Published: October 23, 2009 02:17 am      

STAWAR: Mascot Madness

Our identities easily get wrapped up in things like the autos we drive, our hometowns, and the schools we attend. Over time we develop intense, even irrational, loyalties to the various symbols of these ego extensions. As the fall football season gears up, nowhere is this seen more clearly than the attachment to mascots for schools and athletic teams.

Local high school team mascots include the Charlestown Pirates, the New Albany Bulldogs, the Lanesville Eagles, the Clarksville Generals, the Henryville Hornets, the Silver Creek Dragons, and the Providence Pioneers. Jeffersonville High School has its Red Devils, which remain surprisingly uncontroversial. At least that’s not as bad as Devil’s Lake, N.D., where the mascots as the Satans. Drawing upon the topography of the knobs, Floyd Central High School has its Highlanders.

North Harrison High School’s mascot is the Cougar, which was also the mascot of the Southern Illinois University extension I attended. When they brought the first actual cougar to campus, architect Buckminster Fuller designed a geodesic domed enclosure for it. The school newspaper headline gleefully read, “Million Dollar Cathouse to be Built on Campus.”

My high school had a Trojan as its symbol, which was a source of endless embarrassment. I recently read that Florida’s St. Petersburg College changed its Trojan mascot to the Titans, specifically to avoid jokes about the intimate device that shared its name.

In 2006 Spalding University, in Louisville, replaced its time honored pelican with the golden eagle as its athletic mascot, although the pelican remains on the official Spalding seal. The original pelican logo was based on the medieval myth, that the mother pelican nurtured her young by piercing her breast with her beak and feeding them her own blood. Over time the pelican evolved into an elegant symbol of self-sacrifice, but was, perhaps, a bit too solemn to feature in pep rallies.

Over the past 20 year there has been a concerted campaign to eliminate the use of Native American caricatures and symbols as school and athletic team mascots.

Citing a substantial body of research showing that such mascots create a hostile environment for Native Americans, the American Psychological Association, the American Sociological Society and the NCAA, have all called upon schools and sports teams to retire their Indian mascots. However, such traditions often die hard. It has been reported that approximately 178 schools in Indiana still have Native American mascots. Most frequently used are Warriors (62), followed by Indians (58) and Braves (32). Eight Indiana schools still call their teams the Redskins.

The United States Commission on Civil Rights says the furor over the use of native American mascots “is not a trivial matter.” In 2001 the commission call the use of Native American images “insensitive” and “disrespectful and offensive to American Indians.” This may be more than a matter of political correctness, as such usage skirts on violating federal anti-discrimination laws.

Sensitivity to social issues, such as urban violence, lead the Washington Bullets pro basketball team to be redesignated as the Washington Wizards in 1997. Wizard’s owner Abe Pollin said, “Changing the name was not an easy thing to do but ... Bullets kill people, and we thought it was no longer appropriate for a major sports team.”

In 2001 the University of South Carolina’s mascot, the Gamecock, came under criticism for glorifying cockfighting. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) asked the South Carolina school to retire the mascot, but this mascot remains unchanged.

In possibly the most overt case of racial insensitivity and offensiveness, the Pekin Illinois High School teams were once officially known as the Pekin Chinks. Pekin is allegedly halfway around the world from Peking (Beijing), China. The school’s official mascots included a male student and female student, known as “the Chink” and “the Chinkette.” They were dressed in stereotypical Chinese costume, wore coolie hats, and struck a gong, whenever the team scored. Despite multiple attempts by Chinese-American groups to change the name, it wasn’t until 1983, that the school authorities finally switched to the Pekin Dragons.

Fred Willman, from Naperville, Illinois wrote a book that analyzed Illinois high school mascots, entitled “Why Mascots Have Tales.” Willman defends mascots as an “impetus for school spirit and a source of positive reinforcement for fans and athletes alike.” Willman’s favorite mascot is the Cobden Appleknockers, so named because in earlier times, Cobden students knocked apples off trees with sticks, in order to sell them to earn extra money.

My favorite Illinois mascots, however, are the Freeport Pretzels. This nickname originated from the city’s many bakeries. The Pretzels’ memorable cheer is “You can eat us, but you can’t beat us.” Patricia Norman, principal of Freeport High School has said “We’re the butt of a lot of jokes because we’re the pretzels, But we’re proud pretzels.”

Indiana has it own pantheon of colorful mascots, which include the Cory Apple Boys named after the Cory Orchards; the Edwardsport Power named after a local electrical plant; the Fontanet Beantowners named after the town’s annual bean dinner; and Shoals Jug Rox, named after a unique local geological formation. Monroe City teams are called the Blue Jeans in honor of Governor James D. “Blue Jeans” Williams, a farmer who wore home spun blue jeans in the Governor’s Mansion back in 1877. West Baden has its Sprudels (German for spring) and who could ever forget Indiana State University’s Fighting Teachers.

Perhaps the oddest mascot story comes from Yuma, Ariz. The high school there was originally situated in the abandoned Yuma Territorial Prison. After a 1913 football game, in which the Yuma team was charged with cheating and branded as criminals, school officials decided to bear these accusations as a sign of honor. Thus in 1917, The Criminals became Yuma’s official mascot, complete with a full complement of prison related symbols. Today they still proudly wear the ball and chain (www.yumahs.yumaunion.org/).

Terry L. Stawar, Ed.D., lives in Georgetown and is the CEO of LifeSpring the local community mental health center in Jeffersonville. He can be reached at tstawar@lifespr.com or 812-206-1234. Checkout his Welcome to Planet-Terry podcast at www.lifespr.com/podcast.