Mother says school nickname negatively affected son
She testified about Neshaminy’s use of ‘Redskin’ at hearing.
Neshaminy’s use of the “Redskin” name for its sports teams made her younger son’s experience at the high school uncomfortable and unpleasant, Middletown resident Donna Boyle testified Thursday during a Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission hearing at Bucks County Community College in Newtown Township.
Boyle, who along with her son identifies as Native American, filed a suit with the PHRC in 2013 over the name but then voluntarily withdrew it “because the community was growing more hostile, one particular school board member was riling up the community against me,” she said Thursday.
The PHRC filed a separate lawsuit against the school district in 2015 and is seeking to force it to change the name. Thursday was the fourth day of public hearings on the matter.
Boyle testified that she never withdrew her son — who graduated from Neshaminy in 2016 — from the district but that he enrolled in a work release program during his senior year that got him out of school earlier so he wouldn’t have to spend as much time in what they considered a hostile environment.
Boyle said she considers the “Redskin” name racist and offensive because its origin is connected to the murder of Native Americans and “bounties paid for bloody body parts.”
“He was going to a school that was allowing a term that was harmful to his heritage and ancestry,” Boyle testified. “All the students are indoctrinated into this. They talk about it as a point of pride. I had to protect him from a school that was supposed to be protecting him.”
Boyle said hundreds of emails, speaking at school board meetings and phone calls to board members and administrators never made much of a dent in the district’s attitude about the name and its refusal to change it.
Several other witnesses Thursday said they did not consider the term racist or offensive as it’s used in Neshaminy.
And one, Neshaminy High School mathematics teacher Joseph Pimble, refuted testimony from a former student given Wednesday.
Madison Buffardi, a 2015 Neshaminy graduate and former staff member on the student newspaper The Playwickian, had testified Wednesday that Pimble had berated her during an after-school club meeting because of her opposition to the “Redskin” name.
On Thursday, Pimble testified he had
an exchange with Buffardi at the meeting over an article she had written comparing Muslim women wearing burkas to Catholic nuns. He told her at the meeting the comparison was “silly,” he testified, but did not yell at her or berate her, and that the incident had nothing to do with the "Redskin" issue.
”I don't ever recall speaking to Madison about the Redskin logo or team name,” Pimble said. He added he apologized to Buffardi for calling her comparison silly after being directed to
do so by then high school Principal Robert McGee, now the district's secondary education director.
Middletown resident Joe Turchi, who has four children attending Neshaminy schools, testified that he doesn't consider “Redskin” an offensive term and that he had never witnessed any district student or staff member acting in a derogatory way toward Native Americans.
Neil French, a social studies teacher at Neshaminy's Maple Point Middle School and the high school football team's defensive coordinator, testified that the “Redskin” name “in the context of where I live and work, is a tribute to the people
who came before us in our area, a tribute to their qualities.”
When asked by a PHRC attorney whether he knew which Native American tribes had once inhabited the area that includes the school district, French admitted he did not.
He testified he has not witnessed any behavior he would consider racist from any Neshaminy student and would not tolerate it if he did. While saying he did not consider the term “Redskin” offensive as used in Neshaminy, French added he would have no personal objection to changing it.
“I don't have any strong opinion one way or the other,” he said.
Joyce Jordan-Brown, a PHRC investigator who did investigating for both suits against Neshaminy, admitted under extensive questioning from Craig Ginsburg — one of the attorneys representing the school district — that she did not visit the district or visit with any students and spoke to only one guidance counselor during her investigations.
While saying that not meeting with any “victims” who are allegedly suffering harm is not her usual practice, JordanBrown added “every case is different.”
She added after questioning from a PHRC attorney that she had never visited a district
during any of her investigations that involved schools.
McGee testified extensively about how as principal, he had always tried to give The Playwickian staff as much freedom as possible to express itself about the “Redskin” issue within the limits of school district policy. The student newspaper has written several editorials opposing use of the name dating back to 2001 and has pushed to ban use of “Redskin” from publication in the paper.
The policy states it can be excluded from stories but must be included in submitted letters or opinion pieces. One of McGee's jobs as principal was to review every issue of the newspaper
before it was published, and he testified Thursday that completely banning the word could have violated the rights of other students contributing content.
McGee's testimony is scheduled to continue Friday, when the hearings are scheduled to conclude, though commission officials have said there's a chance they might stretch into next week. The PHRC won't issue a ruling until weeks or months after the hearings conclude, and Neshaminy would have the right to appeal that ruling to Commonwealth Court if it doesn't favor the district's position of maintaining the “Redskin” nickname.