Dixie scouring for new mascot

Southern Utah's Dixie State College is looking for a new mascot, but the search may be reopening old wounds over the college's Rebels nickname and the negative connotations surrounding it and another campus symbol of the pre-Civil War South.

The St. George school got rid of a full-fledged Confederate Rebel as its mascot five years ago and quickly did away with its successor, a modern-day rebel intended to resemble the film character, Indiana Jones.

The school never came up with a new replacement and the issue faded away.

"The mascot has been pretty dormant since that time," said Dixie State spokesman Chris Taylor.

But now the school's booster club, the Colonels, has asked for a new mascot to rouse crowds at Rebel football and basketball games.

Taylor said foes of the school's original Rebel mascot, thought by some to be a disparaging reminder of Southern racism, don't need to start lining up with their complaints.

"By no means are they trying to resurrect the Confederate Rebel," Taylor said.

The school also is not thinking about changing its name or getting rid of its Rebels nickname.

Even so, one Dixie State College history professor wonders if this isn't the time to reopen discussions about other "Rebel" symbols on campus, like a statue of two soldiers with a Confederate flag outside Cox Auditorium.

"I think that's inappropriate in the 21st century," said Chip McLeod, a Richmond, Va., native who has taught at Dixie State for five years. "It belongs in a museum, in the archive, in someone's back yard" but not on the campus of a taxpayer-supported university.

While one can celebrate rebelliousness, McLeod said, celebrating such Confederate symbols as the Army of Northern Virginia flag means embracing the culture of the segregated South.

"There's just few damn ways to interpret this symbol other than what it originally meant," he said. "It's a symbol of a regime that commodified human beings and meant to perpetuate that civilization."

This is not the first such debate over the rebel associations at the school, which originally adopted the symbols because of the "Utah Dixie" nickname, which stemmed from Mormon pioneers' attempts to farm cotton in southwestern Utah.

Five years ago, the school barely retained the Rebel nickname after a tie-breaking vote by the president of the board of trustees. The school in 1993 banned the Confederate flag at athletic events.