After two months without a mascot, students at Wiscasset High School can go back to calling themselves the Redskins today--but only until the end of the school year. The regional school board last night voted narrowly that a new name must be found that is less offensive to Maine's native American population.

For Wiscasset High senior Crysta Brown, not having a school mascot has made the last two months a little weird. For example, she recently competed in a one-act drama competition.

"And it was very discouraging in the brochure--at the back it had all the pictures of everybody's mascot competing, and then it had 'WHS,' and it's just discouraging," she told school board members. "And it just seems like it brings down everybody's spirit when everybody's yelling 'Wildcats' and everything, and we're just nobody right now."

Fellow student Rebecca Slack said she also felt discouraged by the decision in January that the Redskins mascot be dropped immediately. "When we heard that we couldn't use the Wiscasset logo or mascot at any games, we felt, you know, lost."

Brown and Slack were among the many community members who spoke out at RSU 12's board meeting Thursday night in Whitefield. Most of them said they were disappointed by the board's decision in January to go over the heads of a local School Mascot Committee, which had been charged with studying the issue and recommending whether to continue using the name "Redskins."

Chet Grover is a Wiscasset High alum, and a coach with three kids currently in the school system. He's also a member of the Mascot Committee. "The community has spoken. I encourage the board to listen to that," he said.

Grover refers here to a recent poll of 335 Wiscasset residents--which is about 10 percent of the town's registered voters, who voted by a 5 to 1 margin to support keeping "Redskins," a term they've used for 68 years.

Other voices, though, claim this viewpoint does not accurately represent the opinion of the community at large.
School board member Kim Anderson says she's far from alone in wanting the Redskins name to go. "And I'm telling you that there are lots of people in the community who feel this way," she said. "The last election had 10 percent of the voters. And you know what I think? Ten percent--there were 269 people out of over 3,000 citizens."

"You've used the term Redskins with a great deal of affection and love, but it's time to to bury the Indian--it is," said Republican state Rep. Les Fossil of Alna, which is part of the RSU 12 school district. "It's time to find a new symbol for this school and I know that's what you don't want to hear, but it's coming."

After around two hours of debate, 10 of the 19 board members voted to immediately reinstate the name Redskins, with the provision that the Mascot Committee come up with a new name and logo by May.

Board member Eugene Stover is not happy with the vote - he thinks the mascot should stay. "It's been there since the early 40s and no one has complained about it," he says. "No one has complained until the people from the Indian nations came down here and made their complaint. They want to listen to the people from the Indian nation but they don't want to listen to the people from the town of Wiscasset."

"The term does cause harm--I think the school board made a good decision tonight," says Jamie Bissonette Lewey, chair of the Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission, which back in September asked the board to stop using the word Redskin.

By Aug. 1, all Redskins symbols must be removed and replaced with the new mascot. The school's historical trophies and awards, however, are exempt from this rule.