NAME-DROPPER
Shady Side Academy athletics loses Indians moniker, but will other schools follow suit?
Shady Side Academy’s football and field hockey teams started summer workouts Wednesday, with coaches beginning their search for the right combination of players in preparation for what everyone hopes will be a fall sports season.
The school is now also in search of something else — a new mascot.
Shady Side Academy’s board of trustees voted unanimously this week to discontinue the use of Indians — one of the most used mascots in WPIAL sports — as the name of the academy’s athletic teams, effective immediately. According to a letter from board of trustees chair Jonathan Kamin, the board met Tuesday to review the use of the word and after analyzing the situation decided that “a significant portion of our community feels that it cannot embrace” the name or mascot. The letter added that students said the name became something “dividing us instead of uniting us.”
“We want everyone to be on the same page as far as race and racism,” said Shady Side Academy senior Nyla Rozier, a member of the school’s diversity leadership council. “It was a derogatory name being used as the mascot for the whole school. We’ve had a couple of meetings, most recently since Black Lives Matter. I feel like we’re trying to spread the word and help
everyone be better.”
As demonstrations and protests have become more prevalent after the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, attention has also turned toward institutions and companies for their use of names and imagery that many believe promote stereotypes or honor those who contributed to racial injustice. Among the many examples: Quaker Foods retired its Aunt Jemima brand, Land O’Lakes removed the likeness of a Native American woman from its packaging, and a school in Virginia will no longer be known as Robert E. Lee High School.
Many believe Native American imagery should be out of sports altogether. For decades, there has been a sentiment that the NFL’s Washington Redskins should do away with their name, and after federal officials and key sponsor FedEx expressed this week their wishes for it to be changed, the franchise announced Friday that it will “undergo a thorough review of the team’s name.” Late Friday, the MLB’s Cleveland Indians tweeted that the organization is committed to “determine the best path forward with regard to our team name.”
On Thursday, the Forest Hills Board of Education voted 4-1 to “retire” the Redskins name and mascot at Anderson High School in Anderson, Ohio. Last week, a high school in Connecticut dropped its Indians name, and similar efforts have been made in other states at both the high school and collegiate level.
Locally, the Indians is the most common name among the more than 120 WPIAL athletic programs, even without Shady Side Academy no longer using it. North Hills, Penn Hills, Peters Township and West Allegheny use Indians as their mascot, while Indiana uses the Little Indians. Aliquippa, one of the most storied programs in WPIAL football, is the Quips; prior to its football games, a Native American mascot riding a horse throws a flaming spear into the field. Central Valley, Elizabeth Forward, Mohawk and Penn-Trafford are all Warriors, but only Elizabeth Forward uses an Indian in its logo. Mohawk and Penn-Trafford have a spear in their logo for athletic teams, while Central Valley’s is of a soldier.
So, will any other Pittsburgh-area schools follow Shady Side Academy’s lead?
Penn Hills superintendent Nancy Hines said in an email that a “conversation [regarding the Indians name] came up a few years ago, and, at that time, nearly all who participated in those discussions preferred to keep the mascot as is.” Hines went on to say that athletic director Stephanie Strauss plans on bringing the topic back up for consideration when she hosts the school’s athletic advisory committee meeting next month.
Last month, the North Hills School District released a statement regarding its Indians name after receiving messages questioning it and having it become a topic of conversation on social media. The statement said no change would be made at this time, adding that the school district’s “top priority is the safe reopening of our schools for the 2020-21 school year” amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Emails to Peter Carbone, Aliquippa schools superintendent, and Jerri Lynn Lippert, West Allegheny schools superintendent, were not returned Thursday.
Discussion about discontinuing the Indians name at Shady Side Academy had increased in recent years, according to Skyy Moore, a 2019 graduate who now attends college at Western Michigan University. Moore applauded the school’s decision, which, among other factors, took into account a survey from the 2019-20 academic year that showed that 64% of the student body supported the change.
“I think they’re taking a step in the right direction as far as being mindful of certain ethnicities,” Moore said. “I know when I was there, it was something that was talked about. Just how certain people might look at Indians in a different way than what Shady Side meant it to be.”
In 2006, Indiana University of Pennsylvania replaced its Indians name, becoming the Crimson Hawks. That came when the NCAA threatened to crack down on schools continuing to use names or imagery deemed offensive to American Indians. IUP stopped using an Indian mascot seven years earlier.
The only somewhat similar name change at a WPIAL or City League school over the past few decades came at Brashear High, which changed from Bullets to Bulls in 1993. Some believed the Bullets name promoted violence.
Shady Side Academy has yet to decide on what its new name will be. Whether the school’s decision sparks a wave of change across Western Pennsylvania athletics remains to be seen.
“Honestly, I think it depends on the other schools and how their families react to it,” Moore said. “I felt like our school definitely listened to the people of other ethnicities. I think some [schools] might, but I don’t think everyone will.”