Guest editorial

The wrong
mascot debate

As one of the first Marion students to proudly wear a Florence Wildcat junior high letter jacket, I wish to voice my strenuous objection to the eradication of my own educational history by the proposed elimination of the Wildcat mascot.

The district has historically been a poor guardian of the educational heritage of Florence, most notably by allowing the deterioration and destruction of the town’s school buildings.

The stone building was a grand structure rivaling that of the one in Marion, and the brick school was similar in nature to Marion High School. (Note that it’s called Marion High and not Marion-Florence High). 

Imagine the unimaginable, Marion consolidating with Hillsboro, all of the Marion students shipped off to become Trojans, and the town’s historic school buildings being torn down.

Imagine the immense sense of loss the community would feel as its educational legacy was kicked to the curb.

That the school was integral to Florence’s identity is evidenced by the annual Florence High School Alumni Association banquet.

Believed to be the oldest such organization in the state, the association’s banquet regularly draws more than 100 alumni from across the U.S. to reminisce and reflect on their days as Wildcats, even though there hasn’t been a graduating class in Florence since 1971.

Notable, too, is the fact that the association continues to award a scholarship to a deserving Marion High School student.

A district named Marion-Florence has an obligation to honor that educational history, and the only prominent recognition left is that of the Wildcats mascot.

Suggesting that eliminating the Wildcat mascot is somehow “progressive” while maintaining the Warrior mascot in the face of a nationwide movement to abandon the use of offensive indigenous mascots is not progressive at all.

In 2022, the Kansas Board of Education, acting on the work of its Kansas Advisory Council for Indigenous Education, which included representatives of all federally recognized native tribes in the state, recommended that schools “retire Indian-themed mascots and branding as soon as possible, but no longer than within the next three to five years.”

At the time, Marion-Florence superintendent Lee Leiker was quoted in the Record as saying, “Don’t panic. Don’t overreact.”

And indeed, the district has not overreacted. It has instead ignored the recommendation altogether — this despite the research showing that use of native mascots is harmful to all students, not just Native American students.

The research shows that the use of Indian mascots increased stereotyping of native people by non-natives as “primitive,” “aggressive,” and “savages.”

It leads people to dehumanize native people. And there is also evidence that when exposed to native mascots, students are more likely to discriminate against people of color.

In recent years, USD 408 has prided itself on adopting evidence-based practices to improve educational outcomes for its students, and rightly so.

How can that be squared with continuing use of a mascot that’s been demonstrated to cause long-term harm to students by enhancing inclinations to engage in antisocial behavior like discrimination?

Defenders of the Warrior mascot often say that its use honors native heritage. But where is the honor in ignoring the pleas of the state’s native tribes, all of whom agree that they feel no honor at all in being marginalized by mascots that perpetuate age-old stereotypes and portray natives as locked in a time more than a hundred years ago?

Indeed, when the Warrior mascot was adopted, honoring native cultures was the last thing on the minds of many Americans, who through support of the Indian boarding school system participated in the attempt to eradicate native cultures altogether.

I currently live just two miles from the site of one of those former schools and have become well acquainted with the “kill the Indian, save the man” theme that drove their horrible mission.

I’ve worked directly with many native tribes over the years, including currently with the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe here in Minnesota, related historically to the Potawatomi familiar to many Kansans.

To tell any of my native friends that I was a Warrior in high school would be an embarrassment to me, as I’m certain none would respond with “Oh, I feel honored by that. Thank you for sharing.”

The Kansas Board of Education is certainly not alone in its stand against native mascots. The Kansas Association for Native American Education also opposes their use, as does the National Congress of American Indians, which represents the nation’s 574 federally recognized tribes.

In 2004, the United Methodist Church passed a resolution condemning the use of Native American team names and sports mascots, considering them demeaning and racist.

Countless other organizations have come out against the use of native mascots, and the states of Maine, Oregon, Nevada, and New York — all with rich native histories to honor — have banned the use of native mascots in schools.

If USD 408 wants to be inclusive and progressive, it could do both by retiring the Warrior mascot and replacing it with Wildcats.

What better way to say to the people and alumni of Florence that we wish to honor their educational legacy and ongoing contributions to the district than by formally adopting the Wildcat as the district mascot?

Wildcats also makes sense from the perspective of the area’s historic and current ties to an iconic and excellent university, Kansas State.

The county bleeds purple on college game days, and K-State has been the post-secondary institution of choice for a significant number of Marion and Florence grads.

Many prominent and successful businesspeople in the community proudly tout their K-State Wildcat connections.

The university has been integral to the success of agriculture and more in Marion County through its research and extension programs for decades.

You’re hearing it from a Jayhawk that choosing the Wildcat as a mascot reinforces ties between the district and a fine university, and only good could come out of it.

And what of the cost of switching mascots?

I don’t believe that cost would be an issue for a district that just spent $3.26 million on sports upgrades instead of investing in, say, state-of-the-art education facilities and equipment, and that spent nearly $20,000 on a press box upgrade that’s used only sparingly throughout the year.

If there’s one thing USD 408 has shown, it’s that if it’s sports-related, it will find the money for it somehow, somewhere.

Whether attending school in Marion or Florence, my teachers taught me more than reading, writing, and ’rithmetic.

They also taught good old small-town values, one of which was to do the right thing.

The USD 408 board has the opportunity to do the right thing by Florence and all of its students and patrons while honoring the expressed wishes of the state’s native tribes and those across the country by retiring the Warriors mascot and replacing it with Wildcats.

It’s truly a win-win, even though it will be met with anger and disdain in some circles. Doing the right thing is often doing the hard thing. Is the board up to the task?

— David Colburn
Tower, Minnesota