The results are in and the students of Hays High School have spoken loudly and clearly. And their message? “We really can’t be bothered with this right now.”
And that’s probably the right message at this time, especially when it comes to something like figuring out what the school’s new mascot will or should be. For one thing, no one knows for sure if the students will even be returning to the school campus. Some may and others may not. According to the school district’s web site, parents of Hays High School students “will have an option to keep your children learning from home or send them to school in-person.” I would imagine making that decision is weighing more heavily on the minds of students and parents than what the new mascot should be.
I wrote recently that the district provided an on-line link where students could select their choice for a new mascot. Only about a third of the students (902, to be exact) participated in the process. The Patriots received the most votes — 143, in all, which amounts to a whopping 5 percent of the student population. That is by no means any kind of mandate. In a classic understatement, school administrators said today in an official statement. “The administration does not believe it was able to obtain enough student response during this process to be confident that the responses fully represent what students would like to see as a new mascot.” Ya think?
Which is probably one of the reasons the school trustees won’t be asked to select a new mascot when they meet Thursday to consider whether they even want to join the 21st Century and rid the school of its current Rebel mascot. That means, according to the district statement, the Rebels will continue to be the school’s mascot at least through the start of the upcoming school year and quite possibly for the entire school year.
“Though the campus could begin phasing out ‘rebel’ depictions on websites, walls, and other places around the building immediately, an official mascot change-over date would likely not occur until the spring semester or at the start of the 2021-2022 school year,” district administrators said today.
In fact, the administration wants to take the board completely out of the process of selecting a new mascot. The administration said in today’s statement it plans to recommend at Thursday’s school board meeting “that the board retire the Rebel mascot and authorize prior approval to allow the superintendent to determine a new mascot, without requiring an additional board vote, following a student selection process that would occur once students return to class, whether in-person or virtually, for the 2020-2021 school year,”
There appears to be an out, though, for those Hays students who don’t wish to be a “Rebel” during the upcoming school year should the trustees decide to dump the racist moniker.
“Students who do not wish to wear uniforms with ‘Rebels’ on them would not be required to do so,” administrators said. “References to ‘Rebels’ on their uniforms could be covered.”
The administration estimated it will cost, at the most, $600,000 to replace the mascot, a sum that would be split between the next two fiscal year budgets. This would cover replacing student uniforms as well as Rebel references painted on school buildings, the floor of the campus gym and various signs. However, the administration said, “If uniforms are patched and not replaced until their normal replacement cycle, the cost impact of a mascot change would be lower.”
“Digital conversions, such as letterhead templates, website markings, social media graphics, and the development of a new mascot graphics package, would not incur any expense to the district,” administrators said. “Branding services, including logo and graphics design, are provided free to the district through the existing district vendors that supply athletic uniforms and equipment.”
At first, I was not that enthralled by the first-place finisher — the Patriots — that the plurality of students chose in the on-line selection process. I associate it too much with New England’s NFL team and I’m not sure such a scandal ridden franchise should be one a local high school should emulate. But the more, I thought about it, the better it sounded. For one thing, it seems to have some kind of relationship to Rebel; perhaps students regarded “Patriot” as the antithesis to “Rebel.” It also rolls nicely off the tongue, especially when you combine it with “Patriot Pride” or events such as a “Patriot Parade” or “Patriot Picnic.”
The second place finisher was “Cowboys” (127 votes), which made me even more convinced NFL names played a huge part in this voting. Hays Hawks (123 votes), my personal favorite, was third followed by Dragons (95), Wildcats (93), Hurricanes (70), Honey Badgers (56), Mavericks (45), Phoenixes (38), Hyenas (33), Hornets (30), Eagles (21), and Lions (20).
Students attending middle schools that feed into Hays also had the opportunity to select from the list and they went with the alliteration options, choosing Honey Badgers first, Hornets second and Hawks third.
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