By Ginny Morris

The search for a new Eastfield Harvester’s logo is underway. Copyright issues forced the college to discontinue using its previous logo last year.
Last week, Director of Student Life Judy Schwartz hosted the first meeting of a committee of students, staff and faculty that will help select a new logo.
At the first meeting, the committee chose words to describe what they thought the Harvester symbol should represent.
“Responsible,” “determined,” “passionate” and “swag” were some of the concepts they decided the new logo should incorporate.
However, the committee won’t play the primary part in actually creating the new logo.
“We’re going to have a contest,” Schwartz said. “Anyone can enter it.  It can be a crude drawing, or it can be a professional, graphically designed image. We want students, staff, professionals [or anyone else who is interested] to submit images.  Then we’re going to use this committee to narrow them all down.”
Once the committee has chosen a few finalists, the remaining images will be posted on a website where all students and college employees can vote for their favorite.
The deadline for art submissions will be near the end of April so that the new logo can be selected by the end of the semester.
Gerald Kozlowski, executive dean of Career Technologies and a member of the logo committee, said that he believes it is important for the school to have a consistent logo just like four-year universities.
“I’ve been with the college on and off since 1971, and there’s never been any consistency,” Kozlowski said. “The mascot has changed. If you look at almost every school in the country, they’ve got a real, identifiable mascot. It just never happened here.”
Once the new logo has been chosen, Schwartz said the college will order a mascot costume.  Students will be trained to wear it so they can appear at school events.
If all goes according to plan, the new logo will be in place by the time students return for the fall semester.
Sergio Temblador, a member of the student House of Representatives who is also serving on the committee said he is excited about having a new mascot.
“I love the school, and I feel like we need an image,” he said. “We don’t need just the EFC logo. We need a picture of what we are. I think a logo improves the students’ pride.”