Colleges you/child crossed off the list after visiting

Parents Forum
541

<p>Central Michigan makes much of its relationship with the Chippewa tribe. It appears to be more than just writing checks. Here’s a website about it:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.cmich.edu/To_Be_A_Chippewa.htm[/url]”>http://www.cmich.edu/To_Be_A_Chippewa.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I grew up not far from there and believe the respect to be genuine. Do you have evidence to the contrary?</p>

542

<p>When my son visited CMU, their mascot was “The Plaid”. Nothing like a fabric to inspire awe in your opponent. I believe that they were going to change it the next year.</p>

543

<p>I think Scotty, the new mascot, is very cute! (A Scotty dog.)</p>

544

<p>Dartmouth and Stanford share distinction of having traditionally been called the Indians, and in the 70s both changed their names to colors - Green and Cardinal, respectively.</p>

<p>I don’t care whether schools drop their Indian names or not, but if they do I wish they would come up with something a little less lame and little more tangible than a color.</p>

545

<p>^^^ A high school near us was the Redmen. After much uproar and resistance, the decision was made to change it. The current students voted for the Red Hawks. Keep the red, keep the feather. Made perfect sense to me. The School Committee overrode them, and named the school the Red and Blue. Wha…??? I think the students were right.</p>

546

<p>I seem to recall several instances of students picking something cool and then being overruled by administrators picking something lame, but I don’t remember specifics.</p>

<p>I can think of three schools that recently have changed their names from Indian to non-Indian:</p>

<p>Eastern Michigan: Hurons (unique but offensive for somewhat obscure reasons) to Eagles (lame)
Arkansas State: Indians (lame) to Wolves (lame)
Miami of Ohio: Redskins (blatantly offensive) to RedHawks (not completely lame, but could’ve been better)</p>

<p>Here’s a dopey one: Carthage College (Wisconsin) changed its name from the Redmen to the Red Men. Wha…?</p>

547

<p>Hurons were a tribe, but I’m betting you know that.</p>

<p>Redmen – racial reference, Red Men, not.</p>

548

<p>at WWU the teams are Vikings- should I be offended? ( well not me- cause I am a melting pot but maybe for H?)
but we do have a statue of Leif in our neighborhood
[Forget</a> the Nobel Peace Prize, it’s Leif Erikson day, people! Los Angeles Times](<a href=“Archive blogs”>Opinion: Forget the Nobel Peace Prize, it's Leif Erikson day, people!)</p>

549

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<p>Yes, but the name is derogatory. They’re more commonly known as Wyandot, not a single tribe but a confederation of tribes, sort of like the Iroquois. The word Huron is thought to be derived either from a French word meaning something like “thugs”, or from the French word *hure<a href=“%22head%22”>/I</a>, which came from the observation that the Wyandot had coarse hair like that on a boar’s head. It makes me wonder why they didn’t change their team name to the Wyandot(s). Would have been a lot more interesting than the Eagles.</p>

550

<p>Well, okay, but that’s why they didn’t think the Huron name appropriate.</p>

<p>Some posters have said that they don’t understand the objection to Native American names. I think because so much land was taken in the way it was that it’s hypocritical to use their cache when we didn’t protect their culture.</p>

<p>PCness can get tiring, but there is often a good reason. It’s true that it can be taken too far; this is a subjective evaluation.</p>

551

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<p>I think that’s dead on.</p>

552

<p>Right now the students at the University of Denver are trying to bring back Denver Boone. Their teams are the Pioneers–but Denver Boone is not pc so he was dumped.</p>

553

<p>We visited some schools the summer before DD’s junior year. She applied to two of the seven schools we visited. I wouldn’t say she took the others off her list. It is more like they just didn’t make it to the list. Her reasons for applying or not really didn’t have anything to do with the visits.</p>

<p>The one school that I would say she ruled out after a visit was Chicago. I think we both expected to like the school (maybe me a bit more than her), but neither of us was enthused after the visit.</p>

554

<p>Well, one does what one can, constrained by available time and finances. But having had quite a number of visiting experiences spread over full years, I am adamant that visiting when the college is not in session with its regular students has a very diminished benefit. Colleges can have <em>completely</em> different feels which will inform your sense of “fit” or not.</p>

<p>As for the notion of “We’ll visit when we get the acceptances” (not that anyone has recently said this), my response is to grope around to find some polite way of saying, “Are you out of your ever-loving mind?”</p>

555

<p>I didn’t even see a single college that I applied to. I’ve only visited Emory, and that was the summer before my first fall semester.</p>

556

<p>I think the term “mascot” is a relatively new one and set up to be derogatory. I was very surprised when school symbols began to be called “mascots”. A mascot is secondary to the “master”, the student body or the school.
My understanding of figures chosen to represent schools is that these are symbols to emulate or look up to. The pride and fierceness of the American Indian in the popular mind is one example. I understand that the symbol makes many Native Americans uncomfortable, and will bow those folks.<br>
But the term “mascot” is purely a term of diminishment to me. I can’t abide it.</p>

557

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<p>Eagles and wolves are okay. Not particularly imaginative but at least both eagles and wolves are real animals of fierce and noble reputation. The Green, now <em>that’s</em> lame. </p>

<p>As long as we are going for non-tangible concepts for team names, how about going for something totally abstract: say The Optimism, The Future, The Relative Humidity, or maybe The Interest Rate.</p>

558

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<p>I don’t have strong opinions about the word mascot one way or the other, but the dictionary definition and etymology are not nearly so derogatory:</p>

<p>mas⋅cot
  /ˈm</p>

559

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<p>Well, you could go the vegetable route as Scottsdale Community College did with Artie the Artichoke. When discussing mascots, S would teasingly add that it might be cool to be a fighting artichoke!</p>

560

<p>Hope no one posted this already. Enjoy!</p>

<p>10 Weirdest College Mascots:
[10</a> Weirdest College Mascots - Oddee.com](<a href=“http://www.oddee.com/item_96800.aspx]10”>http://www.oddee.com/item_96800.aspx)</p>