{"id":3175,"date":"2007-02-17T07:56:36","date_gmt":"2007-02-17T14:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/02\/17\/university-of-illinois-ousts-chief-illiniwek\/"},"modified":"2007-02-17T07:56:36","modified_gmt":"2007-02-17T14:56:36","slug":"university-of-illinois-ousts-chief-illiniwek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3175","title":{"rendered":"University of Illinois Ousts Chief Illiniwek"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After years of criticism from activists, the University of Illinois had decided to retire its American Indian mascot.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20070216\/ap_on_sp_co_ne\/ncaa_chief_illiniwek\">Here is the story:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The University of Illinois will retire its 81-year-old American Indian mascot, Chief Illiniwek, following the last men&#8217;s home basketball game of the season on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>The NCAA in 2005 deemed the buckskin-clad Illiniwek an offensive use of American Indian imagery and barred the university from hosting postseason events.<\/p>\n<p>American Indian groups and others complained for years that the mascot, used since 1926, is demeaning. Supporters of the mascot say it honors the contributions of American Indians to Illinois.<\/p>\n<p>Illinois still will be able to use the name Illini because it&#8217;s short for Illinois and the school can use the term Fighting Illini, because it&#8217;s considered a reference to the team&#8217;s competitive spirit, school officials said. It is unclear if the school will get a new mascot.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It doesn&#8217;t seem that they are doing this based on some ethical awakening.\u00a0 The full story reveals reservations of some administrators, but the pressure from the NCAA was just too much.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Next stop&#8211; probably University of North Dakota&#8217;s Fighting Sioux or the Florida State Seminoles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After years of criticism from activists, the University of Illinois had decided to retire its American Indian mascot.\u00a0 Here is the story: The University of Illinois will retire its 81-year-old American Indian mascot, Chief Illiniwek, following the last men&#8217;s home &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3175\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}