Whitewater’s high school has the whippet as a mascot, following the tradition of many schools to choose impressive animals as symbols. There are, though, some schools in Wisconsin that have chosen tribal leaders or tribes as symbols, including some nearby (the Blackhawks of Fort Atkinson come to mind).

Governor Doyle has signed legislation that allows district residents to complaint to Wisconsin’s superintendent of schools about symbols or mascots that the complainants feel are fostering race-based stereotypes. (The legislation is available online as Senate Bill 25. For more about local districts with such mascots, see Schools Stand Behind American Indian Names.)

The legislation is a bad idea, for four reasons.

First, the legislation takes away local decision-making, and places it in the hands of the state’s superintendent of schools. Local communities should be able to choose their symbols, mascots, etc.

Second, this legislation places the burden on the district , not the complainant, to establish non-discrimination:

At the hearing, the school board has the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that the use of the race-based name, nickname, logo, or mascot does not promote discrimination, pupil harassment, or stereotyping, as defined by the state superintendent by rule.

A resident can contend merely on flimsy grounds, but a district must defend with clear and convincing evidence. The burden of proof has been shifted to engineer an easy road to force change.
Third, there’s already a way to challenge locally those symbols that one might not like — through a local school board, and by voting in elections to that board. Residents have always had this option, and placing decision-making in a faraway bureaucrat is a way to trump local authority unnecessarily.

Fourth, the legislation is so broad that it’s possible to complain about any tribal leader as a symbol. One can see that that’s likely the purpose of the legislation, too — not simply to decide against egregious uses, but to make any symbolic use of a tribal leader suspect and impermissible. Note that it is, after all, the state superintendent of schools who has the power to define his own standards by rule.

In this over-breadth, one finds not a respect for racial diversity, but an ideological motivation to rely on a bureaucrat to ban any symbol hyper-sensitive activists find objectionable. One need only read the comments of Barb Munson, head of the Indian Mascot and Logo Task Force, to see that she’s reaching mightily to ban just about any symbol.

Her efforts to rely on an outside arbiter to decide these local questions — involving logos and mascots, not fundamental rights of voting, for example — will only undermine progress toward racial harmony. Imposition of an outside solution for something like a logo is a bad idea. If residents of a community choose symbols foolishly, or insultingly, it should fall to other residents to seek local redress.

There should, and need, be no compromise of the fundamental the rights of all residents. Certainly, a small town, filled with mediocre bureaucrats, must not be allowed to flout state or federal law. I have argued as much consistently. Many a town squire thinks like Yertle the Turtle, puffed with importance, and ridiculously distorts state law and policy into something unrecognizable as either law or good policy.

These logos are not, however, a matter involving risks to fundamental rights. Good or bad, they do not require a state-imposed solution.

By the way, I don’t believe that a symbol like that of Fort Atkinson is wrong or offensive. It seems just the opposite, actually — a genuine tribute to a tribal leader.

Far important still, I believe that the burden of proof should not have been placed on local districts, and that decision-making should never have been placed in the hands of the state superintendent of schools.