Washington [racial slurs] name change/local high schools

Reminds me of when Syracuse's International League team went from the Chiefs to the SkyChiefs, then when they dropped the "Sky" they adopted a train logo.

 

Tar Heels name under siege today. Protestors in Chapel Hill.

 

Great googly moogly.

 

In our area there was beaten about one of our schools using Redskins as its nickname. our paper decided a couple years ago not to use Redskins in print unless the story was referring to the Washington Redskins. Now there are new questions about the school mentioned above and another using the name Indians.

Times change.

 

There is no way on God's green earth my high school will change it's nickname from Indians. It is, and always has been, a testimonial to local native-Americans of the area.

The name of the school is the name of the tribe, followed by Indians.

 

The granddaddy of them all was Pekin (IL) HS' team, the Chinks. I learned about the name in the 1970s, when I was still making records, from an engineer I worked with from Pekin. She wasn't proud of it (moving to NYC fixed that) but told me that it was a huge point of contention in the area. It apparently remains so amongst some alumni, even after it was changed in 1980, when they became the Dragons.

Controversial mascots

 

I think if you’re going to change a nickname — and you should if it’s Redskins, etc. — put effort into finding something else about the school or the town that is distinctive or a source of pride. At least try. Don’t immediately adopt Tigers or Bulldogs or Wildcats.

 

I've always been puzzled at teams (like University High, or Marquette University many years ago) who ditch "Warriors" over the Native American issue. The name has been linked to Indian iconography, but I've never thought of it as a solely Native American name. There are plenty of ways you can just change the logo. We have a high school, Righetti, up in Santa Maria, that had an Indian as a logo back in the '70s and '80s, but they switched that to either a school initial or a Trojan or Spartan soldier.

 

I disagree if the nickname change involves giving into the mob. Just immediately say, "Fine. We're the Lions." Give the mob the most PC name possible and do it in one day. Tar Heels should be an interesting one if the protests continue.

 

Mob > Klan

 

My urban high school was the Spartans, not that anyone cared about the athletic program. My junior? year, we became the Wolverines. Allegedly, there was a vote. None of my friends remember voting, not even the guy who briefly became the mascot.

Spartan was sort of alliterative with the name of the school, and was also the name of the school paper. I don't recall the mascot ever being mentioned before or since in any other context, not by my dad -- who went to the same high school -- or even when a friend became a coach there.

I have no idea why "Spartans" was objectionable. For the record, we are nowhere near Michigan, nor a wolverine habitat. We would've been better off as Pigeons, Squirrels, or Subway Rats.

 

Look at the way the San Francisco/Golden State Warriors have changed over the years. They were still using (in limited ways) a full headress as the logo (but everyone remembers "The City" and cable cars on the back of the jersies) into the late 60s, then went to a California map on top of a circle when they moved to Oakland and became Golden State.

But, hell, I'm old enough to remember listening to Stanford Indians football games on the radio. In 1971, the Indian was dropped and replaced by the Cardinal (singular for the color, not the bird, although when Lenoard Koppett was editor of the Peninsula Times-Tribune, he insisted the teams be called the Cardinals). The Tree is the band's mascot.