The following is the transcript of a Foellinger balcony narrative from April 14, 2000. It is an unedited excerpt from the original Chief dialogue document.

My name is Professor Tom Bassett. I teach one of the largest undergraduate classes at the University in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Geography 101, the Geography of Developing Countries.

Each semester, this class has enrollment of 500 students. The class fulfills the nonwestern culture requirement of the University. One of the reasons that students are required to take such a class is that the University believes it's important that students are exposed to diversity of cultures that are different from their own.

It is part of our larger mission in preparing students to enter the wider world in a way they can act responsibly and intelligently, and I hope, with a sense of social justice as citizens of an increasing global economy and society. This is a challenge.

Most of the students in geography 101 come to the University with very little understanding of the world outside of Chicago suburbs. The fourth week of classes I regularly conduct what I call a third world awareness exercise. Students are asked to write down five words or expressions that capture the essence of the developing world. They are then asked to write five explanations of why the third world is the way they described it.

More than 90 percent of the responses usually depict the people in places of Africa, Latin America and southern Asia in negative terms. Corruption, famine, war, natural disasters, poverty, overpopulation and so on.

In discussion sections, we talk about the origins of these negative impressions. Students invariably point to the media and its tendency to portray these distant lands in sensational terms as a way of getting the reader's attention.

My goal in conducting this exercise is for students to recognize that they have a biased view of the nonwestern world. The repeated focus on disasters, tragedies and suffering creates negative stereotypes of nonwestern peoples which prevents American students from seeing the positive aspects of third world cultures.

In short, one of the challenges I face, and one which I greatly enjoy, is to make students come to terms with their ethnocentric views of nonwestern peoples and to see that their perspective is just one of many ways of living in this world.

The presence of Chief Illiniwek on campus undermines my pedagogical objective of challenging stereotypes and making students come to terms with their ethnocentric views. Although many students view Chief Illiniwek in positive terms, he is nonetheless a stereotype that hinders our understanding of American Indian history and culture.

The Chief's lineage is directly tied to Buffalo Bill's wild west shows, the Boy Scouts and Hollywood westerns. These are notoriously biased views of Native Americans that are inappropriate in a university setting. Dressing up and playing Indian for half-time entertainment is greatly disrespectful to Native Americans. Imagine a South African sporting event in which an Africana dresses up as a Sulu chief and dances at half-time to the cheers of a white audience. We would consider such behavior shameful in the context of the history of colonization, displacement and apartheid in that country.

Yet, we do it here on the campus of the University of Illinois. Our government wave of systematic campaign of Indian removal and forced migration to make way for nonnative settlers, some would call it ethnic cleansing today. Today we engage in the culturally insensitive act of having Anglo students masquerade as American Indians at our sporting events.

The contradiction between the University's mission of increasing student awareness of the diversity of places, peoples and cultures in today's society and the perpetuation of stereotypes that demean native peoples should be apparent to one and all.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. The only appropriate solution to this contradiction is to retire Chief Illiniwek and create a new mascot and symbol that is befitting a first rate educational institution that purports to value diversity and respect for other cultures. Thank you.

See the U.I. Dialogue on Chief Illiniwek page for more transcripts and information.