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Illinois School Board Journal
November/December 2001

Black, white or gray? Convening on emotional issues

by Linda Dawson

Many decisions school boards make have clear-cut options. While board members may disagree on which option is right, they still can see delineation, the black-and-white between accepting a low bid or rationalizing a slightly higher one based on past experience.

But how does a board proceed when the issues become murkier, when right and wrong are more difficult to discern or when emotions enter the arena? Should the board rely on just its own experience and that of its administration? Should it listen only to those who come to a board meeting pleading their case? To what lengths should the board go to garner public opinion on a difficult question? And once opinions are collected, should the board go with the majority? Or should the board go against public opinion when it's "the right thing to do"?

According to the 2001 Public Agenda study, Just Waiting to be Asked? A Fresh Look at Attitudes on Public Engagement, most parents and the general public are willing to leave many of the decisions about schools for boards to make on their own. "In general, they respect their judgment, and few seem eager to wrest control or endlessly second guess decisions that depend mainly on professional experience and judgment," the study says. "But people do need to be forewarned and consulted in times of fundamental change; they do need to think through alternatives in times of crisis or serious community division; and they expect their most serious concerns to get a respectful hearing."

One of those fundamental changes -- one that embodies community identity -- is the issue of Native American mascots, logos and nicknames for schools.

On April 13, 2001, the United States Commission on Civil Rights called for an end to the use of such identifications by any non-Native American schools. While not carrying the weight of law, this is seen as the most forceful statement so far on the use of Native American identities for sports teams.

The statement has spurred some school boards nationwide to action with mixed results, both in the methods used to arrive at their choice and the final outcome. Others, meanwhile, wait with their fingers crossed, hoping the question isn't raised in their community.

"Home of the Indians" is the tag line for Poolesville (Maryland) High School's Web site. The site also proudly displays a crest emblazoned with the word "Indians" -- but not for much longer.

On August 28, the Montgomery (Maryland) County School Board voted 7-1 to ban the use of Native American themes for any mascots, logos or nicknames for sports teams at any of its schools. The decision directly affects Poolesville, one of 23 high schools under the board's jurisdiction, the largest school district in the state.

Poolesville has one year to select a different name and change its stationery, as well as replace its team uniforms and the stadium scoreboard. But those changes may not proceed without a fight. Students and residents of this town of just more than 5,000 staged a protest rally before the first football game and started a "ribbon" awareness campaign to keep their "Indians."

According to a September 4 article in The Washington Times, not all the flap comes over the name change itself. In May, after two community meetings, a school poll of more than 800 parents, teachers and students found a 60 percent margin wanted to keep the "Indian" name and logo. The school board imposed the ban anyway. Now, these people feel disenfranchised and micromanaged.

"I don't care about the name change," Dan Radice, a local business owner, was quoted as saying. "It's the way they did it."

And what was the school board's response? In the September 18 issue, board member Reginald Felton is quoted by School Board News as saying: "Our feeling is that Montgomery County values diversity, and using this name just conflicts with that ... What we did is an example of how a board can engage the community to re-affirm our philosophy."

But is that what happened here? Was this community engagement?

Some would say, "yes." The board asked for the community's opinion and an exchange took place. Even though we live in a democracy, they would maintain, some issues must be decided for the best interest of the community and require decisions that go against the popular view.

Others may feel the engagement process had a start with the community vote, but the board stifled any meaningful interaction on the issue with its vote.

In his article, "Engaging the Public" (American School Board Journal, September 2001), Harris Sokoloff outlines three different images of "engagement." The first, he says, is what comes to mind when people marry: the beginning of a process to learn to get along and work out problems. The second is in terms of military "rules of engagement," where one side seeks to maintain control of a situation.

His third image came to him while he was teaching his son about a standard-shift transmission. "Here," Sokoloff writes, "the image is of two or more objects brought together as part of a large mechanism. The objects -- in this case, the gears -- must fit together just so. There is little or no give and take. In fact, in the car, the more give and take, the more slipping and sliding and the less well the transmission will work."

The last image points up the problems with engaging the public on every district issue. If a school board needed to poll the community before it acted on every recommendation of the superintendent, district business would grind to a halt.

"Reserving public engagement for times when genuine dialogue is needed is probably at the heart of making it work," says the Just Waiting to be Asked? study.

Was there true dialogue for Poolesville? The Maryland board took the route that allowed it to maintain control of the situation. While board members asked constituents for their opinion, they said they were not bound by the 60 percent margin that wanted to keep the "Indian" name for Poolesville. But another question remains: Is one vote, one poll enough input for a decision of this magnitude?

Ball-Chatham Community Unit School District 5 near Springfield had been talking about its "Redskins" mascot on and off for nearly 10 years before the school board voted in June 2001 to drop the name. The district did some background work and created a committee of teachers, administrators, students and community members to discuss the issue in the early 1990s, according to Superintendent Rick Taylor, who was middle school principal then. But that committee, which surveyed the community, found overwhelming support to keep the name.

While the issue was dropped at that point, the district began de-emphasizing use of the mascot, Taylor said. There was no mascot on team uniforms and no character image on printed materials like stationery and programs.

When the issue resurfaced this past year, he said, a number of things came together to start the discussion. Although they were not contacted by any outside agency, like the National Council on Racism in Sports and the Media, school board members were aware of the ongoing controversy at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign as well as the Civil Rights Commission's statement.

The district also was nearing completion on a new high school. That provided an excellent opportunity to open the "Redskins" issue for discussion. "With the new high school," Taylor said, "we had a name but no real mascot."

After internal discussion began among the board and the superintendent, three public forums were scheduled for the community to express its opinions. "It was done in an open format," Taylor said. When the board voted in June to retire the "Redskins" name and look for another, some in the community may not have liked the decision, he said, "but no one criticized how it was done."

Following the school board decision, Dan Roarke, the district's athletic director, was put in charge of another community engagement process: coming up with a new name.

In developing his committee, Roarke said he looked for people who had spoken on both sides of the issue as well as asking each head coach for student and parent representatives from their sport. Also included were representatives from the band, cheerleaders, pompon squad, booster clubs and student council.

"We wanted to make sure we had a cross section in our voting committee," Roarke said. "We didn't exclude anyone."

After agreeing on committee guidelines and a brainstorming session, he said, the committee adjourned with the charge to get more input from each of their respective constituencies before the next meeting. In addition to reaching a consensus that there would be only one mascot representing the junior and senior high students, the committee looked at three voting options: open the voting to all students in grades 6-12; open the voting to all junior high and senior high students as well as the most recent graduating class and registered voters in the community; or have the committee vote as representatives of their programs.

The committee chose the third option, asked for new ideas on names, discussed them and then voted, Roarke said. The original 44 names that drew votes were narrowed to five, then three and then the final name was chosen: Titans.

The process went relatively "without a glitch," Roarke said, and was well covered by local media, including radio and television as well as Chatham and Springfield newspapers.

In another Illinois community, public engagement over the issue of a "Redskin" mascot has resulted in retaining the image, although the only permanent visible sign may be the painting on the high school gymnasium wall.

According to new superintendent Steve Swanson, the Huntley Consolidated School District 158 school board voted in April to keep its Redskin mascot following a community forum attended by about 100 people. The forum had the air of a formal debate, he said, where speakers were urged not to "rehash" the same issues but to bring new ideas to the discussion.

Following the forum, the board, which had initiated discussions at prior meetings, voted 6-1 to retain the mascot. Subsequent news stories in April and early May indicated the Illinois Native American Bar Association would file a civil rights suit against the district. In those articles, board members reportedly said they would not spend taxpayer money to fight any legal battle over the name.

When contacted in September, Swanson said he had visited with Matthew Beaudet, INABA president, informally in August and told him that that the board's decision still stands in this community that lies about half-way between Chicago and Rockford.

Until the issue is brought up again, Swanson said, the district is reviewing cheers, refraining from the use of mascot logos on team uniforms and discouraging students in the stands from any use of "tomahawk chop" hand motions when the pep band plays its theme music.

How will the issue come up again? This time, according to the Arlington Heights Daily Herald, a school board member raised the issue. Next time, it could be the threatened lawsuit. Or it could come up if a federal or state agency, like the Illinois Department of Education, issues a directive against Native American mascots.

For now, it's up to individual districts as to whether they wish to engage their community on this emotional issue. Some are hoping the issue doesn't come up.

Ron Yates, superintendent at Pontiac Township High School District 90 for the past 19 years, says the issue has not been brought to the board during his tenure, although a number of people have asked him personally if the board would be talking about it.

Although the school, which has always been known as the Indians, formerly had a mascot who danced at half time, that practice has been discontinued. The school has a large painting in the gym and does use an Indian logo on some of its team uniforms. This north central Illinois community, however, has stronger ties to its Native American name than the school district selecting the name. The town itself was named after a warrior chief of the Ottawa tribe. A statue and plaque explaining this heritage are prominent on the town's square.

Niantic-Harristown Community Unit School District 6 near Decatur also uses "Indians" as the school name. Superintendent Wayne Honeycutt says his board has not been approached about changing the name, either. But he has a feeling community support would run deep toward keeping the name and the personified mascot, who comes out before games to stand and sing while the band plays the fight song.

Honeycutt, who came to central Illinois a year ago from Tennessee, said the issue in that state hasn't been so much Native American mascots but the use of Confederate images in high schools with growing African-American populations.

Whatever the issue, regardless of the emotions, school boards are finding they cannot be as effective if they operate in a vacuum.

"Public engagement," in the words of the Public Agenda study, "holds out the promise that reforms will be more likely to succeed if the public's concerns are heard and addressed. It promises that districts locked in bitterly partisan politics can break out by reaching out to citizens who have a broad rather than particular agenda, a pragmatic rather than ideological mind-set. ... Finally, it promises that if the public is invited to have more say over what schools should look like, more people will once again recognize them as the public's schools, as something worth supporting."

According to information on the Illinois High School Association Web site (www.ihsa.org), 97 high schools in the association have names that include Native American references.

When middle schools and junior high schools are included in the mix, the American Indian Cultural Support organization (www.aics.org) reports 266 schools with Native American-linked names in Illinois. That number is the largest among any of the states with complete listings of school names on the Web site.

Based on the IHSA information, the breakdown on names is as follows:

• Indians 28
• Warriors 27
• Raiders 13
• Redskins 8
• Braves 4
• Blackhawks 3
• Red Devils 2

The following names are used by one school each: Chiefs; Injuns; Red Raiders; Golden Warriors; Red Horde; Comanches; Marauders; Kahoks; Saukees; Illineks; Mohawks; and Red Ramblers.

Amid a growing trend to retire or at least downplay Native American mascots, one school board in northwestern Illinois recently approved a new personification of its team name.

Since 1955, East Dubuque Unit School District 119 teams have been known as the Warriors, according to Don Kussmaul, superintendent. But until this year, the high school never had an actual mascot.

During the past school year, he said, a group of parents approached the board, offering to purchase a Native American costume to be worn by a parent, who would act as mascot at athletic events. The school board approved the offer.

The district also recently added the Warrior emblem, a logo designed by a student in 1987, as the watermark for its stationery and as a prominent feature on its Web site. The logo features an Indian warrior profile with "feathers" that spell out "Warriors" as a headdress.

So far, no one has approached the district about the changes, and because the request came from parents, community support would seem to favor keeping the mascot should anyone raise the issue. For now, the board has made its decision. "When the board says this is what we're going to do," Kussmaul said, "then that's what we do."

Cella, Matthew. "Residents battle ban on ‘Indian' team name," The Washington Times, online edition, September 4, 2001

Colgan, Craig. "School boards consider dropping Indian names," School Board News, online edition, September 18, 2001

Farkas, Steve; Foley, Patrick; and Duffett, Ann. Just Waiting to be Asked? A Fresh Look at Attitudes on Public Engagement, Public Agenda, 2001

Garmoe, Patrick. "National trend still threatens mascot," Arlington Heights Daily Herald, April 21, 2001

Riede, Paul. "More Than a Mascot," The School Administrator, September 2001

Sokoloff, Harris. "Engaging the Public," American School Board Journal, September 2001