NHEG-Magazine-September-October

www.NewHeightsEducation.org
www.NewHeightsEducation.org
In Tennessee, the most recent state to pass the universal school police officer law, public school enrollment rose by less than
1 percent between 2012 and 2017. According to data I obtained from the Tennessee Department of Education, the number of
homeschoolers nearly doubled during that same time frame, from 4,614 homeschoolers in 2012 to 8,843 in 2017.
Parents may be increasingly choosing education freedom over force for their children. That is, when they can choose. In their
just-released study, Corey DeAngelis and Martin Lueken find that school choice improves school safety. They write: “We find
that private and public charter school leaders tend to be more likely to report ‘never’ having safety problems at their schools
than traditional public school leaders.” Providing more choice mechanisms that enable parents to opt-out of assigned district
schools could ensure school safety better than armed guards and locked classrooms.
How similar to prison do schools need to become before it’s polite to call them what they really are?
Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
https://fee.org/
George Washington
University Students
Divided on
“Offensive” Mascot
Julia O’Connell says, “People think [Colonials]
invokes an image of colonizing, which
it doesn’t. It’s just a reference to George
Washington.”
By Courtney Joyner
Monday, April 22, 2019
The Student Association at George Washington University has called the school’s nickname and mascot, the Colonials,
“extremely offensive” and has urged that it be changed, but it’s not at all clear how widespread support for the move is among
the broader student body.
A recent referendum question asking GW students whether the university should change the nickname was put to a vote after
545 students—less than two percent of the student body—signed a petition that circulated last spring.
The petition cited the “historically, negatively charged figure of Colonials [that] has too deep a connection to colonization and
glorifies the act of systemic oppression” as grounds for changing the mascot’s name.
On March 27 and 28, students were asked to vote in the referendum, which asked students: “Should the moniker Colonials,
and any variations of the term, be removed on the grounds that the term does not represent the student body as a whole, and
be replaced by a term that further aligns with our University’s institutional values?”
Mascot Voted Down
The referendum passed with 54 percent approval from the 19 percent of the student body that participated.
“Opposition to the mascot is based on false pretenses, and we oppose the disunity sowed by those who seek to change an
essential component of the university’s identity,” GW’s chapter of the Young America’s Foundation said in a statement. “A colonial
is defined as ‘a member or inhabitant of a colony,’ which stands in stark contrast to the notion pushed by those in favor
of a mascot change.”
Alex Leavi, a sophomore from Savannah, Ga., who studies finance, agreed in an email to The Daily Signal that students are
reading too much into the name.
For the people that want to change the name, it seems they are just looking too deeply into it. The name likely started
as a unique name, similar to the “Warriors,” with a revolutionary twist, since we are George Washington University.
People seem to be implying too much about the name, as if we want to colonize minority groups in the future. The same thing
could go for a team such as Duke Blue Devils. Cool name. Do I like and support the devil? No, I do not. But, hey, it’s just a mascot,
something for fun.
Freshmen Aditi Gupte, a marketing major from San Francisco, and Julia Xavier, a public health major from Westchester, N.Y.,
support changing the name.
90 90 NHEG | GENiUS Magazine MAGAZINE | September | www.geniusmag.com
- October 2019
History Is Key
“I feel like we need to take into account the history of the name,” Gupte said. ”Just the whole history of colonization and everything
you don’t talk about … and it’s the same with the Washington Redskins. That name is also offensive, and people don’t
even talk about it.”
September - October 2019 | NHEG Magazine 91