Rutland High School’s mascot was sent back into retirement just before students returned to school today.
The city school board voted 6-4 on Tuesday evening to retire the Rutland Raiders mascot, effective immediately. The majority of the board believes its Native American theme violates a new state law.
Signed into law in May, Act 152 directs the Vermont Agency of Education to create a “model nondiscriminatory school branding policy.” The policy would prohibit schools from having mascots or other identifying materials based on “the race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity of any person or group of persons” or any person or group “associated with the repression of others.”
The Agency of Education released the model policy in early August. It requires school boards to adopt and implement the policy — or a more comprehensive version — by Jan. 1, 2023.
At the beginning of the Rutland City school commissioners’ meeting on Tuesday, the 11-member board ushered the model policy through the first of two required readings. The second reading is expected to take place at the board’s next meeting in September.
But half an hour later, fissures within the body re-emerged when a commissioner proposed to change the high school mascot, an action that the board had undertaken twice before as a policy-making body.
Commissioner Marybeth Lennox-Levins made a motion to “immediately retire” the Raiders name, imagery and any associated branding.
Commissioner Stephanie Stoodley countered that she didn’t see the point of getting rid of the Raiders moniker since its arrowhead logo had earlier been abolished. “The combination of the two was what the issue was in the beginning,” Stoodley said. “Now that we removed one part, we should be able to just stick with ‘Raiders.’”
Fellow commissioner Tricia O’Connor said there should be a way to “reimagine” the Raiders name in present times. “I don’t see why we can’t talk to the children in the community and ask them what they feel a ‘Raider’ embodies, and come up with some interesting illustrations that perhaps you’d like to use for the logo,” O’Connor said.
Another commissioner, Kevin Kiefaber, disagreed with these points. He said that in Rutland’s history, the term “Raiders” has been associated with a stereotypical image of Native Americans.
“You can’t just ignore that,” he said. “We still have students that are offended by that, and I think the sooner we stop using the ‘Raiders,’ the sooner those students are going to feel welcome in our schools.”
Years of debate; Process begins again
The long-running debate over the Rutland mascot has drawn national attention to the actions of the local school board.
In October 2020, a different composition of school commissioners voted 6-4 to retire the Raiders name and its arrowhead logo. This came after a group of students, staff and alumni expressed concerns about racism in the mascot’s origins.
A few months later, in February 2021, the board officially replaced it with the Ravens, a name that a group of Rutland High School students chose after seeking suggestions from city residents and other students in the district.
Local residents who opposed the change cited the Raiders’ legacy in the city.
This January, another set of commissioners voted 6-5 to reinstate the Raiders. The board chair at that time, Hurley Cavacas Jr., who has since retired, said he wanted to restart the process of changing the mascot because the process undertaken had been flawed.
On Tuesday, Commissioner Karen Bossi argued that immediately getting rid of the Raiders would leave students without an identity.
“I think that just makes us look more ridiculous than we already do,” Bossi said, “not being able to compromise and for dragging this out for three years.” She proposed keeping the old moniker until the school district administration comes up with an alternative.
The newest member of the school board, Rep. Peter Fagan, R-Rutland City, was among the six commissioners who voted to retire the Raiders. Rutland Mayor David Allaire nominated him to fill a vacancy this spring, hoping he would help unify the board.
Also voting in favor of the mascot change were Lennox-Levins, Kiefaber, Sara Atkins-Doenges, Courtney Collins and Cathy Solsaa. Those opposed were Bossi, O’Connor, Stoodley and Charlene Seward. The board chair, Alison Notte, only votes to break a tie.
The board motion to retire the Raiders included a directive for the school administration to come up with a replacement mascot in time to meet the Agency of Education’s January 2023 deadline.
Superintendent Bill Olsen told VTDigger on Wednesday that he and other district officials will be considering how to proceed. “We have a pretty good process in place from the last time,” when the mascot was changed from Raiders to Ravens, he said.
It included setting up a student committee that developed criteria for choosing a new mascot, surveying the public for suggestions and asking students to vote on the finalists. “I imagine we’ll have something similar to this,” Olsen said.
When asked whether the Ravens could become one of the options, Olsen said it’s possible and depends on what the students and community members put forward.
The administration’s nominated mascot would then be presented to the school board for approval.