Your Opinion: A Blue Devil by any other name
Published 9:03 pm Thursday, March 27, 2008
A BLUE DEVIL BY ANY OTHER NAME
By Lee Saye
³What¹s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.² Good golly, Juliet! ³What¹s in a name?² A whole devilish bunch, that¹s what!
The Atlanta Braves quit losing and the American Indian community sat up. They didn¹t like the name ³Braves,² and they didn¹t like fans wearing chicken feathers and lipstick war paint and chanting imaginary Indian chants. A few things had already changed. Ted Turner and Jane Fonda modified the ³tomahawk chop² by doing it with palm down instead of perpendicular to whatever was being chopped. ³Chief Nok-a-Homa² no longer danced on the pitcher¹s mound, and robotic ³Big Victor² no longer wielded a tomahawk in right field. Still, the name of the team rankled. Would a mascot like the ³Indians,² ³Chiefs,² ³Blackhawks,² ³Braves,² ³Seminoles² or ³Redskins² be considered today? I don¹t know.
Someone suggested naming a team the ³Rattlesnakes,² because rattlesnakes have no lobby. Soon thereafter the Arizona ³Diamondbacks² were born.
Now the Tift County High School ³Blue Devil² is under the gun. It is perilous to discuss a high school. There is always someone with a different experience, a different opinion and the same right to speak out. I am brave enough (perhaps I should say ³brash² enough) because I think TCHS is great.
How do I know? I¹ve been here only six years. I know because I often work with TCHS students and recent graduates, and they are the best young people I have ever known. I know because most of my friends are Blue Devils. I know because I am working with Dr. Miles on a project, and find him remarkably open to innovation and absolutely determined to have the greatest high school in the world. Yes, I expect TCHS has every problem any high school has, but they are working on them every day, and always will.
So, who is this Dr. Hellman who questions our traditional mascot? No, he isn’t from here, but he comes with qualifications that deserve our most careful attention. This is not a fanatical rustic come out of some cultural cul-de-sac that time forgot. This is a 21st-century physician with credentials of such power that they cannot in conscience be ignored.
Why can¹t we ignore him? First, he is a scientist, and as such he is of necessity skeptical and evaluative, but he retains his faith in God. Second, he is of such physical prowess that he played basketball for four years as a Western Michigan University ³Bronco,² but his language is not of the locker room; his demeanor is not that of the superior natural athlete. Third, he paid his dues before he spoke. He relieved pain in our community for a year and continues to do so. He insured the safety of our football players for a season. Then he said what his conscience would not let him leave unsaid. Fourth, he wrote a clear, reasoned statement, and laid down big bucks to put it before us. You can¹t refute his argument simplistically.
What have others done? The Stanford ³Indians² became the ³Cardinals² in 1970, though they insist ³Cardinals² refers to the color and not the bird. The Dartmouth ³Big Green,² so named by students in the 1860s because of the color of the countryside, were dubbed ³Indians² by a sportswriter in the 1920s, and were so known until the trustees officially disowned the term in 1974. Some Dartmouth insiders refer to each other as ³Green Wienies.²
The Pekin High School ³Chinks² were a football power in Illinois. They selected a Chink and Chinkette of the year! Fans wore coolie hats to basketball games. The mascot was changed to the ³Dragons² in 1970, but there is to this day a sort of black market of Pekin H.S. ³Chink² paraphernalia. Is there a community left that would sit still for a team being called ³The Chinks?² Atlanta¹s Brown High School, the alma mater of Pepper Rogers and other notables, were the ³Rebels,² and their mascot was a Confederate soldier. The school changed from predominantly white to predominantly black and the mascot became ludicrous. They became the ³Jaguars.²
Perhaps there is no universally acceptable mascot. Many of the world¹s religions attribute souls to animals and this is called ³animism.² That could make the Valdosta ³Wildcats² and the Georgia ³Bulldogs² animistic. It could be that we must all go to epithets like the Alabama ³Crimson Tide,² the Tulane ³Green Wave,² or the Georgetown ³Hoyas,² whatever that is. Scottsdale Community College call themselves ³The Fighting Artichokes.² No artichoke has registered a complaint that I know of. TCHS ³Fighting Cotton?² Not likely.
Somebody has to be up in arms about the Syracuse ³Orangemen!²
This thing about Devil mascots comes up often. Atlanta newscaster John Pruitt was doing a story about it once and said something like, ³Well, I¹m a Druid Hills Red Devil and my wife is an Avondale Blue Devil, so where does that put us?²
I take neither side. My point is not that the ³Blue Devil² mascot is good or evil; my point is that we should listen to reasonable argument, respect the past and trust our high school to move forward in a manner most likely to benefit our progeny. (My progeny include a Sequoyah High School ³Brave² and a Cross Keys High School ³Indian.² My wife is a Sylvan High School ³Golden Bear,² and I am, alas, a Druid Hills ³Red Devil.² Ah, me!
Maybe the name doesn¹t matter. Shakespeare has Juliet tell us that ³A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,² but she never convinced anyone. The TCHS ³Roses?² Hmmm…
Go with God.
Lee Saye
Tifton