The Secret Life of Benny and BerniceSpring 2026

Those who don a Benny or Bernice suit are sworn to secrecy while they’re students. And OSU Athletics, I discovered, does not keep a tidy list of all who have worn the head.

So when I got the idea for a story about the tales of those who once embodied our beloved beavers, I’ll admit I felt a flicker of doubt. How, exactly, do you find people who have been professionally anonymous?

We started, as one does, in the archives. Cora Lassen, the Stater graduate assistant, combed through yearbooks and old Daily Barometers to see whether the secrecy code had perhaps been looser in decades past. (It had not.) I emailed colleagues in case anyone’s former roommate had eventually confessed why they were mysteriously “never at games.” (A couple of leads there.)

Finally, we put out a call on social media.

And then, like a Benny launching from a trampoline to execute a perfect dunk, the responses came pouring in.

Emails. Names. Action shots. Did people have stories? Oh yes. Stories about meeting Oprah. Standing with Ken Austin — the man who originated the role — as a Reser crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to Benny. Being on court as the women’s basketball team cut down nets from their first regular-season title. And the particular terror of falling into bushes or getting stuck crossing a dark street.

Our writer Kip Carlson began making calls. He tapped into his own network. He followed leads from one former mascot to another. The list grew and grew. He finally stopped at 22 interviews, not because we ran out of names, but because we ran out of pages. There are, I now know, a great many alumni walking among us who can execute a flawless push-up routine while wearing a 10-pound beaver head.

All of those unseen Beavers were on my mind the day we took over center court at Gill Coliseum for this issue’s cover shoot.

Five current students — highly trained, deeply committed and absolutely not to be named here — agreed to spend a Sunday afternoon with us under bright lights. We outfitted them in mascot heads and suits from across the decades, so that whether you were cheering in 1988 or 2018, you’d spot a familiar grin.

Then we stepped back.

They slid across the hardwood in old-school, gloriously oversized booties. They marveled at the sheer scale of a 2010s-era head. They demonstrated exactly how much visibility one has through the nose mesh. (Not much.) They swapped stories about near-collisions with exuberant elementary schoolers and the art of communicating pure joy without ever saying a word.

In many ways, they are a study in contradiction, these students who exult in the spotlight while remaining hidden. They get no public credit, only the chance to make a child laugh, to make the fans roar, and to turn an ordinary Thursday night game into a cherished memory.

Judging by the flood of emails we received from their predecessors, those memories last for them as well as for us. So to the Bennys and Bernices of years past: We see you and all you’ve done to bring us together. Even if, technically, we’re not supposed to know who you are.