We are a group of concerned citizens who love the University and wish to see it reach its full potential (we are not defined as or by one voice or person).
What the SGSU movement is seeking:
The removal of the name Dixie from our university. The removal of all ties to confederate south and by extension issues of discrimination and slavery. Simply changing our mascot to something more unifying than the controversial “RedStorm” won’t be enough. This is about the name Dixie being removed as the banner of our identity: http://bit.ly/1M4fzjO
Why:
SGSU i
s seeking a campus environment that recruits and welcomes people from all backgrounds. We seek a diversity of faculty, staff, and students that increasingly goes beyond the greater St. George area. Our vision looks like the potential that Mr. Steve Kiggins of the St. George Spectrum sees, if only we could do the “student and faculty recruiting” that is curtailed by the stigma the name Dixie carries; a name now unfortunately tied to a tradition of pro-slavery, confederate battle flag waving imagery: http://bit.ly/1fzZLbt. We are aware that despite attracting an increasingly diverse campus we are missing MANY we could bring and even hurting some of those who attend: http://bit.ly/1ITqye1
Ultimately, we are pushing for a name change to make our Public institution as great as we know it can be. “Dixie” ties us to a stigma (http://on.fb.me/1TtU8tL) that will forever hold us back from our true potential by connecting us to a history of intolerance that is not befitting a public institution of higher education (http://www.suindependent.com/news/id_9230). To put it in the words or Rev. France Davis, who was speaking about the need for Dixie State University to change it’s name, “Well, South Carolina is no longer flying the Confederate flag. The University of Mississippi no longer plays ‘Dixie’ at their football games. They replaced Col. Reb with a black bear mascot. Huntsville, Alabama, High School is now the Panthers instead of the Rebels. And none of these name changes, Madam Chair, deny the history or the heritage of either of those places. But they do allow the annals of the past to speak for themselves and thus the history is history.”
