Familiar face missing at the Hill

As students returned to the Hill this school year, a familiar face was missing: the Cav Man. Throughout the school, students have noticed that murals and statues of the Cavalier near the gym, front office, and the library have been replaced by a clover. Where has he gone and what does this mean for Clover Hill?

Principal David Altizer has confirmed that there is no plan to get rid of the Cavalier as a whole, but that the message students conveyed to him was that they feel neither connected to nor represented by the Cavalier mascot.

“A creepy Cavalier, I do not think there are any students that see that and are like ‘that represents me’,” Altizer said. 

Altizer stated that our school does not know what our logo is. After the varsity football game last year against Huguenot, Clover Hill had gone viral because of the huge loss of 81-7 and many different logos had been used to represent us.

“I saw the creepy one we got, I saw a different one and then I saw the Tampa Bay Buccaneers one. You know, I do not think we know what our logo is, and most schools know what that logo is. Different news stations [each] ran a different logo for Clover Hill,” Altizer said.

It appears that for the time being, we are keeping the Cavalier as a mascot, but moving towards a logo that can represent all: a clover.

Can change be good?

Students and staff have conveyed diverse feelings about this change on the logo. 

This change has got senior Matthew Shevalier voicing his opinion.

“Personally I think it [Cav Man] represents our school and it has a lot more personality than the clover even though we are Clover Hill. I just think it makes us stand out more. If it is not broken, do not fix it,” Shevalier said. 

P.E. teacher Bryan Jennings feels that the change is good for building a new culture in the school.

“Change is good obviously, anytime you do change, it is tough because people might feel like they are losing some tradition with the old way of doing some stuff. It is still the same school with the same name and same everything with just some subtle changes. It does not really change the mindset or the way things have been. But then again, you have an ability to make new traditions, new things, new ways of doing things too. So, it is not a bad thing,” Jennings said. 

This new logo could be a step towards new traditions and a new beginning for Clover Hill, or it could be a step away from more than a half-century tradition.

Speaking of half of a century, a Cavalier statue built by art students in the 1970s had been by door one for almost fifty years. Starting last year, the fifty year old iconic statue was gone. While everyone is in the dark on what happened, chemistry teacher Pamela Hughes knows what happened. 

“For the past twenty years, because it was made out of plaster, the legs have been coming apart. Two summers ago, his legs completely fell apart, and when he fell he broke his whole torso and legs. Everybody tried, but there was nothing we could do about it, which broke my heart because I was here when he was being made, when he was brand new,” Hughes said. 

Hughes explains how after there was no saving the statue itself, she kept the head of the statue, which is now displayed in her room, 442.

Does this statue falling apart represent what is happening to the mascot itself? Only time will tell what will happen to the Cav Man.