"Kyle J. Lorditch," 3/31/2005

(Chief opinion: VeryFor)

I an continually saddened to hear that so many can be swayed by the rants of a few foolish grandstanding academics posing as educated elite who claim to put the interests of native americans ahead of their own. This simply is not true and these are not honorable people. I would like to strongly caution people of all ethic backgrounds to regard any man or woman who attempts to eliminate any significant figure who represents the cultural heritage of our nation. Chief Illiniwek is a mascot and we should be proud to embrace him. Mascots represent much more than just school spirit. They are a single reprsentation of what a school embodies. The University of Illinois chose to repesent themselves with a symbol of a strong, wise and courageous people, something the institution would like to pass on to their students. It would be wise to consider that by removing chief illiniwek, you would effectively be removing a representation of native american culture in our society, something that is few and far between as it is. Instead we should be concentrating on improving chief illiniwek not disposing of him. His name represents a culture, make him do his job. Start educating the university and the public about native americans with chief illiniwek. Authenticate him with action and knowledge and remove his foolish image. This is a great opportunity here. Why would you want to squander this? After all, when we start purging our society of cultural symbols do we not risk destroying interest in cultural history? Where does it stop? Should we rename Miami and Seattle? Perhaps the citizens of illinois would like to change the name of their state as well. Destroying names and symbols is a dangerous business. Instead of eliminating the man I'd like to encourage you to reinvent him as he should be.

"Kyle J. Lorditch," via the web.