and set it ablaze. Thus, the Duck perished.
Such tragic history seems foretold as though it came from the mouth of Aristotle himself – how could nobody know about the Duck?!
“By the time I arrived at Hofstra, as a faculty member in our economics department, the Hofstra Ducks were not a prominent part of the identity of our University,” said Herman Berliner, ex-Provost of Hofstra. “Therefore, I am not in position to answer Duck related questions.”
The current administration appears to have missed out on the Ducks, as other higher ups echoed Berliner’s statements.
Neil Donahue, a professor in Hofstra’s Department of Comparative Literature and Languages, had only been aware of the Minor League Baseball team, the Long Island Ducks.
“Never heard of such a thing,” said Donahue. “There's the Long Island Ducks, I think. A minor league baseball team.”
While the Long Island Ducks bear a similarity to Hofstra’s previous mascot, students are keen to recognize the Duck’s appeal. Swinging back from a pandemic is hard, and there’s a Duck-shaped hole in every Hofstra student’s heart. Some, perhaps with more of a creative flare, enjoy this flightful representation of school spirit.
“I think it would be a very unique influence on the Hofstra community,” said Sarah Rodes, a senior mechanical engineering major.
“I like the Duck. I think it's great. I mean, if you compare it to the lion now – lions are basic.”
