After decades of debate, Brattleboro Union High School will replace its longtime Colonel nickname with a new moniker to be proposed and picked by students this month.
The school’s nearly 800 ninth through 12th graders will suggest and winnow down ideas between now and Memorial Day to end years of conflicting opinion about the longtime Civil War symbol.
“This is an opportunity to unify our school and make history in the process,” administrators have written in an email to students and staff.
Brattleboro Union High adopted “Colonels” as its team nickname in 1950 to honor Union soldiers who mustered at the town’s old Civil War campgrounds on the school’s campus.
But by the 1970s, the symbol had morphed into a “Pride of the South” plantation owner mascot, leading some fans to wave Confederate flags at games and, in 1998, burn an effigy of a Black doll at a homecoming bonfire.
School leaders retired the mascot in 2004 but retained the “Colonel” moniker, only to see the issue resurface with the state government’s recent law requiring “nondiscriminatory school branding” that avoids stereotyping race, religion, nationality or sexual identity, or referencing those “associated with the repression of others.”
Under the rebranding plan, students and staff will suggest new names this week.
“Any submission should be non-gendered and should be able to be depicted physically and artistically,” administrators have written in a schoolwide email. “‘Colonels’ is not an option.”
Students will winnow down the options in a three-round vote on May 22, May 24 and May 26.
“Our goal is to identify a new name by the end of the school year,” Superintendent Mark Speno told the Windham Southeast School District Board on Tuesday, “and then, over the summer months, start to address the physical rebranding.”
Brattleboro’s decision comes the same week that nearby Leland and Gray Union Middle and High School in Townshend voted to retain its “Rebel” nickname. Students had researched the history of the nickname, and recommended keeping it. On Monday, the West River Modified Union Education District Board decided to keep the moniker for now, while voicing support for a student “rebrand” of its American Revolution-inspired mascot.