School replaces ditched 'Dixie'

Principal: Select mascot before ‘16

Southside High School Principal Wayne Haver said he hopes a new mascot is chosen this fall so the school can phase out the Rebel mascot, as well as its signs and symbols, by the start of the 2016-17 school year.
Southside High School Principal Wayne Haver said he hopes a new mascot is chosen this fall so the school can phase out the Rebel mascot, as well as its signs and symbols, by the start of the 2016-17 school year.

FORT SMITH -- Southside High School has a new fight song, and Principal Wayne Haver said he wants to have a new mascot chosen by the end of the year.

Haver, who opposed eliminating the school's 52-year-old Rebel mascot and "Dixie" as the fight song, was selected to head a committee that will choose the school's new mascot.

"It was natural that Mr. Haver would be the one to head it," School Board President Deanie Mehl said last week.

Meeting before a crowd of more than 200, the School Board voted unanimously Monday to immediately eliminate "Dixie" as the school's fight song and to phase out the Rebel mascot and its signs and symbols by the start of school next year.

But Haver said a committee decided July 1 that the "Wabash Cannonball" would become Southside's new fight song.

The panel was formed days after the School Board met as a committee of the whole June 23 and recommended a change of mascot and fight song.

He said fight song committee members anticipated that the board would follow its members' recommendation and vote for the change. Given that the band would have to be ready to play the new fight song at the school's first football game Aug. 25, and possibly earlier, it had to begin practicing as soon as possible.

The 13-member fight song committee consisted of current and former staff members, alumni, members of the student body, senior and junior class presidents, the band director and athletic directors, Haver said.

Members met and listened to college fight songs on a National Collegiate Athletic Association website. Of all the songs, he said, the committee best liked Texas A&M University's version of the "Wabash Cannonball."

"We were amazed at how the [college] student body reacted to it," he said.

While the song is in the public domain and free for anyone to use, Haver said, the arrangement for the school band and for the drummers totaled $700. He said the school also paid $300 for the rights to another college's fight song that the committee later decided not to use.

Haver said the mascot committee will consist of about 25 people, including members of the fight song committee, members of the community, teachers and former teachers.

That committee will seek ideas and suggestions from people in the school system and throughout the community, then settle on whether to make the final mascot decision itself or allow the student body to vote.

Haver said he has received about 40 calls and emails from people wanting to serve on the committee. Since school starts later this month and it will be a busy time, he did not believe the committee members would be chosen before mid-September.

He said he would like to have a new mascot named by the end of the fall semester on Dec. 18, so it can be added to the various uniforms that the school will start ordering in the spring.

A couple of people who contacted him had suggestions for the new mascot.

He said one suggested the Marshals. The U.S. Marshals Museum is being planned for Fort Smith, and the U.S. Marshals Service has a deep history in Fort Smith.

Another suggested the Mustangs.

Haver said he did a study of mascots in Arkansas. In a list he compiled, the most common mascot across the state was the Eagles, followed by the Bulldogs, Panthers, Tigers, Lions, Hornets, Warriors, Wildcats, Pirates and Indians.

Leland Gordon -- editor of MaxPreps.com, a website devoted to high school sports -- wrote about high school mascots in each state in 2012. He pointed to some clever names in Arkansas, such as the Danville Little Johns, the French translation for Petit Jean, the river that flows through that town; the Deer Antlers; and the Arkansas School for the Deaf Leopards, an apparent takeoff on the rock band.

He said older and smaller schools seemed to have more interesting mascots, as opposed to newer, larger schools that adopt more general mascots.

Arkansas has some individualized high school mascot names, such as the Conway Wampus Cats, the Dardanelle Sand Lizards, the Harrison Golden Goblins, the Fordyce Redbugs, the Stuttgart Ricebirds, the Prescott Curley Wolves, the Nashville Scrappers, the Hermitage Hermits, the Smackover Buckaroos and the Gurdon Go-Devils.

According to an Arkansas Activities Association website list, there's only one high school in the state that adopted the Razorback as its mascot: Texarkana's Arkansas High School.

At least five other high schools have used the Rebel mascot in Arkansas. The others, according to the Arkansas Activities Association list, are Highland High School in Hardy, Riverside High School in Lake City, Rural Special High School in Fox, Sacred Heart High School in Morrilton and Westside Johnson County High School in Hartman.

Mascots, their naming and symbolism, have become a tricky business. While seen as harmless symbols of school spirit years ago, more and more complaints have surfaced in recent years that some are offensive.

Gordon said the legislatures in Oregon and California have passed laws outlawing the use of Indians as mascots there.

And, he said, the Little People of America has petitioned Freeburg High School in Illinois to change the name of its "Midgets" mascot because the group says it's offensive.

The Fort Smith School Board proposed to drop the Rebel as the Southside mascot less than a week after nine black people were shot and killed June 17 during a Bible study in a Charleston, S.C., church. Dylann Roof, 21, has been charged in that shooting. Photos surfaced of him holding a Confederate battle flag, which caused a nationwide outcry against Confederate symbols.

Fort Smith School Board members called the Rebel mascot offensive and a symbol of segregation, oppression and prejudice.

Some Southside alumni argued they viewed the mascot without racial overtones, and as a symbol of history, tradition and pride.

Gordon said of the nearly 200 high schools in America that have Rebels as their mascots, many are outside the South. There are Rebels in places such as New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, Colorado and Ohio.

And not all of the schools that have Rebel mascots are trying to get rid of them. The school board in Vestavia Hills, Ala., voted last week to retain its high school's Rebel mascot but to hire an outside firm to help re-brand it.

Gordon said some high schools portray their Rebel mascots as Revolutionary War rebels.

NW News on 08/02/2015

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