[Peace] Fwd: For immediate release: Mascot issue promotes concern for public safety at Illinois

[Alfred Kagan]

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>Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 10:16:31 -0600
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>From: Stephen Kaufman <stephenk at uiuc.edu>
>Subject: For immediate release: Mascot issue promotes concern for public
>  safety at Illinois
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>Mascot issue promotes concern for public safety at Illinois
>
>For immediate release
>March 8, 2004
>Champaign-Urbana, IL
>
>Native Americans are not honored by the University of Illinois' 
>sports symbol, Chief Illiniwek, and they are coming to 
>Champaign-Urbana to tell the university's trustees just that. 
>Hundreds of Native Americans will visit the campus this week, March 
>10 and 11, to protest the mascot and demand an end to the 
>stereotyping and misappropriation of their culture. Their protest 
>coincides with a university Board of Trustees meeting on Thursday,
>
>Delays and obfuscation have characterized the now fifteen-year 
>debate, which was recently capped by Chancellor Nancy Cantor's 
>resignation.  Racial stereotyping held no place in Cantor's agenda 
>for the Urbana campus and the trustees failed to resolve the mascot 
>issue on her watch. A national advocate of multi-culturalism and 
>diversity, Cantor will become President of Syracuse University, July 
>1.
>
>Though trustees profess their Chief honors Native Americans, the 
>coming of real American Indians to Urbana has the campus in a stir 
>and administrators are concerned for public safety.  The US 
>Department of Justice is equally concerned and visited the campus 
>last week to try to coordinate security.
>
>The North Central Association, the organization that oversees the 
>university's academic accreditation, will visit the campus in April 
>to determine whether the university has responded appropriately to 
>their concerns about the divisiveness of the mascot issue and its 
>impact on the institution's educational programs.  The questions now 
>at hand are whether the trustees' failure to resolve the Illiniwek 
>issue will compromise public safety as well as the academic standing 
>of the institution.


-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu
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