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About The Siuslaw news. (Florence, Lane County, Or.) 1960-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 13, 2018)
SIUSLAW NEWS | SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2018 | 7A SAILORS from page 1A Protected classes “When I first started talking about the gym floor, I hadn’t thought about equity,” Mapleton High School Principal Bren- da Moyer said. She thought the big decision would be whether or not to reproduce to the old Salty picture or have a new one designed. The reason for the change was due to the school’s $4.8 million remodel. Much of the gym and locker rooms have had their re- modeling finished, but the floor needs to be stripped down and resurfaced. The cost to sand, seal, stripe, paint and apply three coats of finish is $26,795. But even as Mapleton began working on its initial district remodels, there were a slew of high school mascot controver- sies in Oregon, beginning with South Eugene late last year. The school was known as the Axe- men, but a petition signed by “hundreds of students, parents, teachers’ coaches and members of the community” requested the name be changed to some- thing “non-gender specific that better represents the entire student body,” according to a December 2017 Register- Guard article. That led to a heated, months-long dis- cussion over the mascot, with overflowing town halls dis- cussing the merit of changing DENTURE SERVICES INC. LOCALLY OWNED AND OPERATED Open 4 days a week! 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Has there been backlash to Salty? “I have not been approached by one person who has come forward and said they were of- fended by the sailor and wanted a change,” Burruss said. O’Mara and Moyer had not received any complaints either. Part of the Salty debate stems from financial and legal consid- erations that may occur. Reading from an email from Oregon School Board Associa- tion (OSBA) Attorney Spencer Lewis, Burruss listed the consid- erations the board could consid- er to her fellow board members: “It’s OSBA’s recommendation that we avoid any logo that dis- criminates against a protected class, whether that’s race, gen- der, ethnicity, religion. … I think the key is whether it singles out or leaves out a group of students. This could be in the name of a mascot, or the imagery used to represent the mascot. A mascot could be offensive to other pro- tected classes, such as students with disabilities, sexual orienta- tion, etc.” However, she pointed out that OSBA’s recommendations are just that: Recommendations. The only state law regarding school mascots involves Na- tive Americans, whose use was banned in 2012, giving schools a five-year grace period to phase out appropriative mascots. But that could change. “We do foresee that there may EQUIPMENT RENTALS & MOVING EQUIPMENT Open & enclosed Trailers. Daily – Weekly Rentals Authorized Dealer STORAGE BUILDINGS Custom Design & Installation. Authorized Dealer Pacifi c Metal & Better Built Barns Storage Buildings STORAGE NOW AVAILABLE: Inside and Outside Storage for Recreational Vehicles, Boats, Automobiles, etc. Climate Controlled. be additional actions, at some just came back from a hiatus af- in a broader spectrum than they point, from the state,” Burruss ter “her children were grown.” have been in the past.” said in the meeting. “They are However, studies have shown And it’s these conversations always updating those kinds of that fans, particularly young that Burruss hopes students and community members can have before making a final decision “Everyone I talked to likes Salty. ... The on Salty. But is the complexity of the school is changing a lot, and it’s good to conversation getting through to change. But if we change our logo, we’re the students? not Mapleton. We’re Salty the Sailor. It’s been that way for a long time.” — JJ Neece, Mapleton High School Freshman laws. So, that’s one thing we’re considering because it costs a lot of money to do what we’re doing to the floor now. We want that to last.” If the state law changes down the road, the school could be forced to do away with Salty anyway, thus forcing the school to redo the floor for another $26,795. The board could easily hide behind this reasoning, using po- tential litigation as a scapegoat for the conversation. Instead, board members are taking a dif- ferent route, using this moment to have an open and honest dis- cussion on what fair representa- tion means in schools. Sally the Sailor “Not being offended and not feeling represented are two dif- ferent things,” Burruss told the Siuslaw News. As a Mapleton alumna, she said she had a won- derful experience as a student, and the small family atmosphere suited her well. “I played every sport there was to play over the years, and I spent a lot of time in the gym,” she said. “But I never had an at- tachment to Salty as a mascot. I more identified with the general ‘Sailors,’ which can be represent- ed by many different images. I was a girl. I never felt represent- ed by a male mascot myself.” However, she stressed that she never felt underrepresented be- cause Salty was there. “I’m attached to a general feel- ing of support for the Sailors, and for me there’s many images that are representative of that,” she said. And she never felt offended. “I’m also not offended by someone who feels that they’re represented by Salty,” she said. “In other instances of imagery (such as Native American mas- cots), you’re working with peo- ple who are deeply offended by that imagery. I feel like if peo- ple were offended by Salty, that would influence our conversa- tion strongly. But that’s not what is driving this.” When it comes to mascots, fe- male representations have been traditionally underrepresented. The University of Delaware, known as the Blue Hens, has YoUDee, a fighting blue chicken. While it’s technically a hen, the portraits are more unisex, and some fans to refer to YoUDee as a male. Most of the time, female mas- cots are accompanied by males. The only female mascot in pro- fessional sports, Mrs. Met of the New York Mets, is the counter- part to Mr. Met. According to a Mets spokesperson, Mrs. Met ones, feel an affinity toward fe- male mascots. In a May 2017 article on Fa- therly.com, St. John Fisher Col- lege associate professor Emily Dane-Staples focused on two mascots of the Rochester Red Wings, Spikes and Mittsy. “We did see gender prefer- ences,” says Dane-Staples. “Girls and boys were contacting Mittsy more frequently than they were contacting Spikes.” But the mascot performers spent the majority of their time with their male fans. “The problem is sports are generally targeting boys and not girls,” Dane-Staples said. “The origins of mascots came from boys. Cheerleaders and yell leaders were all originally male.” The problem with this? If girls don’t feel represented in sports, they can shy away from it altogether. Or if they do get into sports, they can feel like the “other.” In Mapleton, girls play sports just as hard as the boys. There is even a female football player. Plus, Mapleton does have Sal- ly the Sailor for a female mascot, but she’s never made an appear- ance on the gym floor to staff knowledge. She was painted on the girl’s locker room. At Wednesday’s meeting, there was conversation about putting a picture of Sally on the girl’s locker room door again. The picture that had been sub- mitted, which had been drawn years earlier, portrayed Sally in rather short shorts. The com- ments from the female students? “Yes, but not sexualized short shorts. … Can she wear a skirt or something?” O’Mara and Moyer stressed that this issue is not about how females are portrayed in such drawings, however. If Salty was a Sally on the gym floor, they would be having the exact same conversation. This is not about female empowerment — it’s about inclusion. “But let’s be honest, in the 1970s it would be unheard of to have a female mascot,” Moyer added. “I think that’s part of the reason we need to look at this. When Salty was done, cultural- ly a female mascot would never have been chosen.” That mindset played a role in how Burruss thought about Salty when she was in school. “For myself, when I was in high school, playing with Salty on the floor there and not feeling super represented, I didn’t have strong feelings on it. The public conversation, at this time in the world, is equity issues and look- ing at representation. Those are much more publicly discussed Change Freshmen JJ Neece thinks that the change to Salty is unneces- sary. “Everyone I talked to likes Salty,” he said. “I know it wouldn’t change in my head, but different schools would come in and see us differently.” As far as gender inequality, Neece pointed out that “Salty” could be a girl or a boy’s name, it just depends on how you view it. But ultimately, it came down to preserving history. “The school is changing a lot, and it’s good to change,” he said. “But if we change our logo, we’re not Mapleton. We’re Salty the Sailor. It’s been that way for a long time.” Moyer understood the senti- ment. “Sometimes when you’re so rooted in history, you don’t want anything to change. We’ve had a lot of changes, and so, to them seeing this one thing stay is probably comforting.” Mapleton sophomore and vol- leyball champion Briena Jensen was asked about her feelings on Salty. “Salty the Sailor has been for- ever, for generations,” she said. “My family has gone to Maple- ton, and Salty the Sailor was on that floor. … When everybody talks about the Sailors, it’s always Salty. Salty the Sailor. That’s just the first thing you talk about.” Jensen stated that it would be acceptable to replace Salty, but only if he were represented in another way in the gym. “I think it’s good because I heard he might be painted on a wall,” she said. The board has discussed doing a retrospective of Salty through- out the decades on the school gym. That way, the school could still preserve and respect the history of Salty without making him the official mascot of the court. There was no mention if Sally would be included in the mural. “I think that would be almost better with the world like it is,” Jensen said, couching the issue under sexual identity. “There are people that don’t go by a specific gender, so I understand why they would want something more neutral on the floor be- cause they don’t call themselves a male or a female.” The board was given a plan for a logo that had Sally and Salty together, but an official drawing was never submitted. There were other issues with the concept. “In these times we are more aware of the binary notion of Salty and Sally,” Holman said in the board meeting. “There’s a continuum, and there are stu- dents in our school who don’t identify as a boy or a girl. So, that’s problematic itself.” See SAILORS page 8A RECREATIONAL VEHICLES SALES & CONSIGNMENT We welcome Boats, RV’s, Trailers & Automobiles. Leave the selling to us. Complete detail service. 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