More than eight years into the 21st century, South High School in Denver has decided to dump its Johnny Rebel Confederate soldier for a griffin, a mythological beast that has the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion, according to the Rocky Mountain News, which reports that the new mascot resembles the gargoyle statue that looms above the 85-year-old school’s main entry.

Donovan Hilton, a 16-year-old student of mixed ethnicity, told school board members that nobody thought of the mascot as negative, but when typed into a Google search engine, “the name is synonymous with images of the Ku Klux Klan and other images that are completely and unacceptably racist.”