Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania spent the better part of a year assembling a Mascot Working Group, holding a campus-wide vote in September, and soliciting feedback from students, faculty, staff, and alumni — all to answer a question nobody outside a faculty lounge was asking: Is Benjamin Franklin too problematic to be a mascot?

The answer came back this week. No. He's fine.

The College Fix reported Tuesday that the 200-year-old institution has officially reversed course on its plan to replace Ben Franklin and John Marshall with a gender-neutral alternative. Campus spokesperson Sally Badoud confirmed the college would keep both Founding Fathers as mascots and add a third — Roland, a dog mascot who first appeared in 1896 — because apparently nothing says "modern and inclusive" like a Victorian-era canine.

"Our intention is to modernize our mascot traditions rather than discard them," Badoud told The College Fix. "Our campus and alumni community expressed an affection for Ben Franklin and John Marshall, as well as an interest in introducing a separate, versatile spirit mascot."

Translation: alumni and donors made phone calls.

The original push to ditch the Founders had all the usual ingredients. A 2022 Legacy of Slavery Study Group Report noted that John Marshall had owned 250 slaves. The "Ben and John" mascot duo, which debuted in 2007, was quietly retired in 2021. By fall of last year, the Mascot Working Group was actively developing a gender-neutral replacement — because a man who helped write the Constitution and a Chief Justice who shaped American jurisprudence were apparently less inspiring than a blob with no pronouns.

Not everyone on campus was thrilled with the reversal. Senior Lily Andrey told The College Fix, "There is speculation that this decision was partially influenced by alumni and donors who do not want to see these mascots go. This is an embarrassing lesson to send to students: to succumb to those with financial power even if it goes against the ethics that the college claims to teach us as citizens."

The ethics that the college claims to teach. Those would be the ethics of erasing the men who founded the institution because a committee decided their biographical details were inconvenient.

American history scholar Mary Grabar cut closer to the bone. "'Reimagined' is a word that is frequently used today to indicate that the real history is being wiped out," she said. "It's part of an overall assault on our nation's heritage and Western civilization by wiping out the names and legacies of white men who built them."

Badoud said the college is now "developing a dynamic, new mascot that reflects the heart of our community and the founding spirit of Ben Franklin and John Marshall, and the spirit of the Diplomat" — referring to the Diplomat mascot that replaced the original nicknames in the 1990s. They're finalizing designs and creating costumes.

So Ben Franklin stays. John Marshall stays. Roland the dog gets a comeback tour after 130 years on the bench. And somewhere in Lancaster, a Mascot Working Group is designing costumes for mascots the school already had.

The committee met for a year. The college kept what it started with.