George Washington University Is Moving on From ‘Colonials’

George Washington College will quickly select a brand new nickname for its athletic groups, dropping “Colonials” after years of strain from college students who mentioned the title was entangled with violence towards Native Individuals and different colonized folks.

The campus group, within the coronary heart of the nation’s capital, has narrowed an inventory of 10 alternative candidates to 4 finalists: “Ambassadors,” “Blue Fog,” “Revolutionaries” and “Sentinels.”

The college will hear suggestions till April 28 all through what it’s calling “Moniker Insanity” and a brand new nickname might be introduced by the top of the semester, mentioned Ellen Moran, the college’s vp for communications and advertising.

The college’s mascot will stay George 1 — George Washington’s head, which a uniformed pupil wears.

The change comes amid a reckoning of the fraught historical past of group names throughout the American sports activities panorama. It comes after a push by college students and a victory for Native American activists final yr when the Nationwide Soccer League group in Washington grew to become the Commanders, shedding a reputation that was a slur towards Indigenous folks.

“The extra we have interaction and the extra we assist the group envision what the brand new moniker choices would possibly appear like and provides the group an opportunity to check out what the longer term would possibly appear like, we’re getting a whole lot of optimistic engagement,” Ms. Moran mentioned.

The Colonials title has been a part of the college’s id since 1926, changing the Hatchetites, Hatchetmen, Axemen and Crummen (for Henry Crum, a soccer coach).

Opposition to the Colonials nickname erupted in 2019, when the coed physique voted to take away it, and the “Something However Colonials Coalition” was fashioned, in line with a report a college moniker committee launched in 2021.

The following yr, pupil organizations delivered a petition to the college president’s workplace looking for a reputation change

“Colonials had been lively purveyors of colonialism and had been complicit in militarized and racialized violence, oppression and hierarchy,” the petition mentioned. “Colonialism has been traditionally and contemporaneously constructed upon usurping land, labor and autonomy from racialized communities by means of dehumanizing violence and suppression.”

Some alumni, nonetheless, stay connected to the college’s outdated title, Ms. Moran mentioned. Survey respondents with an affinity for the Colonials affiliate it with revolutionary spirit and preventing tyranny, in line with a report.

Proponents, particularly older alumni, have argued that it defines Individuals throughout the British colonial period, mentioned Denver Brunsman, an affiliate professor of historical past on the college who’s a member of a committee that was fashioned to debate the title.

Opponents view it as synonymous with violent colonizers, mentioned Dr. Brunsman, a George Washington scholar. The time period can be traditionally inaccurate, he mentioned, as a result of the primary U.S. president and his contemporaries wouldn’t have recognized as colonials.

“It was a time period that he related to narrow-mindedness, with a sure provincialism,” Dr. Brunsman mentioned.

In 2022, after the committee launched its report, the college introduced it might discontinue its almost 100-year-old nickname. “The moniker can now not serve its goal as a reputation that unifies,” the report mentioned.

Excessive faculties, schools {and professional} sports activities franchises have been grappling with racially charged nicknames and mascots for many years.

In 2010, the College of Mississippi changed its longtime mascot, a Southern plantation proprietor often called Colonel Reb, with the Insurgent Black Bear. The motion to drop group names and mascots based mostly on Native American and Accomplice imagery accelerated after the homicide of George Floyd in 2020.

George Washington College had beforehand renamed some areas and occasions, similar to its Colonials Membership, Colonials Weekend and Dialog, with a Colonial, the moniker committee’s report mentioned. A well being middle and a pupil assist middle nonetheless bear the nickname.

Hayley Margolis, who graduated in 2020, mentioned the checkered that means of colonialism with athletic and administrative leaders whereas advocating a brand new moniker as a pupil chief.

“The concept of a colonial simply by definition is one thing that’s constructed on exclusivity and hierarchy, not to mention racism in its most violent type,” she mentioned. “So these are issues that I didn’t suppose ought to unify a school campus and excluded lots of people on the campus from college spirit.”

As a white particular person with Indigenous ancestry, Georgie Britcher didn’t really feel represented by the nickname. She was a part of the committee that advisable a change to the board of trustees.

“There have been college students who felt uncomfortable with the Colonial moniker and weren’t proud to be Colonials,” mentioned Ms. Britcher, who was a pacesetter of the college’s College students for Indigenous and Native American Rights group.

In 2022, the college’s pupil physique was about 46 % white, 10 % Hispanic, 10 % Black, 12 % Asian and fewer than 1 % Indigenous; 13 % of scholars had been labeled as worldwide college students.

Previously, the excitement across the college’s moniker was whether or not to vary it to a hippo, mentioned Kyle Boyer, who graduated in 2010. The animal has been an unofficial mascot since 1996, when a statue of a hippopotamus was given as a present to the category of 2000 by Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, the college president on the time.

“I believe the winds of social change which have affected issues just like the Washington Commanders had not but risen to the purpose the place moniker change was a critical dialog on campus,” mentioned Mr. Boyer, who has since change into a highschool administrator and a pastor within the Philadelphia space.

Now, he and the alumni he stays in contact with perceive the change, he mentioned.

“There are issues that generally are required to essentially unify a corporation or a group,” he mentioned, “and I perceive the choice to vary the moniker.”