School board considering return of Indian as mascot
Susquehanna Township School District might have teed up a move to reinstate the Indian as the district’s mascot, although some school board members said they were open to a change of the logo imagery itself.
While no vote was taken at Monday’s board meeting, a near-majority of board members indicated they were interested in officially bringing back the Indian, albeit not necessarily in its current form.
“In the next meeting or two, I think we need to have some action item on our agenda,” said board president John Dietrich.
That potential vote would stand to end Susquehanna Township’s yearlong limbo period, in which the school district has not formally had a mascot, although the Indian imagery still appears on many school materials.
In April 2021, following nearly two years of discussion, a previous iteration of the Susquehanna Township school board voted to retire the Indian, with many community members saying that the imagery was a racial stereotype.
However, board membership changed in the 2021 November election, and in February the board voted to not move forward with the Susquehanna Lion, the new mascot selected by a committee of students and faculty.
Of the nine-member board, Dietrich, along with members Scott Campbell, Julieann Newill, Terry Heller, and Michael Cohen, voted against the Susquehanna Lion; members Jesse Rawls, Majid Ali, Keita Kalonji Johnson, and Rebecca McCullough voted at that time to move forward with the new mascot.
Monday’s discussion was intended to feel out what further options the board might wish to bring to a vote, and at the end of the meeting, Dietrich said he foresaw three possible outcomes: either accepting the Lion, reinstating the Indian in some form, or continuing the mascot-less status quo.
Of those options, the reinstatement of the Indian had the most traction Monday night among the five-member majority that voted to quash the Lion, with four of those members supporting
the Indian; Cohen was absent Monday.
Campbell, the most strident opponent of the Indian’s removal, said that he had spoken with indigenous locals on a reservation during a recent trip to New Mexico, who were of the opinion that imagery like Susquehanna Township’s was a positive.
“Worse than the removal of the term Indian is the removal of the imagery, because they’re proud of the fact that they are depicted as fierce warriors,” Campbell said.
Dietrich and Newill said they tended to agree with Campbell, although both said they were open to keeping the name but changing the logo imagery.
“My own personal thought would be to keep the Indian name but change the logo. That was something that was discussed early on. That’s where I’m at, at this point,” Newill said.
“There are folks from the Indian community, Native American community that are in favor of these changes and those that aren’t,” Dietrich said. Keeping the name while changing the depiction could be a “middle ground” solution, he suggested.
For example, Dietrich said following the meeting, the district’s current logo — a profile of an American Indian with braided hair and feathers — could be replaced with more subtle imagery, such as the district’s “ST” initials featuring arrowhead motifs.
Asked after the meeting if his thinking was in line with Campbell, Newill, and Dietrich, Heller said “yes, that is my line of thinking.”
District Superintendent Tamara Willis cautioned the board that during the mascot committee’s lengthy series of interviews and deliberations, all of which were presented to the board, several local American Indians said they were not supportive of the name.
“In previous discussion we said we needed local Native Americans and they’re the ones who should be telling us what they believe, and when we found those Native Americans who said they do not approve of the name, now we’re considering those who are in other states,” Willis said. “I don’t know that anyone is really moving away from their opinion on this.”
Said Willis, “I believe depending on where you land in this argument you will gravitate toward examples that support your perspective. So I kind of agree you just have to vote your conscience.”
By the time the discussion began on the mascot, no one from the community was present.
Campbell and Newill have argued that the mascot evaluation process was “manipulated” by the prior board with the predetermined outcome of canning the Indian.
While previous board discussions had left open the idea of starting a new process, it was indicated Monday night that a clean slate do-over was likely not viable in the current environment.
“I don’t think you can really hit the reset button,” Dietrich said.
Johnson cautioned his colleagues about the message being sent by the board coming at the last minute and veering away from the process, one which students had put countless hours into.
“That seems like it puts very little to no weight on all of the effort the mascot committee went through,” Johnson said. “It sort of nullifies the decision or the deliberation of the students.
“We’re saying for all the time and effort that you put into the selection, in which you chose from multiple options, [the outcome] now just becomes an option itself,” Johnson said. “That doesn’t put the weight on their process that we afforded them.”