JONATHAN TURLEY

Marist College Drops Mascot “Shooter The Fox” Due To Violent Connotation

jonathanturley

8 years ago

We have been discussing the dropping of mascots and team names due to claims of cultural appropriation and insensitivity. The latest school to do so is Marist College which is dropping the upstate New York school’s longtime mascot “Shooter the Fox.” Marist Athletic Director Tim Murray said that “Unfortunately, in our culture today, there is a negative stigma to that term ‘shooter.’ And I just didn’t think it was appropriate for us at this time to perpetuate that term.” However, Shooter would often appear at basketball games to “shoot” baskets. Now “Shooter the Fox” will be called “Frankie the Fox.” Does this mean that we will change the lexicon of basketball to drop references to “shoots?” Marist students can now be described as taking a Frankie for a basket.

Murray said that he grew uncomfortable with the name “Shooter” after the massacre in Las Vegas. The program is that the name “Shooter” was always a reference to the basketball and shooting baskets, which remains the term of art. It is reminiscent of the decision at schools like Harvard and Yale to get rid of college “master” titles because of the association with slavery, even though the word had nothing to do with slavery.

Murray however set the standard quite low: “if our mascot creates any issues with any person, it’s not worth having that nickname.” Really, any person? What if PETA objects to the Fox? Is that now the standard? Anyone objecting will force a change regardless of the conflict with historical or objective meaning.

Yet, Murray insisted that “I just didn’t think it was [not] appropriate for us at this time to perpetuate that term.” But the term is still in the game. There are shoots and shooters. Why yield the meaning of a neutral term to some lunatic with Las Vegas?

What do you think?

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