Will Chief Illiniwek Dance Again?

Pajamas Media ^ | Feb. 1 | Robert Shibley

[AJKauf]

While America’s legislators and business leaders desperately search for a way out of political impasses and economic travails, what, you may ask, are those who lead our colleges and universities working on? Reducing the ever-increasing inflation of tuition? Safety from campus crime? Ensuring academic success? One certainly hopes so. But last fall, at the University of Illinois’ flagship campus at Urbana-Champaign, high-level administrators and professors were spending time worrying about a different vital issue: how to stop their students from promoting Illinois’ banned mascot....

[OB1kNOb]

My son’s roommate in St. Louis happens to have been the last Chief Illiniwek. I’ll have to email him this article. Thanks.

[IronJack]

Political correctness can’t survive without pubic support.
Just say no.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

What about the big statue of Chief Black Hawk on the Rock River ?

[BeAllYouCanBe]

Graduated from the U of I in 1976.

Most times I am ashamed to admit I went to school there and this flap about the Chief is unbelievable and has been dragging on for 20 years. The U of I is so worried that we are going to offend someone by seeing the Chief dressed as an “native American” we can't have the chief anymore.

Political correctness way beyond any logic.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Chief Illiniwek is nothing. My high school was the Pekin Chinks.

[originalbuckeye]

I always thought that high school nickname was an urban legend in Illinois! My parents were both graduates of the U of I. They were quite proud of the Chief. So sorry to know that there is a flap. I did vote in a Champaign poll in favor of keeping him. Will he be resurrected? My dad and brother chose the names Illiniwei and Illininwek in Indian Guides in the mid-1950's when we lived in Ohio.

[originalbuckeye]

I guess spellcheck doesn’t know how to spell Illiniwek either!

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

I was one of the last classes to graduate as a Chink, in 1979. When my mom went there in the late 1950s, they still had actual mascots, the Chink and the Chinklet, who would come out in coolie hats and Chinese costumes and do a routine that involved a lot of hands-together bowing.

When I went there, everyone pretty much knew that they were going to cave at some point and change the name, which really was pretty inexcusable by that time. But it was tradition and it was us against them, so there was a lot of opposition. When I was a senior the student council took a poll, and it was something like 80% for the Chinks, 15% for the Dragons (which everyone knew it was going to become). I wrote in "Chinese Americans" figuring we'd keep the meaning but lose the offensive aspect. Odddly, no one else thought that was a good compromise.

Oh, and guess what the local roller rink was called.

[originalbuckeye]

Graduated an Illinois high school in 1969. The Pekin Chinks was just a rumor that you have now validated!

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

My favorite fact is that in 1964 the Pekin Chinks won the state basketball championship by defeating the Cobden Appleknockers.