Penn Hills School District officials delay action on dropping Indians nickname, logo

Penn Hills School District officials tabled any action to change the district’s Indians nickname and mascot until next year. They’re delaying action, they said, so they can focus on schools reopening and how to best educate students in the covid-19 pandemic.

“This is the worst time this could ever come up,” school board President Erin Vecchio said at an athletic committee meeting Wednesday. “We’re in the middle of a pandemic and we just raised people’s taxes.”

Administrators revealed the district’s reopening plan later that evening. They recommended a hybrid model to start the year, with students split into two groups and attending in-person classes two days a week and online instruction the rest of the week. A formal vote on the plan is expected Aug. 12.

Penn Hills would become the second WPIAL school to drop its Indians nickname if it acted quickly.

Shady Side Academy announced July 1 it would immediately drop the Indians nickname.

WPIAL schools North Hills, Indiana, Peters Township and West Allegheny also have the Indians as their nickname. Aliquippa has an Indian mascot but goes by the nickname Quips.

Penn Hills athletic director Stephanie Strauss recommended dropping the Indians nickname and changing its related images earlier this year.

She said the idea came from talks with other community members, as well as the national discussion of the NFL’s Washington Redskins changing their name to the Washington Football Team for this upcoming season as it seeks to replace its longstanding logo.

The district could phase out the mascot, spear and name in upcoming years as it pursues facility maintenance projects on its fields and gym floors.

“This is something that can happen over five to 10 years,” Strauss said. “It’s not something that needs to happen in one week or one year. … The football field is around eight years old at this point. Football fields usually last around 10 years. The soccer field’s also eight years. If they last hopefully 10 to 12 years, when we go to build the next football and soccer field, we can consider not having Indians or the spear on there.”

Committee attendees were split on the idea.

“This isn’t about political correctness,” high school track and cross country coach Lee Zelkowitz said. “This is about doing what’s right. No group of people should be mascots.”

Vecchio said she has lived in the district for 61 years and the Indians name has been a source of pride for many alumni.

“We named it the Indians because we were proud of our heritage and in what we lived in,” Vecchio said. “I’ve got so many phone calls from ex-football players, coaches telling me, ‘We were always Indians.’”

“If you want to take away the spear or something like that, I’m fine with that. I am not for removing the name Indians. This should not be a school board decision. This should be the people of Penn Hills’ decision.”

Penn Hills parent Diane McKenzie agreed with keeping the name and said, “I’m a Penn Hills Indian. I will always be a Penn Hills Indian.”

Parent Angela Adler, professor of sociology of sport and doctorate student at the University of Nebraska-Linton, delivered a presentation on changing indigenous mascots. She referenced several studies and reports that show Native Americans oppose the use of such mascots and find them offensive.

Adler also included brief history lessons on how tens of millions of indigenous people were killed by European colonization.

“For over 50 years, indigenous Americans have been saying, ‘change indigenous mascots,’” Adler said. “They are saying this is what needs to happen, and they’ve been saying it for a long time.”

Board member Rob Marra acknowledged those reports and cited ones regarding the Seminole Tribe of Florida supporting Florida State University’s Seminole name.

“I know that you can say that there’s all these studies that talk about all these things,” Marra said. “I know there’s studies that go the opposite way. … You can look up things about pros and cons about the Indians (name) and you’ll find it’s a very volatile topic.”

High school counselor Amy Alexander said she’s been fighting for causes like removing indigenous mascots for years, and mentioned how keeping the mascot could have a negative impact on the youth.

“It’s hurtful,” Alexander said. “It’s not good for our students.”

Parent and former board member Heather Houlihan took a different approach to the subject. She said she’s opposed to the change primarily due to finances, and the district should hold off on changing mascots and redoing Penn Hills’ sports landscape because of fiscal constraints.

“I don’t care how long we stretch this out,” Houlihan said. “Even if it takes 10 years, we’re not going to be anywhere near out of debt in 10 years.”

The district is about $170 million in debt largely due to construction loans for the high school and elementary school. Plans are in place to pay it all off by 2042.

Adler and Strauss said grant money is available to schools looking to replace indigenous mascots.

“If we have people who are willing to write grants,” Houlihan said, “I would like to see some of that time, energy, resources and talent be used to retain our teachers, to buy technology, to buy additional desks to create separate learning environments.”

Board members said they plan on discussing the matter further at the November and March athletic committee meetings, as well as have a public survey to get more residents’ input.

Adler recommended not having a public survey because respondents might not be informed of how the aforementioned images impact indigenous people and would likely be against the change. She said people who would be in favor of the change would also be less likely to respond to the survey.

Houlihan argued that surveys were used as the district’s primary communication to generate data in coming up with its reopening plan during the pandemic.

“If the survey was good enough to ask whether or not we could send our kids back to school, then a survey certainly should be effective enough to determine whether or not we want to keep a tradition or a name,” she said.