New school can’t be Cougars because middle-aged women might be offended

[Snake Alchemist]

Students at a new Utah high school are facing disappointment after their choice for a new school mascot was rejected for one of the strangest reasons possible: Board members deemed it might be seen as offensive to middle-aged women.

As reported by Salt Lake City Fox affiliate KTSU, Draper (Utah) Corner Canyon High announced its new mascot and school colors on Wednesday, with Canyons School District officials proclaiming that the school's teams will be called the Chargers, using a blue and white color scheme.

That's all fine and good except for the fact that the school's future student body -- which was given the opportunity to select its own future mascot -- had chosen to be the Cougars. With some 23 percent of the student vote, the Cougar choice was far preferred to other options, which included the Chargers, Diamondbacks, Falcons, Raptors, Broncos, Bears and Cavaliers.

The reason why the future student body gravitated toward Cougars is pretty clear: Area collegiate power BYU uses the Cougar as its mascot and enjoys an enormous fan base of area residents and those who follow the Mormon faith (BYU is a Mormon institution).

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/highschool-prep-rally/school-t-cougars-because-middle-aged-women-might-161402778.html

At first I thought this was The Onion.

[HughBeaumont]

1. What if shopaholics are now offended?

[Lance_Boyle]

2. A decision worthy of DU2,

made by a bunch of PC douchebags.

[EC]

14. Not even PC douchebags,

just idiots. Cougers is slang, not a race to be considerate of. Maybe the board was made up of cougers?

[dana_b]

3. sigh...

the board members need to grow up and listen to the kids.

[HappyMe]

4. *sigh!*

I wish it was The Onion. This is getting out of hand.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

5. It's getting harder and harder to sort truth from satire.

[Journeyman]

27. More than 30 years ago, Calvin Trilling wrote a piece on how difficult satire has become. . .

If I remember the details correctly, the issue that vexed Trilling was that the Soviets were threatening to increase the number of troops and nuclear weapons they had in Eastern Europe. The U.S. -- Reagan's Administration -- countered by staging a mock attack by U.S. forces against the U.S. base at Guantanamo.

As Trilling lamented, how can you satirize such a blatantly ridiculous situation and, in the parody, not make it sound reasonable?

[joeybee12]

6. The Stupid! It Burns!

KNR

[Honeycombe8]

7. I'm guessing it wasn't offense to MA women that had them concerned...

but it was the neverending jokes and such that would ensue, after adopting the name "Cougars." A source of distration and embarrassment.

I think that because #1...most MA women are not cougars, and #2...almost no one in the world is concerned about offending MA women.

[Snake Alchemist]

9. BYU uses it with few problems. nt

[GreenPartyVoter]

10. Our college mascot was the Beavers, and we managed to survive it. And my kids

go to a school where we are the Cougars, and I have yet to hear a single joke.

Maybe it's not as likely as people are predicting?

[redqueen]

8. Ridiculous. (nt)

[HockeyMom]

11. As dumb as when your TOWN is named after a Native Tribe

and calling the HS sports team Warriors. Some people thought it inappropriate. Absurd. Then change the name of your town too. Yes, this happened where I live on Long Island.

[sharp_stick]

12. And to think, the Cougars

was a fallback from my original suggestion of the Milf's (Mormon Interscholastic League Forever)

[pschoeb]

13. The oroginal reporter of this story has more info

http://www.fox13now.com/news/local/kstu-corner-canyon-hs-mascot-corner-canyon-hs-has-a-mascot-colors-20120118,0,5030389.story

It says there are two reasons given, the other not listed in this article is three other nearby schools have blue and white and Cougars for color and mascot, and this would cause too much confusion. My guess is the choice was whether to override the vote on colors, which possibly had a higher number of student votes than the number of votes that cougars got.

[LanternWaste]

15. That sounds to me like a most reasonable conclusion.

"three other nearby schools have blue and white and Cougars for color and mascot..."


That sounds to me like a most reasonable conclusion; and that placing the "expressed concern over the use of Cougar because it's used as a derogatory term for some women..." prior to the other reasons was an editorial decision to fan the embers of pro-/anti-PC crowd to get more eyeballs to read the story.

[Enrique]

21. i.e. Fox News

i agree.

[hifiguy]

16. ????

[Sera_Bellum]

17. Since there are SIX men

and only one woman who are on the board, the only woman must have a lot of pull huh?

The first reason they chose not to use Cougar was that 2 other high schools in Utah already has the name. Only the second reason has anything to do with the Cougar t.v. show. They were concerned it would be a laughing stock to use that name because of the t.v. show.

No, there weren't middle aged WOMEN on the board making a fuss.

http://www.canyonsdistrict.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&layout=category&task=category&id=2&Itemid=258

[redqueen]

18. But... that non-sensationalist reporting of the facts won't generate any ad revenues.

So ... on with the spin!

[Sera_Bellum]

22. Indeed redqueen

This thread's subject title is at best disingenuous.

[ProfessorGAC]

29. Off Topic

Cool screenname, Sera!
GAC

[Snake Alchemist]

23. Who DOESN'T see a uterus when they look at this logo.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http://www.sportslogos.net/logo.php%3Fid%3D5o2wuto6hq2592hhy9e4prm6e&h=350&w=700&sz=9&tbnid=3sgg3L8ZtUD1TM:&tbnh=58&tbnw=115&zoom=1&docid=6kdkDzA1Bt65oM&sa=X&ei=QHIYT7emGuigsQKwiJjXCw&ved=0CCoQ9QEwAQ&dur=1401

[Nolimit]

33. Oh Great...

Now a uterus is the only thing I'm going to see when I look at that.

[JohnnyRingo]

19. Is there an extraordinarily large cougar community in that town?

How exactly does one go about offending a cougar anyway? Who in their right mind is going to stand up and say: "I'm a sexually active cougar, and I'm offended".
Would naming the team the Giggalos or Cradle Robbers have a similar effect on middle age men in town?

I really had to see the article to make sure it wasn't a joke. I guess Tigers is out too, because Charlie Sheen might write a nasty letter to the editor of the local paper.

Just call the team "The Generics" and get on with their namby pamby lives.

[Politicalboi]

20. So Beavers are okay

These assholes just keep getting dumber and dumber each day.

[Cerridwen]

24. That's not what the meeting minutes report.

Though it's much easier to use hyperbole and zero in on a couple of sentences within the minutes to distort what was reported as PC gone wild! rather than the boring fact that Cougars didn't receive enough votes to make the top 5(?).

This, is how spin works. This is how 'common knowledge' becomes common garbage and 'conventional wisdom' becomes so much disinformation.

Beginning on page 23 (of 28) and continuing on to page 24: the first four paragraphs of discussion:

A. Corner Canyon High School Colors and Mascot Selection
President Cowdell said: That’s an issue that we’ve been asked to take up tonight. I’m willing to lead out on this unless, Dr. Doty, you have anything you want to say. I’m looking at the unofficial returns here. It looks to me like the Chargers have it. It looks to me like the Chargers are number one and the Cavaliers are number 2 and the Diamondbacks are number 3. And for some reason the Cougars finished a distance fifth or sixth. I’m wondering how the Board would like to proceed. Let me tell you what I know about this. Knowing that this was going to be on the agenda tonight, I took the opportunity to talk to committee members and get their input. They have counted the ballots. Surprisingly, as you might suspect, Cougars are number 1 but there isn’t that much variation between the bottom number and the top number. It is just funny. The votes are really scattered and it’s really hard to tell where it might have been if there were just a couple of choices. After talking to the principal of the school and other committee members, they’ve asked us if we could narrow the list again and possibly do another vote. They have also asked us if the Board would seriously consider scratching Cougars for a handful of reasons. Some of them more obvious than others. I told them I would raise this issue before the Board. They didn’t have it on the recommendation for a reason. They carefully considered not only the BYU/Utah rivalry and the BYU Cougars but also the connotation to what pop culture sometimes refers to as a Cougar which is well documented. There is a reference to Urban Dictionary in this memorandum which I found fascinating. That official memorandums have references to Urban Dictionary. For those of you who don’t know what that is, don’t go there and spend a lot of time. It is time in your life you will never get back. But, Mary specifically asked me to look at this and I told her that I would and actually I agree with her.

Mont Millerberg said: I can’t remember what the exact percentages were. I looked at it today and ran a tape on them and figured percent. I think you had 42-44% were in agreement with the colors and so I’m fine with the colors going with that. Cougar had I believe 24% which is nowhere near having a majority—just barely coming up with a plurality on it. I don’t know that I am so opposed to the term Cougar to scratch it completely but I really do that if you narrowed it down to a smaller field, you would see a more representative deal. Because what I got out of what I was reading there with all the other names. It’s kind of like most of the people wanted anything but Cougar. Corner Canyon Cougars just kind of rolls off your tongue and it sounds good. If all they could muster up was 24% with that, I think that is a pretty sad showing. I would like to narrow it down and I would like to give the people who are anything but a Cougar a chance to voice their opinion to where it doesn’t get diluted as much as it did.

President Cowdell said: Let’s just kind of straw poll this. Let’s talk about Cougar. Let’s just start there. Mont is saying narrow the list. I’m saying scratch Cougar. Does anybody have any other thoughts?

Paul McCarty said: I’d say scratch Cougar and narrow the list. (emphasis added)

Please see this link: http://www.boarddocs.com/ut/canyons/Board.nsf/Public

Click the link titled: 1-3-12 Minutes final.doc

[Sera_Bellum]

26. Thanks for this comment.

You are a thorough reader who obviously cares to seek facts.

[ProfessorGAC]

31. After Reading Your Cite. . .

. . .i'm thinking these board members are even dumber than i thought.

They say Cougars finished 6th and then say it was 24% which is a marginal plurality. Well, it can't be both. If it has even the slightest plurality, it has to be in 1st place and if it's in 6th, they wouldn't be having the discussion about it.

Then they just pull from thin air the notion that if there were fewer choices there would have been a clearer majority. Well, duh! If i just put one choice on the ballot, i'm quite sure i'll get a unanimous selection. Their call is tautological. And, without actually doing it, they also can't prove it.

Now, if they just didn't want the name because other nearby schools have it too, that would have been reason enough. But for some reason they employed tortured logic and a gobbledygook discussion to rationalize taking the choice away from the kids.

Just dumb.

[Cerridwen]

34. It does look like they're trying to get a different outcome

than the one they got and that they're quite okay with making up crap as they go along in order to do it.

[redqueen]

36. And it's so popular to demonize middle-aged women.

I wonder how many people saw the headline, decided they knew all they needed to know, reinforced their biases, and settled even more comfortably into their chosen prejudices.

[Feldspar]

25. I don't know... but it seems like a lot of

MRAs have very low reading comprehension skillz. Let alone any research experience.

[redqueen]

28. You don't say!

[T S Justly]

30. Meanwhile, nearby Milfington High School officials worry ...

[The Wizard]

32. Crotch Watchers? (NT)

[zappaman]

35. Oh, for fucks sake... nt

[lpbk2713]

37. Why not call them MoFos

As in Mormon Followers.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

38. I'm guessing adopting the name The Draper Utah Donkeys

might lead to an outbreak of punching.