Will Chief Illiniwek Dance Again?
While America’s legislators and business leaders desperately search for a way out of political impasses and economic travails, what, you may ask, are those who lead our colleges and universities working on? Reducing the ever-increasing inflation of tuition? Safety from campus crime? Ensuring academic success? One certainly hopes so. But last fall, at the University of Illinois’ flagship campus at Urbana-Champaign, high-level administrators and professors were spending time worrying about a different vital issue: how to stop their students from promoting Illinois’ banned mascot.
Students for Chief Illiniwek (SFCI) is a UI student group that wants to restore the Chief Illiniwek mascot to UI sports teams. The Illiniwek mascot (a fictional character created in 1926; there was no actual Chief Illiniwek) was retired in 2007 under pressure from the NCAA’s campaign to eliminate most Native American team names and mascots. In response, SFCI was formed, and in the fall of 2009 was organizing an event called “The Next Dance” (referring to the Illiniwek mascot’s traditional dance).
SFCI planned to have the event in UI’s Assembly Hall and was ultimately able to do so, but it ran into a number of roadblocks along the way. In order to find out what happened, SFCI submitted an Illinois Freedom of Information Act request. The results of that request provide a startling and disturbing look at the efforts that administrators and some faculty are willing to undertake to try to derail students willing to defy political correctness on campus.
The FOIA documents, which can be downloaded here (warning, large PDF), begin with a September 6, 2009, e-mail from Renee Romano, vice chancellor for student affairs, to Michael DeLorenzo and Anna Gonzalez, associate vice chancellors for student affairs. Romano reported that she had spoken to then-Chancellor Richard Herman about the upcoming “chief dance in the assembly hall” and that Herman was “considering banning student organizations from using the assembly hall.” She said she told Herman that “they might challenge the legality of banning RSOs [Registered Student Organizations] from Assembly Hall, but that I’d be willing to take it on.”
By that evening, Romano had given up on that idea. This excerpt from her 8:57 p.m. e-mail to Chancellor Herman is very revealing: “From my experience, it doesn’t work to develop a policy ‘after the fact,’ after something happens that you’re trying to change. It makes it appear that you’re trying to stop that particular organization which becomes a free speech issue again.”
What a farce you’ve described. It really makes one wonder how these people live with their intellectual dishonesty.
That said, I don’t care for using a fictional American Indian as a mascot, for heaven’s sakes. How would a funny Jew go over?
Chief Illiniwek was never really a “mascot.” He didn’t parade the sidelines during the game or anything like that. He could be more closely described as a band member since he only came out at halftime with the band. Though such distinctions are trivial and don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. I think most objective people would agree that compared to most mascots, Chief Illiniwek was about as respectful to the Native Americans as you could possibly get. Which is probably why the supporters are so ticked off at his removal.
PS, and I actually know several Native Americans that looked at Chief Illiniwek as an honor (because of the respectful way he was presented)
“Traditions are what you make them to be. If you see them as a mockery of what they represent, then they will become so. So now the question is, who is behind the mockery? You or the tradition?”
College professors and adminitrators in America have long gone beyond parody. At best they’re puffed-up buffoons acting out an absurd kabuki theater of solipsistic mindlessness, and at worst they’re leftist mind-commissars indoctrinating our youth with un-knowledge and a-history.
And for this American parents and/or taxpayers are expected to fork out $40,000-plus a year?
In the end, who are the bigger fools — the bearded pointy-headed profs, or us?
Good reply Jack.
As an alum 1960, I too feel the chief image was a graphic emblem of tradition and identity.
This “politically correct” action was made by alarmists seeking to get publicity.
The result. We have a weak typographic symbol reflecting Illini spirit?. Just look at the merchandise…a cap I against orange and blue. Exciting aye?
(I still have my chief graphic sweatshirt and will wear it proudly at all games.)
Bill England
This is EXACTLY why we will not allow our kids to attend any state school. You’d be better off getting an education in Zimbawe somewhere.
Not only are the people running the joint educated fools, but the trample the Constitutional rights of others & hate free speech. If they can ban it, they will…that it unless it is some nutty far left liberal group making poop posters or something.
Anyone going to state schools today is simply allowing their kids to be indoctrinated by neo-communist, fascist minded fools. There is nothing left on state u campuses except closed minds, intelluctually programed robots, and brain dead whackos. Why anyone supports this slop & identifies it as a worthwhile education is urinating into the wind. All you will get is an empty headed, pc little clone at graduation time. Nuff said!
As an alumnus of the University of Illinois I am appalled at the amount of time that the University leadership has spent on this subject. For an institution that has been rocked by an admissions scandal that forced both the Chancellor and University President to resign and facing a severe budget shortfall you would think that they have better things to do then stop a student organization from promoting Chief Illiniwek.
Illinois has lost focus on what made the University a world leader in scholarship. It has sacrificed its credibility on the altar of political correctness.
Bulgaricus:
Au contraire, a student at a state instituion has constutional rights. If you send your child to a private institution then he has only the rights that the University chooses to give him. (See Duke Univeristy as an example.) Constitutional protections only apply in the public sphere. A private school has every right to impose its own agendas and restrictions within its community.
“Activists Tell Fullerton High to Drop Indian Mascot/ Los Angeles Times -
Six months after winning a partial concession from a local high school over the use of its Indian-themed mascot, local Native American activists are now calling for the removal of a similar mascot at Fullerton Union High School, one of the oldest campuses in Orange County. [...]
more@:
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/nov/23/local/me-7348
Bulgaricus: you’ve got it more than half right. Private schools are no longer private. They’ve long been co-opted by govt. grants to faculty, physical plant and students — they built climbing walls and imported more Middle East students with the money.
So it’s not just State, but ALL most ALL schools.
Plotting to deny free speech, finding a phony reason to undermine the freedom to assemble, …highlights the low water mark in a once great academic institution.
When academicians become so blinded by attachment to a worldview that they cease to accept…no…to allow any other voice to be heard…they have lost their moral compass.
The “teaching moment” has passed and the pupil hasn’t failed, the master has.
Chief Illiniwek was always a respectful and stirring dance commemorating, not debasing, a tradition. At no time that I am aware of, did it denigrate Native Americans of any tribe, much less the Illinois tribe or Illini lands.
Sharing that heritage, rather than burying it, should be the point. Talking about the heritage and respecting it through expression of dance is a wonderful thing, not a memory to be burned in a police state bonfire.
I just wonder, if the drama students had written a tribute to the Illinois tribe and invented the very same dance, to be performed in the very same manner, using the very same steps, in rhythm to the very same music…whether the front row would be adorned with those thought police …cheering and tearing…at how beautiful it all was.
How this “dance” was so creative and respectful…because the students came from the “correct” side of the political spectrum.
Of course, that dance would have to show somebody as the villain. We know who that would be…and that would make everything…just fine.
cfbleachers
University of Illinois/Urbana ’75
I can’t agree more. I grew up in Champaign County and the Chief was always revered…you would never see him racked against the goal post in the third quarter, because he was always treated with respect and dignity. I am also an alumnus of the University, and upon being asked to contribute once, I pretty much have said as much that I will never give one cent until the Chief is restored. They (the trustees) sold out to the NCAA for money. As far as I’m concerned, they are a bunch of spineless bean counters who have destroyed our time-honored traditions, and they should all be removed.
Maybe we need a U of I “Tea Party” call to replace all of them.
Pat
UIUC B.S. Elect. Eng. ’87
#8
Chief Illiniwek (the costumed mascot) can never be authentic, as the Illini were primarily an acgricultural band of tribes from the 1500s and 1600s. The dances and other ceremony aspects are accurate. The U of I would more forthright if they re-named the mascot the Fighting Sioux or Fighting Lakota, since the costume is from a Sioux chieftain circa late 1860s. Or ride the wave of the resurgent NHL Chicago Black Hawks and rename themselves the same.
I’ve always seen Chief Illiniwek not as intentionally debasing, just goofy. I think I would rather be depicted as fierce and arse-kicking, like the Florida State Seminoles (and their buckskin-bikini clad cheerleaders aint bad either). CF, maybe they just need a Custer (or John Kinzie) co-mascot as a comedic/humiliatory foil and all will be well.
urbanleftbehind
UIUC 1995
Do what the leftards did at Cornell and Columbia in the 60′s and watch Chief Illinewek return.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS——Bill AYERS—enough said. Sad , sad day when they hired this terrorist and they won’t let Chief Illinewek dance.
Keyboard555:
Ayers teaches at the University of Illinois Chicago which is not to be confused with the real University of Illinois.
I’ve seen the chief dance. It’s a Native American minstrel show. Thus, it’s a perfect activity for PJM to get behind and cheer on.
tdiinva,
It is
University of Illinois at:
Chicago,
Urbana-Champaign,
Sprinfield
this is now the same exact school, it is the U of I system. I graduated from UIC and for a long time it was seperate, but today, it is one and the same school with different locations.
William Ayers, who still teaches in the education department of U of I at Chicago, is part of the U of I system.
not to mention, that U of I at Urbana-Champaign has its share of Left wing radicals.
Anyway, leave it to the academic world, which constantly claims freedom of speech and press, to do everything in their power to step on the freedom of speech and assembly of a student group and the only reason? a ridiculous masscot argument.
This U of I masscot thing has been going on since the 1990s. A bunch of under performers and a know nothing, radical professors grabbed unto this to show how the U of I system treats minorities. I despised this movement then and I despise it now and I say this as a Latino who rarely got a long with the radical, pro-castro, left wing Latinos on campus.
Live in Illinois and have watched UIUB dumb itself down over the years. The Politician’s kids get to go free,without qualifing in SAT testing standards. plus the university has long sold itself to Political correctness. And they cannot get any real athletics to attend the school because it is in the middle of Illinois, farm Country, flat as a table, and cold as hell in the winter.
Have always been glad I attended a technical school, I tried to attend UI for one quarter, as a Army Veteran, but could not attend required Classes and listen to ultra liberal dribble. Sent my kids to technical Schools and daughter to Nursing School. They are all very happy and conservative independent thinking adults.
That said, I don’t care for using a fictional American Indian as a mascot, for heaven’s sakes. How would a funny Jew go over?
Depiction of fictional Jews, Eskimos, Burgundians, Uskoks, Welshmen and urban intellectuals is not just permitted, but the First Amendment couldn’t care less who doesn’t care for the depiction. There’s no right to be free of offensive depictions.
CJ:
UIC may be part of the same system but there is only one “real” UofI. Springfield and Chicago (apart from the Med School) are just advanced community colleges. Also note the Chief Illiwek does not apply to the UIC. They are the Flames (or Flamers as the case may be)
#17
Amen!!! And I’ve also heard that UIC also stands for University of Indians and Chinks. I think DePaul University up in Lincoln Park is more apt to be described as the Flamers. UIC is just high school cliques grown up.
#CJ
I used to hate it when employers or others would assume that when I said I went to U of I, they assumed it was UIC not the real U of I. I would say Urbana-Champaign before it became standard just so people wouldnt have this preconceived notion of just a “Latino” who goes to Circle (the UIC campus is located near the junction of I-90/94 and I-290 in Chicago, an interchange that resembles a circle of ramps and is also known as the spaghetti bowl).
urbanleftbehind
UIUC 1995
As opposed to a “funny Jew” an Indian chief figure is heroic and a warrior is an appropriate symbol for a sports team. So is a Viking. So is a fighting Irishman. So is a Massachusetts patriot with a tri-corner hat and a musket.
Like many Americans, I am part Indian. My warrior ancestors deserve their fair share of mascot roles. My Quaker ancestors, well, that’s another matter.
Unlike Charles, I would be happy if all Indian “mascots” were retired. It is just so frickin’ embarrassing to see non-Indians play dress-up and “honor” us in this way, no matter how heroic they think we are or were. I love to participate in the dances of other cultures: Irish, Slavic, German, Israeli, you name it, but I would never dream for a moment that if I dressed up like a traditional Irish dancer and danced solo at the Notre Dame football game (when I look like an American Indian), that somehow real Irish-Americans shouldn’t at least be embarrassed for me. I wouldn’t even blame them if they thought I was goofy. But never would I think I was honoring what ever Irish people were proud of in their own culture by acting so goofy.
When I read a story like this (and the idiotic comments that follow) I am embarrassed for my conservative friends whom I love and support politically on almost every other issue. And hey, if there is anyone who should be a “small government” conservative, it should be an American Indian, whom the American government has historically screwed over again and again.
I was wondering about the Chancellors here. All of the schools are cutting their budgets. Do they need a Chancellor of Student affairs, a Vice-Chancellor of student affairs and at least two associate Vice-Chancellors of Student Affairs? Maybe they do not have anything else to worry about.
I am not involved in the mascot debate, as I am a graduate of Purdue and Boilermaker Pete. Though there was debate about removing his weapon. Hammers can be dangerous.
Luckily, they won’t have to ban Pontiac cars from the parking lots much longer!
Interesting that many conservatives see this as ‘their’ issue. I’d consider myself a moderate liberal and the loss of the Chief infuriates me to this day. I suppose this IS what conservatives mean when they talk about too much PC behavior and I am afraid they are right on the money there. The Chief is part of MY tradition – it was stolen from ME and it ticks me off. When I was a child, it was one of the few positive depictions of Native Americans around and it actually helped me open my eyes to the needs of the less fortunate.
As for liberal profs, most of my professors there leaned fairly conservative, so that is a complete red herring. Universities actually have a responsibility to have professors who are all over the map, especially state universities. The trade school lover says he left because he couldn’t stand liberal profs. Right – that and spending all night at Kams until your GPA reached 1.2.
And – no – UIC is not UI Urbana-Champaign. Don’t be ridiculous. If someone interviewed with me told me they went to U of I and then I found out they meant UIC, that person would never be hired. It’s fine that people go there, but it’s not the same. And it has nothing to do with the Chief. Oskewawa.
The Chief represents the genocide of all Native Americans and the trivialiation of Native culture. All those who support his return are knowingly participating in a racist act. Yes, I said all of you who support the Chief are racists. If you can’t see that you are too ignorant to be in college. So report me. I love to talk to the police. Now that I am retired I have plenty of time to do so.
Dr. Randall Norris, Ph.D.
Former Professor
Amnerican Culture Studies
Sauk Valley Community College
Dixon, IL
Senior Fulbright Fellow
Illinois “Roads” Scholar
Author, Women of Coal, Highway 61: Heart of the Delta
I am a Illinois fan, I think to take away Illiniwek, is to take away the very “Soul” of the University. Give him back!!!
Dr. Norris,
Thank you for your insight -the depth of your analysis and your flawless logic makes me wish I could have attended the prestigious Sauk Valley Community College. Please come out of retirement; I really want to learn more about “Amnerica.”
Regards
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