I’ve been writing at FREE WHITEWATER for nearly two years, and I’ve described all sorts of galling, shocking, or just plain ridiculous events.
No need for thanks — it’s my pleasure, I’m sure.
Yet, I’ve never encountered a fraud quite so disturbing as the one that dupes unsuspecting visitors to the website of Whitewater High School.
That’s Whitewater High School, in Whitewater, Wisconsin, my town.
Our public high school’s mascot is the whippet, a fine and speedy canine. The American Kennel Club notes that
Having evolved for over a hundred years, it was not until 1891 that official recognition was given to the Whippet by the English Kennel Club. Used for racing early on, the breed was nicknamed “the poor man’s racehorse.” Whippets were first brought to America by English mill operators of Massachusetts, which for many years was the center of Whippet racing in this country. Later the sport moved south to Maryland, particularly in Baltimore.
We should be proud to have the whippet as a school mascot. Gosh darn proud, Whitewater!
What, though, awaits parents, and children (think of the children!) who visit the website of our high school? Others may be afraid to discuss it, but I’m not. (Quick note — there’s a legal fair use right to display these images, one worth exercising and defending.)
This is what greets these innocent, impressionable visitors….
The high school site doesn’t say that this is a whippet, yet it’s supposed to be. See for yourself, though, what others have whispered about, but I’ll discuss openly —
Well, well, not so unique and local after all, are we? I keep hearing how wonderful local ties are, and how important it is to have lived here forever and ever, to have been born in a Whitewater cow pasture, or eaten a Whitewater brat, or played in Whitewater’s dirt as a child, etc., etc.
And yet…and yet…our high school’s supposed whippet logo looks an awful lot like the logo of the Greyhound Bus Lines. That’s a greyhound, from a company headquartered in — wait for it, proud boosters of localism — Dallas, Texas.
Consider the points of similarity between the supposed website whippet and the greyhound of Greyhound Bus Lines: the forepaws are in the same position, the hind paws are in the same position, the dogs’ heads are in the same position, the tails are in the same position, the dogs’ bodies are of the same proportions.
Yes, one’s colored red, but that could be food dye, or spray paint, or whatever they colored the Whitewater dog with.
It’s still a greyhound underneath.
Greyhounds are different from whippets, as a chart from the AKC website plainly shows —
As you can see, greyhounds and whippets are separated by eleven — count ’em, eleven — other breeds of dog. Now I’m not some fancy dogologist, but even I can read an AKC chart. They’re obviously different animals.
No how, no way should a spray-painted greyhound serve as our high school’s webpage logo.
I have nothing particular against the Greyhound Lines. (In fact, I once suggested a suitable use for their services.) It’s just that the youth of Whitewater deserve a better website mascot than the logo of a company with a lamentable reputation for its vulgar clientele and foul-smelling terminals.
If we’re trying to attract newcomers, skid-row bums shouldn’t be our target demographic. We probably have enough of our own, anyway.
These are hard times, but even in this recession, someone should be willing to find and photograph a real whippet for our website. It doesn’t even have to be a live one — there must be a local taxidermist who has a stuffed one lying around in an attic somewhere. It just has to have been a real whippet once.
Good enough, I’d say.
Yet, a real whippet it should be. It’s the very least we owe our children.