No Sense In Anti-Mascot Crusade

The best move Harvard athletic director Bob Scalise made last week wasn’t reappointing Tim Murphy as the school’s football coach. That was something of a no-brainer after Murphy helmed the Crimson during another winning season and emerged validated from the myriad disciplinary issues that cropped up around the squad during the summer and early fall.

No, the best thing Scalise has done recently is to do nothing at all. That’s compared to Dartmouth AD Josie Harper, who recently issued a written public apology in the campus newspaper to “the Native American community, and the Dartmouth community as a whole,” for scheduling a men’s hockey game between the Big Green and the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux. According to Harper, “UND’s position,” i.e. having a nickname and mascot that invoke a native tribe, is “offensive and wrong.”

Groan.

At heart, this is an issue of 21st century political correctness. The history of unjust dealings with Native Americans is utterly reprehensible and there’s an impulse to try to make amends now, post-violence, by outlawing stereotypical depictions of indigenous culture. Or, wait, is it American Indians? The list of too-sensitive nouns and verbs is changing and expanding so rapidly I fear I’ll be consigned to writing columns composed only of prepositions by the time my stint in this space is over.

The NCAA, by banning 18 schools with “hostile or abusive” mascots from postseason play last August, is the true instigator of this complaint. The update issued by the organization in late April indicates that six offenders, including North Dakota and Illinois (Fighting Illini), remain, four, including Florida State and Utah, have been excused, five have changed or are changing their nicknames, and four linger under some form of review. Harper and Dartmouth’s athletic department are falling in step with the attitude of the self-righteous NCAA (don’t get me started on its simultaneous touting of amateurism and commercial exploitation of college athletes), supposing moral superiority in condemning UND and misdirecting its energies towards social justice when it should be trying to improve its crummy football and basketball teams.

My intellectual instinct is to oppose potential hypocrisy, and I don’t believe a bright line exists in this case. Let’s take a look:

Florida State has earned an exemption because its Seminoles nickname and mascot is endorsed by that selfsame local tribe; North Dakota’s Sioux have issued no such pardon. But an accurate threshold can not be express approval. What then of the Bears, a perennial Dartmouth opponent? Does Brown have the consent of our ursine friends? You think I’m kidding.

On a human level, though, how about the USC Trojans? Descendants remain of ancient Ilium, sacked by the Greeks many moons ago (dirty trick that horse was, huh?), and old King Priam. Have they been consulted about the school’s mascot Traveler, a white horse with an armored warrior astride? That militaristic imagery certainly depicts residents of Troy in a potentially hurtful way.

What about Notre Dame? That venerable institution has a leprechaun as its mascot and the Fighting Irish as its athletic nickname. See the similarities? I didn’t think so—it’s okay to caricature the Celts because they’re white.

If the problem is lumping all Sioux, a nomadic Plains people, under the heading “fighting,” or the extraction of visual generalizations from group names, did Harper consider the Big Green men’s hoops team’s first two opponents in 2006, George Washington and Massachusetts? The GW Colonials mascot is a presidential look-alike in a powdered wig and breeches. Is the implication that all American colonists were white and wealthy? Because that belittles the poor artisans and black slaves.

Even more aptly, the UMass mascot is a Minuteman. Were all Revolutionary-era Massachusetts residents soldiers, violent dispensers of rebel justice with rifles drawn and bayonets affixed? Of course not. Yet no one complains in these cases, because the subjects belong to the culturally-dominant ethnic group.

Finally, what are we to make of Dartmouth’s fellow Ivy institution Penn, and its nickname, the Quakers? Or ECAC rival Union (Dutchmen), for that matter? The parallel to UND is that the nickname is a nod to the ethnic/religious group that used to form a majority in the area where the school is located. If it is simply impolite to cite such a group, Penn wouldn’t get off scot-free. But I’m being silly! Everyone knows the Friends practice pacifism. Very few people know that Native Americans didn’t scalp their enemies for recreation.

And thank me for not thoroughly delving into the implications of perhaps the collegiate level’s most controversial moniker, the Rebels of Ole Miss, which can be read as a tacit approbation of slavery and the Confederate cause.

The Crimson’s news coverage of this story last week quoted the executive director of the Harvard University Native American Program: “It is inappropriate to have these mascots representing native people—they don’t.” The idea that a mascot should be an accurate representation is absurd. That would be the end of mascots. Sports is the domain of the generality and the cliché. UND is a stupid school with a stupid nickname. Why make more of its mascot than that?

Because of the racial component. I almost forgot. She continued: “I think they are legacies of stereotypes and really portray native peoples in caricatures. It’s part of an American myth that we need to rectify.” Kind of like how George Washington’s mascot portrays colonial people in caricature and UMass promulgates the myth of the Minutemen? Where’s the rectification brigade on that one?

And forbid we should look to the positive side of a Native American mascot: the acknowledgement of regional predecessors or the ideal of a courageous spirit and physical prowess that the teams in question hope to emulate.

It’s easy, Ms. Harper, to throw stones when your house isn’t glass but Green. The Harvard athletic administration, in a similar position, with a harmless hue as its nickname, didn’t take the bait, and for that it deserves some credit.

It’s just too bad that the Harvard women’s basketball team missed playing Arkansas State in the Contra Costa Times Classic tournament this past weekend. I think the Crimson would’ve slaughtered the Indians.

—Staff writer Jonathan Lehman can be reached at jlehman@fas.harvard.edu.