When the Northwestern baseball team hosts Illinois this weekend, it will take on a team with a Native American mascot.
But Iowa didn’t play a scheduled game Tuesday against the Bradley University Braves, citing a university policy not to play non-conference games against teams with Native American mascots.
Though the Peoria, Ill., school got rid of its mascot in 1989, Bradley President David Broski said the Braves nickname will remain for at least three to five more years.
Iowa’s Board in Control of Athletics implemented the policy in 1994 in response to complaints about teams’ offensive and stereotypical portrayals of Native Americans through mascots, names and logos. The policy applies only to non-conference games. Iowa plays the Fighting Illini every year.
Minnesota and Wisconsin also have rules regarding teams with such mascots.
NU Director of Athletics Mark Murphy said NU doesn’t have a policy similar to Iowa’s and has no plans to create one.
NU softball traveled to Peoria to play Bradley on April 27.
“I don’t feel that just because you play someone in a game, you are a supporter or not a supporter of a particular issue,” Murphy said. “It seems like a pretty strong statement. How much attention and what good it does is hard to say.
“My feeling is those are issues that those schools need to deal with.”
The Fighting Illini take their name from the Illiniwek, a loose confederation of Algonquin tribes that lived in the area that is now Illinois.
The school’s symbol, Chief Illiniwek, performs a ritual dance at home football, basketball and volleyball games, said Cassie Arner, Illinois associate sports information director.
“We feel that there is a difference between a traditional mascot and our chief,” Arner said. “He’s not out there antagonizing another mascot and he’s not visible during contests. His role is to perform traditional, authentic Native American dance.”
Chief Illiniwek has stirred a large amount of controversy recently on the Urbana-Champaign campus. In a March poll of 13,000 students, 69 percent voted in favor of keeping the Chief. Protesters against and students in favor of Chief Illiniwek held demonstrations in April.
Murphy said he faced similar issues when he was the athletic director at Colgate. Though the Red Raiders acquired their nickname from the football team’s red pants, the school adopted a Native American mascot in the 1950s. Colgate stopped using the mascot in the 1970s, and the word “red” was dropped from the team’s name in 2001 because of complaints from students.
NU baseball coach Paul Stevens said he did not want to pass judgement on Illinois’ tradition because it’s a sensitive issue.
“There’s a lot of pride in the University (of Illinois) in attendance in these scenarios,” Stevens said. “As far as Paul Stevens is concerned, I’m at Northwestern and we’re the Wildcats. I don’t agree with any kind of racial prejudice in any shape or form.”
