Did you know that the Columbia College Alumni Association led the way in choosing the lion as the mascot for Columbia? At a meeting of the association in 1910, George Brokaw Compton CC 1909 exclaimed, “We have the King’s Crown, let us have the Lion!” The same year, the student board voted to make the lion the official mascot. Since then, the lion became prevalent across campus in various forms as a figure of pride, including sculptures and the Columbia fight song Roar, Lion, Roar.

A more recent depiction of the lion is that of the Scholars' Lion, which stands near Havemeyer Hall and the northwest corner of Low Library, and was unveiled at Dean’s Day on April 3, 2004 in honor of the University's 250th anniversary. The sculpture, a representation of the Columbia lion, was crafted by Greg Wyatt CC’71, whose sculptures may be found in Washington, D.C., and Stratford-on Avon, England, as well as the campuses of Vanderbilt and Hofstra, is the creator of Peace Fountain in the courtyard of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, where his studio was located. Principal funding for Scholar’s Lion came from Richard Witten CC’75, Mark Kingdon CC’71, Bill Campbell CC’62, Mark Lehman CC’73, Bob Berne CC’60, Brooks Klimley CC’79 and the Class of 1971.

At the unveiling, then-Dean Austin E. Quigley remarked upon “the importance of the visual images that we place before us” and how the Scholars' Lion would take its place alongside other campus icons such as Alma Mater; the statues of Hamilton, Jefferson and the Thinker; the names carved in the façade of Butler Library; and the restored Tiffany stained glass windows in the lobby of Hamilton Hall.