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
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the name to simply “Axe.”
In April, South Albany High
School officially dropped the
name “Rebels” after hundreds
of letters and emails requested
the change following the 2017
riots in Charlottesville, Va., after
a protest turned violent over the
removal of a confederate monu-
ment.
In May, Portland’s Franklin
High School determined its
mascot, a Quaker, was discrim-
inatory after parents filed a
complaint in 2015, arguing the
mascot violated the separation
of church and state.
But those changes were
spurred by community action.
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
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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.”
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