Published in the June 24, 2021 edition.
By MARK SARDELLA
If you thought the Warrior logo issue that roiled the community last spring was just going to go away quietly, that’s what’s known as wishful thinking.
At least that’s what the anti-logo side was wishing would happen.
But the Warrior logo is back in the news, and once again, it wasn’t the pro-logo side that brought it up.
School Superintendent Doug Lyons raised the issue at a recent School Committee meeting when he had to explain why a “confidential” survey that the School Department sent out to the community last March wasn’t so confidential after all.
If you filled out the School Department’s survey on the Warrior logo, you did so with full confidence that your personal information and opinions would not be shared with the public. After all, the School Department was quite clear on that point.
“While the survey requires your full name, physical address and email address, personal information will NOT be shared with the public,” was the explicit guarantee in the survey’s preamble. (The word “NOT” was written in all caps just in case there was any doubt in your mind.)
The survey was sent out on March 18, the day after a panel of Native American activists from around the state was convened by the School Committee to condemn the logo, which had long consisted of an image of a Native American in a headdress.
The survey was part of a “process” used by the School Committee to determine the fate of the logo.
So, hundreds of people filled out the survey, and even though the results may not have been as clear-cut as the School Committee hoped, the survey was cited as a basis for the School Committee’s decision to eliminate the Warrior logo last March.
Now, it turns out that the basis of the survey — that it was confidential — was not true.
Shortly after the survey was conducted, the School Department received a public records request from a local resident for the data from the Warrior logo survey. Lyons said that Town Counsel Thomas Mullen was consulted and he said that, while student survey results were protected, the adult surveys were subject to public records requests and had to be released.
As a result, those survey results were released in early April.
New School Committee member Ami Wall, who was not on the school board when the survey was conducted, asked Lyons why name, phone number and email were required on the Warrior logo survey and wondered if that was standard procedure on all surveys sent out by the School Department.
Lyons didn’t answer the broader question, but said that name, address and email were required on the Warrior logo survey as a way to make sure respondents had a “connection to Wakefield.”
School Committee Chair Suzy Veilleux agreed with Lyons’ explanation for why name, address and email were required on the survey responses.
“How would we know if they’re tied to the community?” she wondered.
That’s funny, because there didn’t seem to be a lot of concern about “ties to the community” when the Native American “panel” was brought in the night before the survey was sent out to label anyone who favored keeping the logo a racist.
And “connections to Wakefield” didn’t seem to count for all that much when members of Wakefield’s most prominent Native American family, the Bayrds, said repeatedly that they supported the logo and had never experienced any racism growing up and living in Wakefield.
It turned out that a majority of Wakefield people agreed with the Bayrds. In a non-binding referendum on the April 27 Town Election, residents voted 2,911-2,337 in favor of keeping the Warrior logo and voted the most vocal anti-logo School Committee member out of office.
And now, the School Department’s own survey has, in the words of School Committee chair Suzy Veilleux, “come back to bite us.”
What is it they say about karma?
