On Friday, May 15, an Instagram post revealed the identities of five graduating seniors from the University of California, Berkeley who donned Cal’s mascot costume during their time at Berkeley — breaking decades of a campus tradition in the process.
Lots of colleges have secret mascots. But perhaps no college has taken that secrecy to the level that Cal has with its affable, sweater-wearing bear, Oski. There’s a secretive student committee (the Oski Committee) that oversees the mascot’s seamless mannerisms, student bodyguards whose primary goal is to prevent anyone from knocking Oski’s head off and really no one to pry any additional details out of because the only true and verified Oski is the first one, William “Rocky” Rockwell. He’s the Cal junior who came up with the idea for the mascot in 1941. When Rockwell went off to fight in World War II, he asked his classmates to don the costume in his stead. None of them were known explicitly — building the veil of secrecy.
From pretty much then on, the clandestine nature of Oski has been a major part of the mythology surrounding the costumed bear. Very few people have revealed their time inside the mascot, or even on the Oski Committee since then. Back in 2022, the Daily Californian student newspaper reported on why there’s a level of protection.
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California Golden Bears mascot Oski bumps fists with a student during the Big Game between the California Golden Bears and the Stanford Cardinal on Nov. 22, 2025, at Stanford Stadium in Stanford, Calif.
Matthew Huang/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
“The secrecy of the committee was said to promote humility but also unaccountability,” the Daily Cal story reads. “In 1955, Oski threw ice cream at a crowd, allegedly causing ‘permanent injury’ to a 12-year-old boy. He thwarted a $50,000 lawsuit from the alleged victim because the plaintiffs could not identify the person in the suit.”
Cal alums told SFGATE that people they knew — beyond any doubt — were Oski would still look them dead in the eye and deny it, guarding the secret with near-absurd commitment. In one case, a former Oski kept their mascot identity hidden from their partner at the time, who later described the caginess around it as a real source of tension in the relationship. (They broke up.)
The school itself has promoted this secrecy many times over, on both the athletics website and in stories about big Oski moments, like his 75th birthday. That anonymity was also prominently featured in a San Francisco Chronicle story about his 75th birthday, too.
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All of the above made the social media post on @cal_oski’s account acknowledging five seniors who worked as Oski jarring to many around campus and plenty of Old Blues off of it. Four of the seniors shared their own Instagram posts with Oski publicly, with lengthy captions about their time and experiences in and around the mascot. And one of the posts, from new Cal grad Finley Murray, went incredibly viral.
Murray’s post garnered thousands of likes within the first few days and has over 66,000 likes as of Wednesday, May 27. Given how viral the trend of mascot reveals has become across college campuses, some prominent sports influencers included Murray’s post in celebrating the significant number of women who are playing the famous mascots.
SFGATE reached out to Murray for an interview after her post went viral. After initially declining the interview due to “the secrecy and tradition of Oski,” she agreed to talk without revealing any information about other Oskis or committee members. According to Murray, the big secret isn’t a thing on campus anymore.
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“Since my joining of the committee my sophomore year, it’s been the case that seniors have revealed on Instagram, whether they are public or private, and they tell their friends and family,” Murray told SFGATE in a phone call last week. She later added she would have taken the secret “to the grave” if that was what the Oski Committee required.
An SFGATE investigation found no other posts from Oski’s account revealing the graduating committee members or ex-mascots in recent years, nor other public posts from recent Cal alums. On the contrary, Oski’s account even made a joke about it two years ago on April Fool’s Day, with the post hinting at a “reveal” on a first slide chiding folks on the second slide: “Why did you scroll though?”
Almost as jarring as the Oski photo spread reveal for Cal alums was a doubling down of endorsements on the reveal from other Cal accounts. In the comments of the initial post are replies from the main Cal Athletics account and from the school-run Berkeley Inspire account, both celebrating the students. Last week, the official UC Berkeley account — with over 425,000 followers — also shared Oski’s post to its Instagram story. Add it all up and it sure looks like a school-approved end to years of Oski secrecy.
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SFGATE sought out school officials for a campus comment on the perceived policy change, but Cal student affairs spokesperson Adam Ratliff said there was “no campus administrative comment to give” and said his attempts to reach students involved in Oski were unsuccessful.
SFGATE was able to track down another Cal student who served on the Oski Committee and graduated in 2025 but preferred to remain anonymous because they hadn’t revealed their Oski identity to the public. (SFGATE is honoring said request.) This Oski confirmed that, for recent committee members, the “conversations had changed” about the secrecy in recent years. And while none of the past Oski Committee members had taken their revelations public, some had begun to do so privately.
Murray had that moment herself right before graduation. Her friends and their families all went out on a boat at San Francisco Bay for a last hurrah and photo shoot together. She decided to put on Oski’s cardigan underneath another jacket, revealing her campus secret identity in the middle of the round of photos under the Golden Gate Bridge. She said her five friends “absolutely exploded,” with her roommate even crying a bit when she found out Murray had kept the Oski costume in her closet in the room they shared.
But a reveal in a private moment is quite different than a coordinated social media push. So why now? Is it to chase the viral mascot reveal trend? Is it simply for social media clout? According to everyone interviewed for this story, none of the above.
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“The reveal wasn’t even in my mind when I joined because honestly, that’s not what it’s really about,” Murray said. “You can’t be doing this thinking, ‘I’m so excited to be doing this game day in 90-degree weather so I can reveal it.’ No, you’re excited to be doing game day as the mascot because it brings you and the people around you so much joy.”
FILE: The Cal mascot, Oski, reacts to a call during a college football game between the Cal Bears and Oregon Ducks on Oct. 5, 2019, at Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Ore.
Brian Murphy/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Murray didn’t want to get into the politics behind any policy change, saying she didn’t want to speak on behalf of the full committee, but the anonymous Oski did.
“If no one knows who it is, it could be anyone,” the anonymous Oski said. “But at the same time, if you see the different people who have been Oski, that may make you realize that you, too, could be him.”
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And secret or otherwise, there’s maybe nothing better according to Murray.
“I don’t know what I will ever do in life that is as fun as being Oski the mascot,” Murray said. “I really do not know what I will do, because it was the most fun I’ve ever had in my entire life.”
SFGATE social media producer Jessie Fisher contributed to this report.
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