Important conversations about place names and a re-examination of mascots and logos is happening nationwide right now and Minnesota is no exception. The Murray County Central School District is being asked to re-examine their Rebel mascot.
My name is Brett Gaul, graduated 1995, and Matt Onken, graduated 1993, are both alumni of Murray County Central High School. They're asking the school board to reconsider MCC's mascot. "Although when they were adopted, they were not seen as offensive symbols and an offensive name, over time, it's become clear that the Rebels name and the "Hey Reb!" mascot are offensive to many people because of their association with the Confederacy in the United States and being connected with racism and white supremacy," Gaul explained. "And particularly the 'Rebel pride.' It's great to be proud of your school and they've got a lot to be proud of, but that phrase 'Rebel pride' is loaded."
Onken recalled a more recent time when he was wearing an old MCC jersey, which had the name "Rebels" on it "[It] didn't have the mascot, just the name 'Rebels.' And a friend of mine, he looked at it and he's like, 'ah, Rebels huh?' And he is an African American man and I hadn't really thought about it before" This caused Onken to think about the significance of the mascot and to begin to push for the mascot change as well. "It's a question of education where [Gaul] and I, when we were wearing those Rebel uniforms in the 90s, I didn't look at it as offensive, but that's because I didn't know better."
Dan Woldt is the chair of the school board at Murray County Central. He said that the cultural sensitivity of the Rudy the Rebel mascot was brought up for the second time at their June school board meeting. He said that the name — not the mascot — was voted on by the students in the early 90s when the Murray County school districts combined into one school after a devastating tornado.
"The Rebel name was chosen because of the UNLV basketball team was popular out here," explained Gaul. "So all these kids got to vote and they voted for The Rebels and it had no mascot for a while — and this is according to the principal the time and he had sent a letter in support of removing the Rebel mascot."
Gaul said that a number of people, "including the former principal, who oversaw the consolidation of Slayton and Chandler and Wilson, wrote letters and that principal says that looking back we made a mistake. It was a mistake to have The Rebels name, it was a mistake to have this mascot."
In the letter that the former principal wrote, he said that, when the school first adopted the new name The Rebels, they put our an ask for merchandise, as they had no rebranded school merch. "So [the principal] ... got some samples back and it had The Rebels but then the provider of the samples are the ones that put this Confederate soldier mascot on there," Gaul explained. "And so it wasn't chosen by the students. It wasn't chosen by the staff. That's just how it's been. He said he went with it. He should have said something at the time but didn't."
Woldt said that, looking back on the original mascots, with its musket with a flag that hung out of it, "it was no doubt a Confederate soldier. So combining that with the name Rebel, it kind of fits the bill." But he added that because this imagery has been so ingrained in student life that "people around here don't see him as a Confederate soldier or liken to the negative connotations, but they see him as you know, the school spirit, the embodiment of that."
In order to make a community-based decision about on the MCC mascot debate, Woldt said that the school board is planning to send out student, stakeholder and general public surveys. The school board is also bringing in a PR firm to evaluate their branded imagery and perform a market analysis gauging the financial impact of a mascot change.
"Many of the emails that we've gotten said that finances shouldn't be taken into the consideration if the right thing is the right thing," Woldt said. "At the end of the day, you still have to pay your bills. So financing should be kept into the equation when you're trying to figure this out."
He also considered the finacial implication of not making a change. "If it's looked at as being something that deters people from visiting the community, coming through community, enrolling their kids in the school district, absolutely. That has to be weighed into it."
"I think there's some animosity that it's people like me, people like Matt, who don't live in the school district, and who are bringing this up," Gaul added when asked about the finances of a mascot change. he said that many people in the school district have reached out to Gaul and Onken to show their support for the change. Gaul and Onken have also offered to commit to giving a $1,000 donation to the school to help make this change. "I've also talked to a former school board member who said that you could phase this in over time. Nobody's asking that this be changed immediately overnight. It would be unreasonable to expect that," continued Gaul. "And then you also have this education side. One of the things that sort of concerns me about the school districts plan to have a survey, which is probably good, but if there's no education side of that, about why people perceive these images as racist or white supremacist or inappropriate, then I don't think it will be very helpful."
So, let's educate people on the history of rebel mascots in secondary schools with the guy who literally wrote the paper on it. Dr. Caleb Smith is an instructor at Jones College in Ellisville, Mississippi. Since 2008, Dr. Smith has been studying rebel mascots in secondary schools and published his dissertation on the subject in 2019. He explained that of the different versions of Rebel mascots, Confederate, Western, Revolutionary and other, most Minnesotan Rebel mascots fall under the Western iteration.
"In 1982, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, adopted their version of that "Hey Reb!" and a lot of schools have since adopted a facsimile of that "Hey Reb!" and Rudy is one of those examples," Dr. Smith explains. "He is a little more pioneering; a Pathfinder is the word that you UNLV likes to use to describe him."
Dr. Smith said that UNLV claims that their version of the rebel mascot is one that was ready to go tackle the west. "And it's like, yeah, but he still looks like a character of Robert E. Lee. You know, that with the big long mustache."
If you look at the UNLV rebel mascot, he also has a lot of fringe on his outfit, "so he looks more outdoorsy, more Western less of a plantation owner or slave owner and he has a gun that's used for hunting game," continued Dr. Smith. He said that in places like Murray County Central and other schools in the Midwest, initially, their definition of Rebel is one that is more affiliated with history of either one of two things: In the early 1930s, there were a lot of riots of farmers who rebelled against agricultural prices that fell because of the Great Depression. "So they rebelled against the banks who were foreclosing on them and they started these small, sometimes Communist led groups that would go and protest foreclosures," Dr. Smith said. But the other connection is a lot less historical.
"In the American vernacular, the American language that we use today, Rebel, though is most closely associated with the Confederacy, so the issue has come now that rebel has taken on more than just a term as someone who rebels here in the United States."
Gaul said that, to prove his point he asks people to use Google. "Do a Google images search of "rebel pride" and see what shows up. It's not the kind of things you want associated with your school district, particularly if you're always talking about being respectful and being responsible," Gaul said. "I think if the Murray County Central School District were more diverse, they would have an easier time seeing how people view these images in the name as offensive. And so it's not that they're bad people and we're not calling anybody racist or white supremacist. It's just a case of their consciousness about this really hasn't been raised. And that's what we're trying to do in a gentle loving way here for the good of students and for the good of the school district."
School board Chair Woldt agreed. "Anytime you can bring awareness and understanding to something is a good thing. Is it a little stressful for some? I think it is but for me, I'm excited about having the conversation and getting other view points," he said. The way that I see things is gonna be different than other people. I think the fact that we are in a rural community and we are predominantly Caucasian community, there's not a lot of diversity. And perhaps people in general don't see things the same way as outside community, but that is gonna be important to put into the matrix when we look at determining what to do."