Chief Illiniwek comes back for Homecoming

Despite bravely skirting the Open Meetings Act for the sake of retiring Chief Illiniwek, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign can't seem to shake itself free of the controversy several months later.

Once again, the honored symbol and/or racist stereotype has fancy danced its way back into the media spotlight just long enough to remind everyone what's different about this year's half-time show at Memorial Stadium.

At issue was the university's mandate that no Chief imagery could be used during the homecoming parade:

Kachel said groups cannot use the Chief symbol on their floats, signs, costumes, or T-shirts. She still expects the best of the parade's 35 floats to employ some creative design ideas.

Uh oh. EVERYONE PANIC!

To give you an idea of how weird it got over this flap, the very people who spent years protesting against the Chief came to the aid of pro-Chiefers:

"While I don't want to see people wearing those shirts because I think they are offensive, at the same time I know they have the right to wear them. I think the University needs to learn they cannot sensor people's speech," says Jen Tayabji, Progressive Resource Action Cooperative.

And then there's this quotation:

"We decided this was a blatant trampling of First Amendment rights," said UI student Paul Schmitt, president of the student organization Students for Chief Illiniwek.

Before this ended up being too much of a circus, free-speech champion Chancellor Herman lifted the ban:

"The floats and the people on them are representations of personal points of view," said Robin Kaler, University spokesperson.

"Just as we don't prohibit people from wearing their Chief apparel to work, we won't prohibit those in the parade from expressing their points of view," Kaler added.

Whew! Crisis adverted. And according to The New York Times -- wait, they're covering this, too? -- nothing much happened at the parade:

There were no protesters.

The amusing part of all of this, however, is that the student paper might have unintentionally started this ruckus:

There wasn't any uproar over the ban until an article about the parade was printed in The Daily Illini, Kachel said.

I'd give my college paper props, except the NYT noted this tidbit:

The chief is still such a hot point of contention that the university’s student newspaper, The Daily Illini, would not discuss the homecoming issue and does not plan to publish an editorial position on the rule reversal.

Why is the Daily Illini not weighing in on its editorial page on what's an intense local issue dealing with the First Amendment? This is the kind of thing that gets people to pick up the paper for more than the crossword and sudoku!

So, it looks like the Chief will still be a part of the university's tradition on homecoming and also not go away completely any time soon. It's obvious that the university is going to have to deal with the fallout from their decision for quite some time, whether they want to or not.

Another way to look at this flap is that the university didn't actually want to completely scrub the Chief from the institution. After all, you could make the argument that parades and athletic events where students are allowed to keep honoring the Chief adds to a hostile and abusive environment that they supposedly got rid of once they put an end to the fancy dance.

But maybe this is just the latest example of the university trying to pander to both sides of the aisle. They made the grandest of gestures in retiring the Chief, but have now placed themselves defensively behind the First Amendment in letting 81 years of the Chief's spirit continue forward. This is hardly a show of a firm commitment to purge the Chief from memory, or a show of remorse.

So, what is the university's stance on the Chief? Does it have one? And can we ever expect the issue to be laid to rest? I doubt we'll know the answers to any of these questions anytime soon.

(Thanks to Rich Miller for giving me the invite to Illinoize. I started out unsure of what to write about here, so I think I'll try to contribute posts dealing with higher education in Illinois in a semi-snarky, yet hopefully entertaining manner. Some disclosures for the unfamiliar: I'm a former editor of the Daily Illini and alumnus of UIUC and UIS. I blog here and here, and contribute here.)