Answers from schools with Native American nicknames differ years after Guardians were born

When Cleveland's professional baseball team announced three years ago it had begun considering a name change, Shelley Melchior hoped Copley-Fairlawn City Schools would be persuaded to abandon its Indians moniker.

“If they could have rode the wave of the Major League Baseball team up north, I feel like it could have happened more seamlessly, more naturally,” said Melchior, a 1996 Copley High School graduate who served for the past two school years as the president of the PTA at Fort Island Primary School in Fairlawn.

Melchior urged the school district to adopt a new nickname for its sports teams by submitting a letter to the board of education through the district's website. She received a response from CFCS indicating a committee would be formed.

Copley-Fairlawn For All, a group of students, alumni and community members, also requested the school district dump its mascot in the summer of 2020.

Yet two years after the Cleveland Indians revealed on July 23, 2021, they would become the Guardians, Copley's nickname remains unchanged.

The same is true of the Northwest Local School District in Canal Fulton and the Rittman Exempted Village School District. Copley, Northwest and Rittman bear the same name.

With the Guardians' anniversary upon us, here is an updated look at the stances schools in the area have regarding their Native American-themed nicknames.

What happened when a Copley-Fairlawn committee debated a potential nickname change for a year?

Neither Copley nor Northwest intend to alter their names, leaders from those school districts said, but conversations and messaging surrounding their positions differ.

A diversity, equity and inclusion committee created by Copley-Fairlawn schools three years ago debated whether the district's name should be changed, Assistant Superintendent Brian Williams said.

The conversations occurred from December 2021 to December 2022, Williams said, and halted without the committee of roughly 30 people submitting a recommendation to the board of education.

According to the district's website, the committee is composed mostly of school district employees, including Williams, plus four community members, three students and a Copley Police Department detective.

The group didn't vote on the nickname issue, Williams said, but instead informally polled its members and informed the district's administration of the outcome.

“We didn't feel like we reached enough of a threshold that making a recommendation one way or the other was representative of our committee,” Williams said.

“Based on the fact that we've had conversation about the name, at this time, we don't anticipate any changes to our name in the near future.”

What types of discussions has the Northwest school district had about the name of its sports teams?

Northwest Superintendent Shawn Braman said the birth of the Guardians sparked “very informal” nickname conversations in his school district, but he isn't aware of anybody from the community who lobbied administrators for a revamping.

“No one's reached out to us,” Braman said. “I would say the community feels very strongly and very prideful about our mascot name. Right now, I can't see us ever changing it, to be honest.”

Attempts to interview the superintendents of Rittman and the Chippewa Local School District were unsuccessful. Chippewa uses the nickname Chipps.

As the 2021 baseball season started, the USA TODAY Network, which includes the Beacon Journal, chose to stop using Cleveland's former MLB team name in staff-generated content. The policy applies to high school sports coverage, but some exceptions were made in this story for the sake of clarity.

Long before the Beacon Journal joined the USA TODAY Network, its sports department began refraining from the use of East High School's old Orientals nickname. Akron Public Schools ditched the name in 2010, and East became the Dragons in 2011.

What strategies have Copley, Northwest and Walsh Jesuit High School implemented regarding logos?

Melchior contends school districts should “honor and respect other cultural identities in a positive way” and not by using nicknames or imagery some people deem offensive.

“If there's any amount of discomfort by any population group, it's a conversation,” Melchior said. “We shouldn't have any [discomfort]. And if there's even a little bit, then there's a problem.”

Melchior said she believes Copley will eventually change its name partly because it has begun to shift away from using a Native American head as a logo. Although the imagery remains visible throughout Copley-Fairlawn schools, Williams said there has been a concerted effort to make a golden “block C” the district's primary logo.

“That has been representative of our district over the last several years,” he said.

Braman said Northwest has transitioned to a “large red N” as its main logo in recent years because school leadership sought branding uniformity throughout the district and wanted to avoid “any kind of caricatures or any kind of representation that we thought would even be even remotely offensive to anyone.”

Walsh Jesuit's Warriors nickname will remain intact, though the Catholic high school in Cuyahoga Falls has distanced itself from its old Native American imagery, unveiling new logos in April featuring a crusader-type figure, Walsh director of communications and marketing Anthony Burke explained in an email.

What did Cleveland Guardians leadership say about the club's decision to take a new name?

In 2005, the American Psychological Association called for the retirement of Native American-themed mascots because of “harmful effects” they can have “on the social identity development and self-esteem of American Indian young people.”

The Cleveland baseball team eliminated the Chief Wahoo logo from its uniforms starting with the 2019 season. The club had slowly moved away from the scarlet-faced caricature years earlier, switching to a red “block C” as its central logo.

The decision to change the team name came the following year on the heels of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd. Guardians owner Paul Dolan told the Akron Roundtable in 2021 he had “put on blinders” regarding the franchise's old nickname, but “those blinders came off … in the wake of the George Floyd killing.”

Two years ago, Guardians manager Terry Francona said he was proud of the organization for its overhaul.

"You have to step outside of your own skin and think about other people that may have different color skin and what they're thinking,” Francona said.

When the Guardians nickname was unveiled, the Cleveland Indigenous Coalition stated: “Our community has worked tirelessly to be recognized as diverse and vibrant, instead of being portrayed in inaccurate and harmful ways. This name change will help create a place where Native American children and their families are valued and fully seen.”

The coalition also called for Ohio schools to follow the Guardians' lead.

Have any schools consulted the MLB's Guardians about the process of adopting a new name?

Curtis Danburg, Guardians vice president of communications and community impact, wrote in an email the Guardians “really haven’t had any high schools reach out for guidance” about a nickname change.

As of April, there were 966 school districts in the U.S. with Native American-themed nicknames, including 331 with the same one as Copley, Northwest and Rittman, according to data compiled by the National Congress of American Indians.

By the NCAI's count, 32 schools changed nicknames in 2021. Cuyahoga Heights Schools was among them. It dropped Redskins — the same name retired by the NFL's Washington Commanders in 2020 — and selected Red Wolves as the replacement in 2022.

Cuyahoga Heights Schools superintendent Tom Evans explained in an email one out-of-state school district has consulted him since the transformation.

Copley-Fairlawn schools has not sought advice about a potential nickname change from either the Guardians or another school district, Williams said.

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Melchior said she would be compelled to push for a new nickname again if Copley-Fairlawn schools were to maintain the status quo for the next few years.

Melchior even has a suggestion for a new nickname, a nod to a phrase already used by the district.

“It could be 'the Copley Pride,' and the mascot could be a lion,” she said. “You don't have to change the color scheme. Lions are golden.”

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Nate Ulrich can be reached at nulrich@thebeaconjournal.com. On Twitter: @ByNateUlrich.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: How Akron-Canton area schools view Native American nicknames