Barnstable School Committee Votes To Retire Red Raider Mascot

HYANNIS, MA – A month after Barnstable High School Principal Patrick Clark called for district officials to change the school’s Red Raider mascot, the Barnstable school committee voted retire the high school's controversial nickname and logo.

In a 3-0 vote with two abstentions, the school committee on Wednesday night voted to move on from the use of Red Raiders, a mascot which has long been considered offensive by Native Americans and activists. At the June school committee meeting, students called for school officials to disown the mascot, which has also been a target of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.

The decision comes at a time when racism has moved to the forefront in the country since the death of George Floyd's death in Minneapolis. Washington's NFL franchise has since removed its Redskins nickname and logo while more locally, thousands have signed a petition for Braintree High School to retire its mascot, the Wamps.

While committee members acknowledged that the Red Raiders school nickname once depicted honor, pride and respect and was never intended to be offensive, the fact the mascot and its accompanying Indian head logo had become offensive to many people indicated the time had come to move away from the mascot. The school had, in recent years, moved toward using a logo that included a 'B' with feathers and included the words "pride, respect, honor."

“The students’ pride is in their school, not what the mascot is,” school committee member Barbara Dunn said during Wednesday's meeting. “The mascot is a symbol but is not the core of their pride.”

Committee member Stephanie Ellis said that a decision should not be rushed into and implored her committee colleagues to hand the decision over to students. But the majority of committee members insisted that the time had come to retire the Red Raider mascot. Ellis also asked whether the school could keep the Red Raider nickname and move away from the Indian head logo, but Dunn said that the continued use of the Red Raider mascot now comes "with baggage".

Dunn, along with committee members Joseph Nystrom and Kathy Bent voted to retire the mascot while committee chairman Mike Judge and Ellis abstained from the vote.

While the committee voted to retire the mascot, all five members agreed that what becomes the school’s mascot should be left not only up to students, but to the Barnstable community at large. A subcommittee will begin to consider options for a new mascot – a process that Nystrom said Wednesday could take time.

While acknowledging that he did believe it could be time to retire the Red Raider mascot, Judge admitted that he had mixed feelings about the entire subject. He said that whatever mascot is chosen will be something that will be reflective not only of students at Barnstable High School, but of the community as well and that he felt like while it was the school committee making the decision, the result was bigger than the five committee members or those who identify with what the school's mascot may be.

“This is bigger than the students,” Judge said prior to abstaining from the vote. “This is about the town.”