With each passing day it seems more and more nuttiness comes pouring out of the campuses of universities across the country, as progressivism continues to rear its ugly heads in our finest educational institutions.
Students attending George Washington University have put out a petition to try and have what they are calling an “offensive” mascot booted out of the school.
GWU’s current mascot is a colonial, which apparently these fine young folk think is racist, and want to have it replaced with something more mild, like a hippopotamus.
Yikes.
Campus Reform is reporting:
According to the petition, “the use of ‘Colonials,’ no matter how innocent the intention, is received as extremely offensive by not only students of the University, but the nation and world at large.”
“The historically, negatively-charged figure of Colonials has too deep a connection to colonization and glorifies the act of systemic oppression,” the petitioners argue, suggesting that “alternative nickname recommendations [include] ‘Hippos,’ ‘Revolutionaries,’ or ‘Riverhorses.’”
Rachel Yakobashvili, a petition organizer, told Campus Reform that she started the petition because “it was time for students to be able to voice their concerns and desires in a more public and organized manner.”
Supporters of the motion argue that changing the mascot—which has portrayed the school’s namesake, George Washington, since 1926—is necessary to make GW inclusive. Andrew Hesbacher, another petition organizer, told The Hatchet that in many places, colonials are equivalent to terrorists and murderers.
Other advocates of the petition claim that without the change to its mascot, the university is supporting colonization. In an April 16 op-ed for The Hatchet, for instance, student Alejandra Velazquez complained that “we are implicitly supporting colonization, not just in sports games, but in any school event where the mascot appears.”
The op-ed goes on to contend that it is hypocritical for the George Washington Colonial mascot to attend university events like the Chinese New Year Parade of the South Asian Heritage Celebration, since many cultures “survived oppression or were drastically changed due to colonialism.”
Fortunately, while this school seems to slipping rapidly into the madness of liberalism, there’s still a few voices of reason left. Like freshman Alejandro Alvarez.
Alejandro Alvarez, however, told Campus Reform that “George Washington was one of the founders of this great nation and without his efforts we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the blessings of liberty we have in America today.”
“I’m a US citizen who was born and raised abroad, and Washington’s legacy is not only celebrated in this nation but in every nation because the world recognizes how this man helped to change the course of history,” Alvarez continued. “I’m proud to have him as my mascot and everyone should be proud as well.”
Our Founding Fathers deserve way more credit than they receive from the modern generation. After all, without their willingness to put their lives on the line, we wouldn’t be here right now.
We owe our lives, our liberty, and every blessing that comes with them to these brave souls. Sure, they made a lot of mistakes, but a lot of what these kids believe about them is nothing more than revisionist history.
Let’s hope this petition fails and the mascot, who represents some of the greatest men in our history, gets to stay put.
