Milton board decides to retire Indian logo, name
Earlier vote defeated in dispute over picking new symbol

By Kathleen Ostrander
Special to the Journal Sentinel
 

Milton - After nearly a decade of controversy, officials in the Milton School
District have decided to drop the high school's nickname, the Redmen, and change its Indian logo.

The decision came after two hours of heated debate Monday night, when the School Board voted 5-2 to mothball the district's logo of a warrior in a headdress as well as the nickname that some say was offensive to American Indians.

The logo has been the subject of contentious debate since the early 1990s, when a Milton resident who is American Indian sought an injunction in Rock County Circuit Court to bar the district from using the nickname and logo. Carol Hand said the logo and nickname were discriminatory, but the court said it had no jurisdiction to force a change.

A vote to drop the logo and nickname was defeated in May after the School Board couldn't agree on how the district would come up with a new logo.

On Monday night, Wilson Leong, a board member, put forth a simple resolution to retire the logo and name - with no mechanisms added to get a new logo or nickname.

"I'm extremely pleased with the vote," Leong said Tuesday. "It came after a lot of hard work and soul searching."

The board in August will start talking about how it will come up with a new logo and nickname, he said.

The decision by the Rock County school district to drop the logo was applauded by J.P. Leary, American Indian studies consultant for the state Department of Public Instruction.

Shortly after the attorney general's office issued an opinion in 1991 that
Indian logos and nicknames needed to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis to determine whether they constitute harassment of students, DPI officials sent letters to school districts urging them to evaluate their logos.

"This is the way we would like to see this issue handled - on a local level,"
said Leary. He said 42 school districts still have Indian names and logos for
their sports teams.

"I don't know if this provides a 'nudge' to those other districts, but it
certainly shows the issue will not go  away," he said.

About 20 people from both sides of the issue spoke Monday before the board voted.

Barbara Munson, who chairs the Indian Mascot and Logo Task Force formed by the Wisconsin Indian Education Association, said archaic stereotypes that promote racism have no place in schools.

In a written handout, she said the task force hopes Indian logos will eventually go the way of "Sambos restaurants and blackface minstrel shows into the realm of cultural oblivion."

Twenty-five Wisconsin school districts have changed their Indian logos and
nicknames since the idea was broached in the early 1990s, she said.....
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