The Chief has left the building

illini_no_mas.jpgThe University of Illinois has finally buried their minstrel show mascot symbol, Chief Illiniwek, and people are weighing in on all sides. Letters to the editor are pouring in for both the local and student paper, The Daily Illini.

Students for Chief Illiniwek have their Illini-week all planned out, complete with candlelight vigil. A. Candle. Light. Vigil.

It’s hard to have much compassion for the students on this one, especially when they’re forming groups and posting messages like this on Facebook (I left all the punctuation alone, so sic sic sic etc.):

This is a bunch of crap if you ask me! There are alot of Illini fans that are very upset about the whole thing..If you dont like the way things were I feel people should leave! Tradition is Tradition and should NOT BE CHANGED

i agree with kyle … weve had the chief for over 80 years and now its a huge problem … wat bullshit

im sick of all the people who made such a huge deal about being anti-chief, and now all the sudden we are stupid…

My personal favorite was a group (now deleted) named “If They Get Rid Of The Chief I’m Becoming A Racist.” I wonder how many of these outraged, political-correctness hatin’ students know what their symbol of honor is really about. If this is honor, I don’t think anyone deserves to be honored. The NCAA has made it crystal clear how they feel about the situation. Enough of the slippery slopes; booting a ugly characterture does not mean we live in a sanitized, zero-tolerance world where PETA will get up in arms about bears and bobcats as mascots. The university is making the right decision here, however long overdue. Is there a justification here other than blind tradition? Can we really claim that the Chief is promoting education of all things Native American?

(After the jump is a video of the dance from his second-to-last performance ever. Judge how honorable the shuckin’/jivin’? is for yourself.)

Posted February 19, 2007 at 12:59 pm by Matt Q | Share on Facebook
Categories: athletics, bizarre, racism

Comments (4)

4 Comments | Add yours

  1. Andrew Lovell on February 19th, 2007 11:47 pm

    Nice post…here’s a story from ESPN.com.

    http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=2770595

    Should be interesting to see what happens in the next few weeks.

  2. Nancy on February 20th, 2007 8:38 am

    Wow! Awesome Dance!!! Never really caught THAT before. THIS is what the fussing is about??? Think SOMEONE (i.e. the people who aree dissing this) need to get a life!

  3. Tahleen on February 23rd, 2007 9:45 am

    Wow. Not only was I uncomfortable watching that, the mascot looked terrifying. Especially with the gymnastics.

  4. bill on February 23rd, 2007 6:11 pm

    I have never seen that but its actually pretty cool. No one dances like that any more anyways so I don’t think its wrong. It’s sad they had to get rid of such a great tradition

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