In the near future, WWU is expected to release a survey to students about the potential changing of our mascot, on the grounds that it is hyper masculine, aggressive, and all around problematic.
The idea is that the Viking as a white, male warrior doesn’t create an accepting atmosphere on campus for those of non-white, non-CIS identifications, and that Western is perhaps a little stuck in the past, being the only public university in the state that does not use an animal to represent its student body.
There is, of course, resistance to this change, especially on social sites like Yik Yak, where posts describe the name change as unnecessary.
But they do it in a way that demonstrates why the change may be so important.
Proponents for the change are being labeled “little bitches." What does it say about the point of view that the mascot should remain unchanged if the language that goes along with that argument is a gendered slur? Or when you place 90 percent of the student body on a scale below your "ballsack":
And then you commit the logical fallacy of privation to say that because the problem exists more extensively somewhere else, we shouldn’t address it here?
I think that tradition plays a large role here in what’s really behind the resistance to potential change, as well as the dominant white culture not wanting to lose ground to the “pussification of America” that they believe the politically correct movement is.
The mascot can currently be described as a white, masculine warrior… are these traits really indicative of Western?
In the past, the administration at WWU, when faced with budget cuts, made the decision to cut the football program entirely, indicating WWU's value of academic competitiveness over athletic competitiveness.
WWU’s undergraduate population is 55 percent female.
WWU is in fact predominantly white, but WWU’s president Bruce Shepard doesn’t see this as an acceptable future. Shepard has received flack in the past for saying that,
“If we are as white in 10 years as we are today, Western will have failed as a university.”
But when Shepard says this he draws upon the idea that WWU faces real challenges when trying to attract students of varied ethnic backgrounds, in a “do-we-survive-as-a-public-university-worthy-of-the-name-sense”. Bruce cites the facts:
"90 percent of our students come from Washington; high school graduation numbers in our state are flat and are projected to remain so; within those flat graduation numbers, the percentage coming from families from diverse ethnic and racial groups where parents have not gone to college is rapidly increasing."
Which would result in “fewer curricular choices, more generic curricula, a much different and much weaker Western.”
Western is concerned with its ability to survive as a school that serves students of varied backgrounds equally.
You are concerned with blocking the voice of the minority, with perpetuating ideas and rhetoric that exclude people of varied cultures, and making a stink about even entertaining the idea of change because of “pussification.”
Why does the Western mascot have to be a person at all? Why can’t it be an animal, or even better, an idea? Why can’t the mascot stand for something that all cultures can get behind: the pursuit of knowledge?
Why does the face of Western have to be a white, male warrior? The only white male warriors I see around Western are the dominant culture that fights to maintain tradition and simultaneously act against those of varied cultural backgrounds.
