The Cheef must go.
ESPN.com - NCAA - NCAA rejects Illinois' appeal of mascot ban
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Illinois lost its appeal of the ban on the university mascot Friday and will remain on a list of schools prohibited from hosting NCAA postseason events after February.The decision actually was a compromise. And it's one I think I can support. UI gets to keep the name Illini and even 'Fighting Illini.' But as long as the Cheef remains, the UI can no longer host NCAA post-season events.
The NCAA will allow Illinois to keep its "Illini" and "Fighting Illini" nicknames. The university contended those nicknames derived from the name of the state.The governing body, however, said Chief Illiniwek remains a "hostile and abusive" image of American Indians. The mascot is a student dressed in buckskins and headdress who dances at halftimes of home football, basketball and volleyball games. The tradition began in 1926."
The NCAA staff review committee found no new information relative to the mascot known as Chief Illiniwek or the logo mark used by some athletics teams that depicts a Native American in feathered headdress, to remove the university from the list," said Bernard Franklin, the NCAA's senior vice president for governance and membership.
Although the UI can continue the charade with a completely hopeless appeal to the NCAA executive committee, all that really remains is one question:
Will the UI decide to handcuff all sports and all athletes at the UI -- save football and basketball -- by keeping the Cheef and eliminating any chance of any postseason competition on campus?
Or will the UI finally wake up and make the decision that's been needed for a couple decades?
The ball is in your courts, BOT
Watcha gonna do?
And so it goes.
2 comments:
"Or will the UI finally wake up and make the decision that's been needed for a couple decades?"
So if the Chief is 'hostile and abusive,' today and the BOT should have dumped him in the early 80's, was the Chief not a bad thing from the 1920s through the 70s? Has he changed in the last 20 years to become more hostile and abusive?
No, I would say WE have changed. We now recognize that Hollywood portrayals of different races is wrong, hostile and abusive. We also now are able to recognize that minorities have rights and voices and should be both heard and listened to. You could use the same argument for African Americans before the 1950s. It is NOT OK to portray other races in hostile and abusive lights just because you are in the majority. That's hard for some folks to admit. (Perhaps my dates were wrong; maybe I sould have said they should have dumped him in the 60s; but I was busy at that time off fighting other wars.)
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