NCAA Basketball: Wisconsin at Rutgers

A bill passed by the Rutgers University Student Assembly calls for making the school's Scarlet Knight mascot more diverse. (Jim O'Connor | USA TODAY Sports)

NEW BRUNSWICK — Since its debut in 1955, the Rutgers University Scarlet Knight has appeared in several incarnations.

Once a real person on horseback, helmeted, caped and plumed, the mascot for a time switched to riding a mechanical horse. Later, the Scarlet Knight took to foot as a fully-costumed figure with an oversize head to boot.

Now, 60 years after the campus grew tired of the chicken-looking Rutgers Chanticleer, the school's student government is calling for another mascot makeover.

A bill passed by the the Rutgers University Student Assembly calls for more gender and ethnic diversity in the mascot costume, according to a report by The Daily Targum, the school's student newspaper.

Emmet Brennan, student assembly parliamentarian, came up with the idea after noticing the mascot is light-skinned with blue eyes, which he said isn't representative of the school's diversity.

"What we were thinking -- the way the bill's laid out -- it's not defined that we need an Asian knight, a black knight, a Latino knight," Brennan told The Daily Targum. "That we would really leave it up to the different student organizations ... and basically the student body as a whole to determine how many knights they'd like and what these knights would represent."

In a statement to NJ Advance Media, Rutgers Athletic Director Julie Hermann said the athletic department appreciates the intent of RUSA's recommendation and "will gladly engage in discussions with them on this matter."

Rutgers wouldn't be the first school to have both male and female costumes for their mascots. The University of Florida has a female Gator counterpart, Alberta, to the male, Albert.

The University of Central Florida had both male and female knight mascots for a short time in the 1990s before phasing out the female knight, according to the school.

But David Raymond, a former professional mascot who now designs costumes, said he doesn't know of schools with multiple versions of the same mascot. And Raymond wouldn't recommend it.

"I don't think that is going to solve the issue," said Raymond, who was the Philadelphia Phillies mascot, the Philly Phanatic, for 16 years. "I think that's going to create more confusion.

Rutgers would be better served to change the color of the Scarlet Knight to a one that's not associated with any ethnicity, Raymond said, such as green or purple.

"When you have a human character with a flesh tone of any kind you will have diversity issues," he said.

The Scarlet Knight became Rutgers mascot after a campus-wide selection process, according to a history on the university's athletic department website. Rutgers describes its prior mascot as a "giant, colorfully felt-covered, costumed representation" of an earlier campus symbol, the Chanticleer.

Though technically a rooster, legend has it that the Chanticleer mascot looked like a chicken and was the target of hoots, howls and crowing when Rutgers was losing.

Since then, the school has tweaked the Scarlet Knight mascot several times and debuted a new costume last year before beginning play in the Big Ten Conference.

The proposed mascot changes aren't the first effort to change campus traditions to better reflect the story body. Rutgers in 2013 rewrote its 140-year-old alma mater to make the lyrics gender-neutral.

Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.