The following excerpts from several articles published before and after George Washington University (an early member of the Atlantic Ten Conference) decided to drop their “Colonials” nickname perhaps provide some additional insight into the CAA’s recent decision.
So now, is the University of South Carolina going to decide that they need to change the name of their arena to something besides Colonial Life Arena (CLA)? Will Colonial Life and Accident Insurance Company need to follow suit (or change their own name and guide USC to do the same with the name of its arena)?
While a slew of professional and collegiate athletic teams have recently changed their names to do away with racially charged titles, George Washington University has joined the move by changing the nickname for its teams.
Known as "Colonials," the university's sports teams were the source of controversy when students said the name had a negative connotation regarding violence toward Native Americans and other colonized people.
The final four nickname options … are "Ambassadors," "Blue Fog," "Revolutionaries" and "Sentinels."
… calls for the change of the moniker began in 2018 when students launched a petition urged university officials to change the "extremely offensive" name that ended with nearly 550 signatures. In 2019, the student body held a referendum where around 54% of students voted in favor of changing the name, according to the newspaper.
Students and alumni criticized the Colonials moniker during the Diversity Summit in the fall of 2019 at an event hosted by the "Anything But Colonial Coalition," citing the nickname reinforced a “divisive hierarchy” and made the University “complicit” in centuries of colonial violence and repression, according to The Hatchet.
The Hippo served as an unofficial mascot for the university, according to the student newspaper, but due to trademark troubles, was never official.
This renaming joins the many athletic teams who have recently undergone brand changes due to negative racial connotations, including Cleveland pro baseball team's change from Indians to Guardians and the Washington football team's change from Redskins to Commanders.
While some athletic teams are changing their names, some teams, like the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs, argue their teams' original names are crucial to their history.
"While the origin of the team's name has no affiliation with American Indian culture, much of the club's early promotional activities relied heavily on imagery and messaging depicting American Indians in a racially insensitive fashion," the Kansas City Chiefs website says. "Over the course of the club's 60-plus-year history, the Chiefs organization has worked to eliminate this offensive imagery and other forms of cultural appropriation in their promotional materials and game-day presentation."
While there are still growing calls for the Kansas City Chiefs to change their name, they have not budged and instead established an American Indian Community Working Group in 2014 that banned headdresses and face paint at games and retired the use of Warpaint as an ambassador of the Chiefs, among other things.
As for George Washington University, the board of trustees will announce a new nickname for its athletic teams by the 2023-24 academic school year. The university mascot, George 1, that's been around since 1948, will remain the same.
“For supporters, the term refers to those who lived in the colonies, especially
those who fought for independence against England and, with bravery, courage, and
against all odds, secured democracy for the United States. It embodies the spirit of George Washington,” the committee’s report said. “For opponents, ‘Colonials’ means colonizers (both here and abroad) and refers to those who stole land from indigenous groups, plundered their resources, murdered and exiled Native peoples, and introduced slavery into the colonies.”
The report concluded: “Given this offense and harm and given that those who would retire the moniker comprise a little over half of the university community, the moniker can no longer serve its purpose as a name that unifies.”
The move comes two years after the school renamed its student center — formerly called the Cloyd Heck Marvin Center and named for the ex-university president who advocated for segregation.
“We have a great opportunity to conduct an inclusive process that will determine how we as a community want to come together around a unifying moniker and showcase ourselves as a distinguished and distinguishable university,” president Mark S. Wrighton said in the release. “I am very excited for our next steps together.”
Not everyone is on board with the decision.
“We believe that the Colonial mascot does not uphold colonialism, rather it is meant to honor the colonists of the Continental Army who fought against tyrannical colonialism in the establishment of our nation,” the GWU College Republicans said in a statement. “These colonials fought against foreign rule, they weren’t advocates of the practice of colonialism. The erasure of the Colonial mascot is an erasure of the sacrifice made by those who dedicated their lives to the creation of our great nation.
“We are also deeply troubled with the possibility that this could snowball into the changing of the University’s name itself, which we remain in vehement opposition to. We look forward to any collaboration or inquiries to resolve this issue.”
… the name Colonials offends a broad cross-section of the campus community, particularly international students and faculty who come from areas still fresh with memories of colonialism.
The term “colonial” denotes a power relationship of one group over another, which in the American experience includes the history of conquest and enslavement of American Indian and African people by Europeans. The University has seemed to admit this legacy by eliminating the name Colonial Invasion from the annual basketball tipoff and by cautioning students from wearing clothing with “Colonials” on it while traveling abroad outside of Europe.
Clearly, this is not an association that an institution like GW, which prides itself on embracing diversity and inclusion, should want to keep. Yet, change is hard and one common defense of the Colonials name is tradition. Specifically, the name, its defenders argue, is a tribute to our University’s namesake, George Washington. … a professor charged with teaching and lecturing on George Washington, including for a course that is taught annually at the Mount Vernon estate … [has written that] that Washington never called himself a “Colonial.”
The word “colonial” was almost never used during Washington’s life in the 18th century. The American people who lived under British rule were known as colonists and subjects of the British crown, but never colonials. In fact, the few times that Washington used the term it was mostly in a pejorative sense. During the Revolutionary War, Washington condemned the effectiveness of military units organized by the states, commonly known as militia, in contrast to his national Continental Army. On a handful of occasions, he used Colonial as a substitute for state, including when referring to militia units. In February 1777, for example, he denounced recruiting efforts that favored these state “Colonial” forces over his Continental Army as “fraught with every evil – manifestly injurious to the common cause – and an indirect breach of the union.” In short, the Colonial Army, though a term Washington never actually used, was antithetical to what he prized most in a military.
Instead, during the Revolution and after, Washington tirelessly promoted the American Union. If he had a guiding political ideology, it was America itself. Washington battled against the provincialism of his countrymen who continued to harbor the highest loyalty for their states, which was a colonial mindset in the way he used the term. Through the U.S. Constitution, he hoped to make the United States one unified nation rather than a confederacy of 13 sovereign states. Likewise, Washington promoted the idea of a national university during his presidency to bring young people from around the country to the federal district to train new American citizen leaders. That vision remains GW’s deepest connection to George Washington, except today the principle includes not just America but the world.
Why, then, would … [George Washington University] stubbornly cling to a nickname that not only offends current and prospective students and faculty but also has nothing to do with George Washington?
The name Colonials began in 1926 as the brainchild of longtime faculty member and administrator Elmer Louis Kayser. As my fellow historian and GW writing professor Phillip Troutman has uncovered, Kayser chose “Colonials” at the height of America’s Colonial Revival, a cultural movement manifested in architecture and historical preservation. Kayser did not intend for the nickname to be offensive, but times and values change.
Just three years ago, Amherst College dropped “Lord Jeff” as its mascot. Named after Lord Jeffery Amherst, an 18th-century British general who sought to infect Native Americans with smallpox, the mascot had outlived its utility for Amherst’s students. At first glance, Colonials appears more benign than Lord Jeff or the racist Washington Redskins football team name. Yet, as a mindset, colonialism subsumes both these and other offensive nicknames.…
The word “colonial” was almost never used during Washington’s life in the 18th century. The American people who lived under British rule were known as colonists and subjects of the British crown, but never colonials. In fact, the few times that Washington used the term it was mostly in a pejorative sense.
