In front of a crowd of 1,950, Kolton Grice lifted a bulldog-sized weight off his shoulders, which signaled to the Ferris community that he was Brutus.
Grice, an information security and intelligence senior, had the golden bone handed off to him by Emma Franklin, who had played Brutus since 2020, during her reveal in 2022. Since then, Grice has been one of the few students to take up the helm of the bulldog mascot with his reveal on Feb. 23.
The mascot is a facet of Ferris State’s Student Alumni Gold Club. Wearing the Brutus suit requires the wearer to be sworn to a vow of secrecy via a non-disclosure agreement. For Grice, the secrecy presented a challenge.
“At first you feel guilty because you’re like ‘Oh, shoot, I’m lying to all the people I care about what I’m doing in my free time,’” Grice said. “They want to hang out with me, but I have this obligation to do, and I have to make up some excuses to not hurt their feelings… That’s why I was kind of excited about retiring a little bit because then I can hang out more with my buddies, which I’ve had to sacrifice most of the time for this.”
Grice found the best way to defuse people asking him if he was Brutus was to tell a white lie that he would have to sub-in for Brutus here or there or that he was just a handler. He believed that this would “satisfy their curiosity.”
Alongside the trials of keeping his identity a secret, Grice experienced rowdy opposing fans at rivalry games, a baby throwing up on him, near exhaustion from a parade, and even handsy grandmas. However, one of the bigger issues he faced was living two lives.
“That’s the most difficult part, to be honest,” Grice said. “There’s so many people that you know from both [regular life and from playing Brutus]. It gets a little tricky and it also makes it a little awkward. The best way I found out to go about it is just to be quiet and not interact with them altogether. That way you don’t actually slip up and say something that makes you sound like you’re a weirdo.”
Since picking up the suit in 2022, Grice estimated that he had performed between 200-300 events as Brutus, which included Ferris’ national championship game in Texas.
Welding engineering technology senior Cody Langlois, who also played Brutus and was revealed earlier this year, believes Grice was the right person to help return the SAGC to its pre-COVID strength.
“He was the first mascot ,” Langlois said. “One of the things that they told me in my interview, [was that] they’re trying to get the Student Alumni Gold Club, as well as the Brutus program back to what it was before COVID. I think Kolton’s personality, his laid-back style in the suit, the way he interacted with people, and the way that he performed at events definitely played a big role in getting back to what it was. He has [also] recruited a lot into the Student Alumni Gold Club.”
With Langlois and Grice sharing the mascot role, Langlois found it “wonderful” to be able to talk about the Brutus secret with somebody.
Diagnostic medical sonography senior Madi Bozek, who met Grice through a mutual friend, had performed with Grice in the Brutus costume while she was on the university’s dance team. While being friends with Grice and performing with Brutus, she had a suspicion her friend was donning the suit.
“He kept making up excuses like ‘Oh, I have to go do this.’ or ‘Oh, I have to sub in for this because the other guy is sick,’” Bozek said. “I started making the joke [saying he was Brutus] … We just kind of rolled with it as a joke. Then it turns out the joke was reality.”
Bozek had no hard feelings about the secret, as she understood Brutus had an NDA. She also understood the importance of Brutus by saying he is “one of the faces of the school.”
Grice’s retirement puts an end to his time as Brutus but he will go down as one of the few students who put time and sweat into representing the university.
S.E. E.S.
C.E. – EC / C.F./ R.S.