LITTLE ROCK — Mascot mayhem continues
There will never again be a high school team called the Braves, Chiefs or Indians in the state of Oregon, after the Pacific Northwest state officially outlawed all mascots connected to Native American themes during a state board of education meeting.
The decision to ban Native American-based mascots came as the result of a 5-1 vote by the state board of education and will require 15 schools to change their mascots. Additionally, all schools which refer to their teams as the Warriors will also have to scrub all references to any Native American customs from school insignia.
According to The Oregonian in Portland, Ore., the decision to ban Native American mascots came after six years of debate on the subject. While there is still a fiveyear grace period before the rulekicks in, Chairman Brenda Frank, who is a Klamath Tribe member, said she was emotional about what she clearly considered to be a landmark decision.
“I’m overwhelmed, but I’m holding back on my emotions - I have a meeting to finish,” Franktold The Oregonian. “It’s been a long time coming.”
While the decision to get rid of all Native American mascots may seem like a simple issue of political correctness, it also brings with it significant economic issues at a time of extreme financial distress for many of the state’s school districts.
According to one school - Molalla (Ore.) High School - the effort to rid itself of all insignia related to its existing “Indians” mascot could cost the school district hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Meanwhile, Molalla principal Randy Dalton insisted that no one in the school’s surrounding community took offense at the school’s choice of a mascot.
“I’d be hard pressed to find somebody who would want to bring shame to the Molalla Indian Tribe,” Dalton said. “There’s a lot of tradition here. It’s a very respectful community that wants to do the right thing.”
The Oregon State Board claimed it took those significant financial concerns into consideration, but that it couldn’t choose to side with those economic worries because of the potential such mascots had to offend Native American studentsacross the state.
“There’s a collective right that exists here,” board vice chairman Artemio Paz told the Oregonian.
These sorts of mascots produce “racism and unnecessary bullying. We do not allow that to exist for any of our populations.” A tweet too short
New York Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora said he would buy and return Lawrence Taylor’s Super Bowl ring if he had 500,000 Twitter followers by 10 p.m.
Saturday. Umenyiora fell about 445,000 followers short.
Wrote Reggie Hayes of The News-Sentinel of Fort Wayne, Ind.: “I guess you could say his tweet didn’t have much of a ring to it.” True blue fans
Four suspects were arrested after beating up a man Sunday after a baseball game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals in a Dodger Stadium parking lot.
“To be fair,” wrote Janice Hough of leftcoastsportsbabe.
com, “the accused are almost certainly not real Dodgers fans, otherwise they would have been gone after the seventh inning.”Quote of the day “We didn’t swing the bat well [Tuesday], then we came in and picked up where we left off.” Arkansas baseball Coach Dave Van Horn after Wednesday’s 2-0 loss to Ole Miss eliminated the Razorbacks from the SEC Tournament
Sports, Pages 20 on 05/24/2012