TURNERS FALLS — The debate over whether Turners Falls High School should keep its mascot, currently an Indian, continued Tuesday night during the Gill-Montague Regional School Committee’s second public forum on the issue.
Committee Chairman Mike Langknecht said at the start of the night that the process still has a way to go. Educational forums will follow these two public meetings over the next several months and then the public will be allowed to submit proposals for the mascot. Those proposals can include the current mascot as well as new ideas.
“This is not the end of the process; this is the beginning of the process. We’re not going to take a vote at the end of the night,” he said. “We want to hear your opinions.”
Those who spoke touched on similar themes of previous meetings about the mascot, with those wanting to keep it saying the mascot comes from a place of pride and honor while those wanting to change the mascot said the use of an Indian image is not the correct way to honor the local Native Americans.
The forum was tense yet cordial for most of the night. The forum lasted beyond the full two hours and ended with one man shouting from the back of the room and Langknecht asking him to leave.
Throughout the night, there were calls from those who want to save the mascot, for the School Committee to leave the issue alone or let it be handled by a town vote.
The committee has previously said that it won’t pursue its own referendum on the issue, but that people in the towns are free to create their own. Several people have expressed plans to get a nonbinding referendum on the ballot for the town of Montague in May.
Both sides seemed to agree on one angle of the issue, however, with calls for more education about Native American culture and history coming from those who want to keep and those who want to change the mascot.
“I hope that the two sides will come together through education,” David Brule, an alumnus of the school and president of the Nolumbeka Project, said.
Several students from the high school as well as the attached junior high spoke all in favor of keeping the mascot along with faculty and staff.
Rachel Baker, a current events teacher at the school, spoke in favor of changing the mascot, and discussed a time where her current events class wrote papers and did research on mascots and logos that use Native American imagery. She said she felt the lesson had failed because most students said that while the mascot could be offensive to Native Americans, they personally did not find it offensive.
“For those of you who are comfortable making an entire race or ethnicity a logo or nickname, I want to know if you would be comfortable with one of the following: The Turners Falls Asians, the Turners Falls African Americans, the Turners Falls Latinos. And if you’re not comfortable with any of those, then I want you to think about why you are comfortable with the Turners Falls Indians,” she said.
Sarah Underwood, the school’s cheerleading coach, said she was concerned with the cost of a change like this, and how the school would afford it with an already tight budget.
Tammy Young, an alumna of the school whose daughter Emily attends the junior high school, said that her daughter was bullied after a previous forum for wearing her “Indian” sweat pants.
“I’ve yet to hear a good reason why we should change it,” she said.
Kerri LaPointe, who is an alumna of the school, said the School Committee should be focusing on other issues instead of the mascot.
“I’m not seeing how this hot topic has anything to do with our students or their education,” she said.
Lou Leelyn, who lives in Wendell, said she was not from the area but understands the school pride the students and alumni feel. She said that she was heavily involved in sports in high school and some of her best character traits came from her time as a student athlete.
“The thing is, the team spirit, and everything that it stands for, is still going to be here regardless of what your logo is,” she said. “It’s still with me 22 years later. It doesn’t matter if you’re an eagle or a bear or a tiger. And I haven’t even mentioned what my school mascot was because I think that’s the point, is that you’re who you are because of your team spirit and your values, you’re not who you are because of the logo on your sweatshirt.”
The forum was the second, with the first in mid-October. More than 100 people turned out for the first forum, with about 35 speakers. A similar size crowd attended Tuesday’s meeting.
Whether the school should keep the mascot, which is currently an Indian, has been debated by the public since a group of citizens approached the Gill-Montague Regional School Committee last May calling for them to change the mascot.
Since that time, school officials introduced and passed a proposal to create a review with public input to decide whether the school should keep the mascot.
Since the introduction of the proposal, community members have circulated online petitions either calling for the committee to get rid of the mascot, or to keep it.
In addition to the public forums, the committee is also hosting four “inquiry events” to get specific information about certain points of view on the mascot debate. Those four events will run from the end of November to the beginning of January and are for the school committee but open to the public.
You can reach Miranda Davis at
413-772-0261 ext. 280
or mdavis@recorder.com.