Committee recommends changing of mascot to Morris High School board

MORRIS – The Morris Community High School District 101 Board met Monday night and heard a presentation and recommendation from the mascot committee.

Morris currently is one of five schools in Illinois that uses the nickname and mascot Redskins, along with Momence, Sullivan, Wolf Lake (Shawnee) and Nokomis. The school’s use of the name and mascot has been a topic of debate for several years. However, the debate had never reached a level where a committee was formed until this year.

The committee, which was made up of 19 people – ranging from current students to parents to interested community members that held three different meetings on the topic since February – recommended that the school board stop using the Redskins mascot at the end of the 2021-22 school year. The mascot committee also recommended selecting a mascot that better represents the values of the community, the students and the school district. In the final vote of the committee, the vote total was 17-1 in favor of changing the mascot.

During the presentation, many arguments were made in favor of changing the mascot. One was that the word Redskin is defined in the most current Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “offensive – used as an insulting and contemptuous term for an American Indian” and by The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary as “slur, offensive, old-fashioned, taboo – a very offensive word used for Native American.”

Student body president Alex Duffy then pointed out a list of behaviors that are deemed unacceptable in the school’s handbook, one of which was “using derogatory slurs.” Duffy pointed out that the school district could be held liable if someone decided to sue over the use of the term.

District 101 Superintendent Craig Ortiz said that since there are three new board members, the earliest the board will take action to vote on the recommendation would be at the June 14 board meeting.

The school received 65 applications from people interested in being members of the committee, which was narrowed down to 19 people.

Ortiz also pointed out that the board and administration knew this issue was a topic of interest, which is why when the new football stadium and artificial turf field were installed last summer, there was no mention of the word Redskins, nor any artwork featuring the traditional Indian head. The logo at the middle of the field is a block M, and the scoreboard reads Morris across the top. The word Morris also is in both end zones.

“When we did that, it didn’t make some people happy,” Ortiz said. “But if we had gone with ‘Redskins’ and we had to change it in a year or two, some people wouldn’t have been happy with the extra cost and would say that we were wasting money.”

The school board agreed to have further discussion on the topic and will put an action item on the agenda when they are ready to vote.