Bowing to the NCAA’s inane politically correct pressure, the University Of Illinois officially retired its mascot after 81 years of faithful service:
URBANA, Ill. — The University of Illinois swept aside the last vestiges of Chief Illiniwek Tuesday, voting to retire the mascot’s name, regalia and image.
The resolution lets Chancellor Richard Herman decide how and when the Chief Illiniwek name and image would stop being used and licensed to apparel makers and others.
The school would continue to call its sports teams the Fighting Illini under the resolution.
Activists and some American Indians have long complained that the chief is offensive and demeaning, while backers defend him as an honorable tradition.
In February, the school decided to end the performances of the Chief without a vote, which Board Chairman Lawrence Eppley has said wasn’t needed. Nonetheless, board spokesman Thomas Hardy said voting now could blunt any legal action claiming there should have been a vote.
“This certainly would count as formal action by the board,” Hardy said.
Oh I don’t know, a white flag of surrender would have been appropriate too.
March 13th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
This is just sad. How long before all human related mascots are removed simply because of fear of offending someone? The same people who want to celebrate diversity and embracing other races quickly shy away from it in cases like this, and I’m just at a loss for words beyond these.
March 13th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
It is a sad day for the University of Illinois. I am an alumni and felt that the Chief was a honor to the Native American people. It seems that there a lot more critical issues facing America than a school mascot that people could have put their time and energy towards.
March 14th, 2007 at 8:11 am
I’m somewhat torn on this one. If you look at the history, their “Cheif Illiniwek” was a mishmash of historically inaccurate collections of several things they made up and several things from various tribes.
Part of me says that they should have kept him and refused to bow to political correctness. The other part says that if they can’t be bothered to do some research and be historically accurate, they are being offensive. The latter seems more and more correct as I think about it.
March 20th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Has anybody really noticed that most of the chief supporters use phrases like “…think or thought the chief was honorable….” Well, there lies the problem - they think it was honor. We should all knwo that what we think is honor is not always honor. The other problem is that most of the people that say the chief was OK and all are not Native American either. That creates a very big problem - people not of a culture trying to tell others of another culture what is honorable. But the history of man has been doing that forever.