OU Forced To Change Name Of Event After Term “Sooners” Is Deemed Offensive
The University of Oklahoma’s nickname, the “Sooners,” came under fire when a Native American activist raised the argument that the term is offensive.
OU was forced to change the name of an annual event formerly known as “Sooner Mosaic: Social Justice Symposium” after receiving complaints from students and faculty.
The movement to remove “Sooners” from the title was led by Native American OU graduate Rance Wryackwe, who says the name is “a celebration of a loss of culture and loss of land” at the expense of Native Americans.
The term “sooners” refers to white settlers who jumped the gun and illegally inhabited Native American land before President Grover Cleveland gave them the OK with the Indian Appropriations Act of 1889.
From Campus Reform:
“I know it’s a sensitive term for me,” Weryackwe said, “and I think if we talked about it and made it sensitive in other people’s eyes, that would help.”
The event, now known as “Mosaic: Social Justice Symposium,” is held on November 14 and “provides a space for University students, faculty, staff, and alumni and outside community members to learn and discuss contemporary issues of social justice through presentations, research, and discussion forums,” according to The University of Oklahoma website.
In other words, it’s a haven for self-righteous blowhards to revel in their offense to the most minute of details, exchange Tumblr profiles, and pleasure themselves while the president of the student union recites the most up-to-date list of “unbiased language.”
Meanwhile, the University of Oklahoma adopted the nickname “Sooners” in 1908. Wouldn’t that mean these activists are, as they like to put it, celebrating a loss of culture?.
[via Campus Reform]
Image via YouTube
This hypersensitive bullshit is really getting out of hand.
9 years ago at 7:28 pmYou can’t use a name of the Indians such as “fighting Sioux” for universities because that’s offensive to use them but also don’t name it after anybody who may have been white and male, that’s offensive too. It’s mostly white people who get hyper offended for these minority groups as well which is insane. Buy your sooner gear before its changed in the coming decade.
9 years ago at 9:37 pmThis guys is about to lose his scalp over a nickname, SJW needs to take a chill pill
9 years ago at 10:47 amCommunity had it pretty spot on when they made their mascot the “Greendale Human Being”
9 years ago at 10:39 pmThat’s offensive to extraterrestrials if they exist.
9 years ago at 11:29 pmCan you believe all these hateful people with their clearly defined mascots? Go Zone 34 Amorphous Solids!
9 years ago at 7:25 amIt’s also speciesist (and holy shit after I typed that my spell check didn’t come on and it turns out speciesist is a real word)
9 years ago at 9:31 amI would say this time it’s at least reasonable. I mean the dudes pissed because a school embraces a mascot that symbolizes a genocide we still more or less ignore in this country
9 years ago at 9:45 amWe also ignore the fact that 90+% of the Native population on the east coast was wiped out by a plague 10 years prior to colonization, in favor of blaming the first settlers, so let’s say we have awful history curriculum in this country and call it a wash.
9 years ago at 10:22 amSo the attitude ‘oh we already inadvertently killed most of them, fuck the rest let’s just kill them and take their land’ is somehow acceptable? It doesn’t erase the fact that American pioneers and the U.S. Government decided it was okay to systematically rape and murder a race just because they were living on land that others wanted.
9 years ago at 3:24 pmI don’t want to get into a long-winded historical debate, because this isn’t the forum, but I take issue with a couple of things you said. TL; DR warning.
First off, the colonists didn’t inadvertently kill most of them. Most of them died off in the time between the Vikings being kicked out of Newfoundland and the arrival of the Mayflower.The estimated NA population on the East coast was 80-110 million people in the 1530’s based on archaeological findings, and by the time the Mayflower got there in 1620, an unidentified plague (that wasn’t smallpox) killed off roughly 90% of the TOTAL Native American population and roughly 96% of the NA population in Massachusetts.This happened in the century of non-contact with the Western world, and it was a disease that Western settlers didn’t recognize. Blaming us for that would be like blaming Egypt for killing off a third of Europe with the Spanish flu. Even in the era of modern medicine, horrific diseases like Ebola still exist that have the capacity to cause genocide-level death totals. Europe had TWO cataclysmic disease outbreaks, bookending the one that happened in North America. Further, many people believe that prior to this plague, Native Americans were the largest, most advanced culture on the planet. It’s laughable to say that a few hundred people fleeing religious persecution would have the means necessary to so ultimately eliminate a culture like that. There’s a reason the Natives were so welcoming to the first settlers. THEY FUCKING NEEDED THEM, they need more manpower so that they would still be able to do simple shit like raise crops.
My second complaint builds off the first. Let me preface this by admitting that there were several atrocities that happened and are inexcusable, such as the Trail of Tears. I fucking hate when people claim that we just said fuck it and took their land. That’s a ridiculously simplistic way of looking at it. Archaeologically speaking, Native Americans just sort of popped up in North America one day. Their ancestors migrated to a basically empty continent from Siberia/Eurasia. Post-Plague, Europeans migrated to what was essentially an empty continent, and until population density required expansion, basically stayed on the uninhabited East Coast. As American population boomed, and Native population stayed relatively stagnant, they were forced to either assimilate or relocate, unfortunate as that may be. A confluence of Natural disaster and common human struggle led to their devastation, not simply The White Man being The White Man.
Yeah, Yeah, don’t post novels. I’ll take my laps.
9 years ago at 5:03 pmI wish there was an edit button. I didn’t even mean to bring up the Vikings, that’s just a whole other, totally unrelated thing. Insert Columbus fucking around in the Bahamas there.
9 years ago at 5:30 pmOkay that’s actually pretty fair
9 years ago at 5:38 pmYour “unidentified plague” was actually vd. Not a joke. Indians had no known medicine for European std’s and they ended up dying because of it or their attempts to cure it.
9 years ago at 10:38 pmI’m going to forgo the academic argument regarding right of conquest and just say that if you genuinely give a shit that we wiped out the fucking natives then go get f*cked. You live in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and last time I checked that’s a pretty sweet deal (unless you threaten people with badges and guns). Why don’t you get off the internet, because I think your time would be better spent brainstorming and trying to figure out the non-gender-specific name you and your future life partner Chaz are going to give your fugly child.
9 years ago at 5:08 pmOn a positive note, at least if it’s born with a vagina it can be a SigEp now.
Easy there bud. I’ve got an internship this semester, the fuck else am I gonna do?
9 years ago at 5:40 pmWe didn’t ignore the genocide. We celebrated by putting the hard-ass cracker that told those cave men to kick rocks on the $20 bill.
No one forgot it happened. We’re just all really happy it did.
If we didn’t nearly wipe out the natives, then the Navajo language wouldn’t have been obscure enough to use as code in the Pacific Theatre. You support the Axis powers and Hitler… you racist.
9 years ago at 5:15 pmAre you fucking kidding me
9 years ago at 7:38 pmFuck everything.
9 years ago at 7:38 pm“If you don’t like something, destroy it, silence anybody that opposes, and then act like the victim of bullying.” -the left
9 years ago at 7:44 pmI think that they’re really jumping the gun on this one.
9 years ago at 7:45 pmDude is an OU grad, meaning that he knew damn well what the university’s nickname was. Spent 4+ years there and just then decided that Sooners was offensive to him. Bitching just to bitch at this point.
9 years ago at 7:48 pmWeird, keeping the Sooner brings presents the opportunity to talk about it, remember it, learn about it. Eradicating the term eliminates that possibility.
9 years ago at 7:50 pm“Yata yata offends me, therefore it should be changed and I’ll ruin the fun for everybody.”- Hypersensitive motherfucking pussy.
9 years ago at 7:51 pmFucking liberals and the pussy ass bullshit, fuck #donaldtrump2016
9 years ago at 8:05 pmI’m offended that he’s offended, where’s my kickback
9 years ago at 8:12 pmIf your a white male, no chance.
9 years ago at 9:38 pm