Chief Referendum

I’ve been swamped with the Primary, but the Squire has been all over an on campus referendum over Chief Illiniwek.

I’ve argued before that I find the Chief to be a horrible anachronism that uses stereotypes to represente American Indians.

Certainly a mascot could be a proud figure representing everything noble about American Indian culture in general and the Illini Tribe specifically. Instead, the student playing him performs an atrocious and stereotypical dance that degrades the proud heritage of American Indians.

U of I students still have 2 hours to vote. Squire had this to say in comments:

The two-day campus voting period ends at midnight tonight, and with it the referendum on the Chief. As I stated earlier, the Pro-Chief option will likely win due to the heavy amounts of social ignorance in the student body. The pro-Chief faction will likely decide that might/numbers makes right and trumpet the results while still not getting what the issue is truely about. At least spring break is next week so hopefully no group on either side will do anything too terribly stupid.

With the (underhanded) cancellation of the April meeting the Chief resolution will be voted upon at the June meeting of the Board of Trustees. That meeting will be Allen’s last before his term as UIUC Student Trustee expires. The BoT really does not want to vote on the issue – it’s a lose-lose situation for them – but they really have to sometime soon. Tension on campus is getting a tad out of hand and we need a vote one way or another just to settle the student body down a bit.

He also points to this article on David Gill, Democratic Candidate for the 15th District.