By MARK SARDELLA
Apparently, the School Department doesn’t have enough on its plate at the moment, so last week administrators announced plans to push ahead with developing a new high school sports logo to replace the Native American image that was so heinous it took three quarters of a century to determine that it was offensive.
Presumably, the process of choosing a new logo will require somewhat less time.
That process will include two “forums” this month – one for students and one “community forum” — to gather feedback regarding a new logo. If you want a preview, go back and watch the very balanced “Native American panel” and community forum that the School Committee held last spring prior to getting rid of the old logo.
The process will also involve the creation of a committee to develop a new logo. This committee will complement the already created committee on the development on an “Indigenous curriculum” for the schools. The Indigenous curriculum is part of our atonement for the grievous sin of using an image of an Indian warrior as our school logo. The School Department is big on “making amends” these days.
For the very first meeting of the Indigenous Curriculum Committee, school administrators brought in one of their favorite paid “consultants” as the keynote speaker. Dr. Mishy Lesser is founder of the “Upstander Project” and “Upstander Academy.”
The Upstander Project/Upstander Academy preaches that all Americans of European descent are “invaders” and “colonizers” living on “stolen land.” Lesser and her Upstander Project want to “break down Eurocentric knowledge silos” and encourage “decolonization,” which, according to Indigenous scholars, involves an “ongoing critique of Western world views.”
Since they keep paying Dr. Lesser, school leaders presumably share those beliefs. In fact, Wakefield paid to send Social Studies and English curriculum coordinators to Upstander Academy last summer to learn how to incorporate these teachings into the local school curriculum. (But they would never dream of bringing Critical Race Theory into the schools. Trashing Western civilization is where they draw the line.)
According to School Superintendent Doug Lyons, the process for selecting a new logo will be modeled after the process for developing the Indigenous curriculum.
Does that mean that Dr. Lesser will be brought in to conduct a little indoctrination session at the student forum? Or is that being handled in the classrooms?
Lyons provided a preview of the new logo selection process at a recent School Committee meeting.
“We’re looking at keeping the Warrior name, right?” Lyons asked. “How might we be able to get a symbol or logo or something to align with that?”
Good questions, especially given the policy language approved last October by the School Committee: “Mascots, logos, team names, and/or nicknames will not be derogatory or offensive to persons of any race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, religion, or age. Neither should the mascot, logo, team name, and/or nickname depict violence or abuse.”
Never sticklers for consistency, they’re happy to ignore the fact that the name “Warriors” “depicts violence.” That aside, I decided to Google “warrior logos” to see what others have come up with.
It’s not easy to find “warrior” images that don’t depict fighting men of one ethnicity or another.
The Golden State Warriors decided to go with an image of the Golden Gate Bridge as their logo. What a bridge has to do with “Warriors” is anyone’s guess. But don’t be surprised if our logo committee decides to go with a safe Wakefield image like the Bandstand. (The hiker statue is unacceptable. He’s an actual warrior.)
Per the logo policy, a majority of the new logo committee will be students, so some random cartoon image is also a distinct possibility, even though one criticism of the old logo was that it was “cartoonish.”
I also wouldn’t be shocked if they conclude that it’s just too hard to come up with an image that “aligns” with “Warriors” but doesn’t “depict violence.” In that case, they could change the team name, which I’ve suspected was part of the plan all along.
Since we’re all illegitimate colonizers, I think “Wakefield Invaders” is a name everyone can agree on. A new logo would still have to be created.
Hey, do I have to do everything?
