A resolution from the Senate Committee on Equal Opportunity regarding displays of Chief Illiniwek imagery during Homecoming generated debate at the Dec. 3 meeting of the Urbana-Champaign Senate. Connie Shapiro, a faculty member in human and community development and a member of the equal opportunity committee, amended the resolution as she presented it; the resolution called for “UIUC Administration (to) dissociate itself from future Homecoming displays” because of the controversy that arose this year over whether participants should be allowed to display Chief imagery in the parade, since the university decided in March to discontinue use of the Chief as the symbol for the Urbana campus. However, campus administrators allowed participants to display Chief imagery in the parade based upon legal counsel’s advice that such displays were protected under the First Amendment.
“The invocation of the principle of free expression to allow the display of the Chief Illiniwek logo at a campus-endorsed events jeopardizes the authority of the campus administration to condemn other ‘representations of personal expression’ that are legitimately read as negative stereotyping of members of underrepresented, historically disadvantaged or marginalized groups within the campus community,” the Senate Committee on Equal Opportunity wrote in its resolution.
Nicholas Burbules, who said that he had opposed the Chief symbol since arriving on campus in 1989 and that he was speaking on his own behalf and not as president of the senate executive committee, said that it would take time to eliminate the use of Chief imagery. He urged people to be sensitive to the feelings of Chief supporters, who feel they are losing a cherished symbol and take personal affront at being called racists. They are using their rights of free speech to oppose what they see as a wrong done to them, and “we need to defend the right of protest for others because we insist on it for ourselves,” Burbules said.
During debate, several students and faculty members spoke out against the resolution, including Justin Randall, president of Illinois Student Senate, who expressed concern that the resolution would result in Homecoming being abolished, and Paul Schmitt, vice president of Students for Chief Illiniwek. Several faculty members questioned the intent of the resolution and what was meant by the term “dissociate.”
After debate, senators voted to postpone action on the resolution until the senate’s February meeting so the SEC could review and clarify the resolution.
In other business, a proposal to rename the Library Research Center in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science as “The Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship,” which had been postponed from the Nov. 5 senate meeting, was debated and passed by the senate.
Senate members also approved a proposal to merge the Division of English as an International Language and the department of linguistics into a newly configured department of linguistics. All curricular programs will be transferred in their current forms to the new department. When the merger has received all necessary approvals, an internal committee will be established in the new department to help resolve any issues that emerge during the transition.
Illinois Rep. Naomi Jakobsson presented Vernon Burton, history, with a resolution from the Illinois General Assembly congratulating him on receiving the Heartland Prize for Nonfiction for his recent book, “The Age of Lincoln.”
A proposal from the educational policy committee and Ron Yates, the dean of the College of Communications, to rename the college was withdrawn from the agenda by Yates prior to the senate meeting.
