THURSDAY, NOV. 8, 2001
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 3A
Council to study stereotypes of Native-American mascot
By Leah Shaffer Special to the Kansan
Lunch time included more than devouring some food and a soda yesterday for several students and faculty members.
Cornel Pewwardy, assistant professor of teaching and leadership, and a dozen other students and faculty spent their lunch break in the Multicultural Resource Center discussing stereotypical Native-American mascots and their affect on children.
alect on children.
The Brown Bag lecture, "Indian Mascots: Dancing At Halftime In Kansas Schools," was sponsored by the center.
Pewwardy said the choice of whether to keep Native-American mascots in public schools was coming to the forefront in Kansas. He said the State Board of Education would assign the task of looking into the issue to the Education Equity Advisory Council.
The Council will make recommendations to the state board next year.
Pewewardy said some school districts that he advised were initially numb or angry at the prospect of changing their mascots. He said they usually called back after thinking about it.
Wichita North High School has refused to change its Redskins mascot, but Hiawatha High School, which used to have the Redskins as its mascot, changed to the Redhawks.
He said people have become indifferent to Native American stereotypes.
"I want these communities to think about how they are being stereotyped and where that stereotype comes from," Peewardy said.
Stereotypical images of mascot Indians were especially detrimental to the education of Native-American children, he said.
"Self-esteem has a lot to do with self image; if you shame a group with their image, they are not going to do well academically," he said.
During the lecture, Santos Nunez, program director for the Multicultural Resource Center, talked about working at a Boy Scout convention. At the convention, the Boy Scouts performed traditional dances, burned sage and held ceremonies that should be reserved for Native Americans.
She said that the boys thought they were honoring Native-American culture, but they missed the point. Contact Shaffer at 864-4810
KC tests detect no new anthrax spores
The Associated Press
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Additional tests taken inside a contaminated Kansas City, Mo., postal facility turned up no new anthrax spores, the state's top health official said yesterday.
The 55 negative samples taken Tuesday at the underground Stamp Fulfillment Service center included swabs from the same trash bag where the initial spores were found last week, said Maureen Dempsey, the director of the state Department of Health and Senior Services.
Dempsey said the new results do not disprove the original finding of anthrax, confirmed last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Instead, they show the contamination at the center was extremely small, she said.
Officials are awaiting results from samples taken outside the facility and from tests by a private firm from inside the center. Dempsey said they are optimistic those results also will be negative.
No one has been found to be infected and officials stressed the public is in no danger. Still, 250 people who work at or recently visited the center were advised to continue taking antibiotics.
Cleanup at the facility began last night, said Gary Stone, manager of the center.
Tests were ordered as a precaution after two of 19 samples taken last week tested positive. The center had received mail from the contaminated Brentwood facility in Washington, D.C.
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