Schools to comply with mascot ruling

Representatives from two Baptist-affiliated colleges say their schools will comply with the NCAA’s decision to ban the use of American Indian mascots and logos by sports teams, although one of the schools is appealing.
  
The Mississippi College Choctaws and Chowan College Braves are among the original 18 schools targeted by the NCAA. 
   
The Florida State Seminoles, Utah Utes and Central Michigan Chippewas appealed and then won the right to continue the use of their mascots. 
   
“We are fully supportive of the NCAA rulings,” said Alice Smith, director of media relations at Mississippi College. “We are in the process of trying to mount an appeal, but we are in support of the NCAA to operate under the guidelines that they’ve set forth.”
   
Mississippi College, which is the second oldest Baptist college in the world and is located in Clinton, Miss., named its mascot after a band of American Indians in the area, the Choctaws. 
   
“They’ve always been very supportive of us and we have verbal support from them,” Smith said. “We’ve had Choctaw students come to our college and play on our teams, so we’ve never had a problem. And we have never had one complaint from anyone up to this time.”
   
At Chowan College in Murfreesboro, N.C., school officials have appointed a committee to study the issue, but they have yet to hear directly from the NCAA regarding their Braves nickname. 
   
“We have no mascot. All we have is a ‘C’ representing Chowan with a feather on it,” said Jim Tribbett, the school’s athletic director and men’s basketball coach. “We have only one uniform — an old uniform from the softball team — of our 11 sports that says Braves. Everything else says Chowan.”
   
Tribbett said his school is sensitive to both the NCAA’s intentions and American Indians, but the very name of Chowan College is Indian. 
   
The campus, with about 800 students, is located between the Chowan and Meherrin rivers in northeastern North Carolina, and both rivers are named for Indian tribes.
   
“We’re sensitive to the nature of it, but to comply with the NCAA we’d have to change the name of our school,” he said. “And that’s not their intent.”
   
Chowan College is the only school in the nation in the process of reclassifying from a Division III to Division II school this year, Tribbett said, so they will be extra careful to obey the NCAA’s wishes. 
   
The school has a “very good relationship” with the Indian tribe in the area, he said, and the college’s president will take part in a celebration the tribe is having in October just six miles from campus. (BP)