The topic of the Ole Miss mascot change has been a controversial one. For many years, the University of Mississippi, commonly known as Ole Miss, has used a mascot known as "Rebel Black Bear." However, in recent years, there has been a push to change the mascot due to its controversial history and association with the Confederacy. The original Ole Miss mascot, known as "Colonel Reb," was a caricature of a southern plantation owner and Confederate soldier. This image, along with the "Rebel" moniker, has been seen as offensive and racist by many, particularly in light of the university's history with racial tensions and its connection to the Civil Rights Movement. In response to the growing criticism, the university retired the Colonel Reb mascot in 2003 and introduced a new mascot, the Rebel Black Bear, in 2010.
Mascot Evolution Continues at Ole Miss: Students Voting on Landshark vs. Black Bear
Many Ole Miss students and alum have moved on from the old days of Colonel Reb as their disturbing mascot. And the Rebel Black Bear may soon be history, too.
The University of Mississippi’s student-body president, Dion Kevin III, today announced that students will vote on whether to change its Rebel Black Bear mascot to the popular Landshark, The Daily Mississippian, the university’s school newspaper, reported this morning.
Students will vote on the mascot change next Tuesday alongside “personality” elections for Mr. and Miss Ole Miss, Homecoming Queen, maids and campus favorites. The university chose the Black Bear in 2010 in homage to famed Oxford writer William Faulkner, who wrote the famous short story, “The Bear.”
The Rebel Black Bear has been the official mascot since 2010 when Ole Miss officially chose it to replace the old racist symbol of Colonel Reb, which still makes various unofficial appearances during campus events and, as the JFP staff noted with surprise once, dancing at weddings of Ole Miss graduates. Haley Barbour also had a Colonel Reb on his wedding cake back in the day; his campaign sent out the photo of the Ole Miss graduate and his wife, Marsha, cutting the cake during his successful campaign for governor of Mississippi.
Many Colonel Reb supporters, however, would still rather the old plantation owner to be the official mascot of Ole Miss, but that seems unlikely to ever happen with a newer generation of Ole Miss students rejecting the racist symbols of the old days.
The ship now seems to be sailing toward the landshark, at least if the student-body president gets his way. Kevin issued a statement in favor of the landshark, which The Daily Mississippian published in full. It reads in part:
“The Landshark as we know it today has its origins in football, but has since expanded to symbolize Ole Miss’s fight spirit and athletic prowess. It was started by Ole Miss defensive linebacker and military veteran Tony Fein in 2008 during our historic upset of the Tim Tebow-led Florida Gators. With 41 seconds left in the game, Tim Tebow ran an option left, identical to a scoring play earlier in the quarter. As the play developed, Fein rose up, hand to helmet, and the Landshark was born. It would subsequently join the Rebels in wins such as the 2009 Cotton Bowl victory, the 2013 SEC Basketball Tournament, and the 2014 College World Series. After a decade of success under the Landsark, it’s time to make it a lasting part of our history. … I support the Landshark, and I am an Ole Miss Rebel.”
Put simply, the students of Ole Miss seem to be focused on the future and making their own mascot choices, not on symbols of the past from Confederate colonels to literary figures. Cheers to them.
UPDATE: After this post went live, someone pointed out to me this great piece by Adria Walker, formerly of the JFP, at Millsaps College about Confederate symbolism on that campus, including the Majors mascot. Definitely worth a read.
Ole Miss claimin’ a Landshark as their mascot but refuse to really change! “Foolishness”
Not only did Ole Miss embarrass themselves on Saturday at Auburn by gettin’ their doors blown off 44-23. They’re makin’ a complete spectacle of themselves tryin’ to get away with tryin’ to change their mascot without actually changin’ the name of the mascot like boyz can’t see this foolishness.
The Ole Miss Chancellor, Jeffery Vitter, announced on Friday that they would have a new mascot walkin’ the sidelines from now on, a Landshark!! However, the school will still be known as the Rebels. What.
Everybody and their baby’s momma knows that Ole Miss’ mascot is the Rebel, as in, the rebels that fought for the Confederacy. Part of the Confederate flag is in the Mississippi state flag bruh.
Let’s keep it real or all the way 100, whichever comes 1st! In 2003, they officially retired Colonel Reb from the field because they told boyz that they wanted to move away from symbols of the Old South. Okay playa, if you want to move away from symbols of the Old South then change the darn name and stop playin’ and tryin’ to run game on boyz because you look stupid tellin’ folks that you’ve got a new mascot but you’re still the Rebels.
In 2010 they came up with a darn bear named Rebel. What was he a rebel against? Picnic baskets? Now you’re runnin’ around with a Landshark? C’mon bruh this is stupid.
Listen to this foolishness. They say that the Landshark was originated in 2008 and quickly adopted by the defensive unit of the football team. Since then, players from Ole Miss teams have celebrated big plays by putting a hand to their forehead in the shape of a shark fin, accordin’ to the athletic department.
Bruh..EVERY defensive unit on EVERY football team in America calls themselves the sharks and have been for the last 15 or 16 years. Especially the secondary units. They’re huntin’ for balls. EVERYBODY says that and they’ve been sayin’ it forever. I know that they’ve got internet in Oxford so stop with this foolishness. So again, you sound crazy talkin’ about it originatin’ then and boyz adoptin’ somethin’ that everybody has been doin’ for years.
You sound crazier than the dun teachin’ us that Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492 when people were already livin’ here. You can’t discover someone else’s home and you can’t originate something that boyz have already been doin’.
Stop frontin’, change the name and get a new mascot. It’s not that hard. Well…I guess it is when the Old South is still alive and well. Stop me when I start lyin’!
Playas Thesaurus:
1) Dun: noun – the person in question, dude, guy, etc. It’s whoever I’m talkin’ about and its non-gender specific.
The G is excluded from the endings of all words because the G is near and dear to my heart because I’m from “The G” which is Gary, Indiana. So I only use the G when I’m talkin’ about “The G!”
The caption under the photo is real talk today!
Share this:
- Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
The Root: Time For Ole Miss' Mascot To Go
Students and alumni of that venerable Southern institution Ole Miss are currently reeling at the news that the university has decided to replace its controversial mascot, Colonel Reb, a white-bearded Confederate Army officer, with an as-yet-undetermined new one -- a horse, perhaps. To many, abandoning the controversial colonel, who hasn't been the school's official mascot since 2003, makes sense. Even if just some among the Ole Miss student body -- 14 percent of which is black -- are offended by Reb, then he cannot represent the school as a whole.
Nevertheless, a group of stalwarts is refusing to back down. One student group, the Colonel Reb Foundation, has already gathered thousands of signatures to protest Reb's expulsion. And when The New York Times interviewed fans at a recent Ole Miss football game, the resistance to a new mascot was obvious: " 'Over. My. Dead. Body,' said Mack Allen, 36, an alumnus and technology analyst from Memphis, who wore a T-shirt to a recent football game that read, 'Colonel Reb -- Loved by Many, Hated by Few.' "
Like the movement to keep the Confederate flag on government buildings in South Carolina, the Colonel Reb fight is yet another public instance of a group of proud Southerners standing together to fight for their right to show nostalgia for the Old South. And just as I did about the movement to keep the Confederate flag alive, I can't help asking myself once again, "What's there to be nostalgic for?"
In Chapter 9 of Harriet Ann Jacobs' firsthand account of bondage in North Carolina, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacobs describes a punishment inflicted upon a male slave who had been caught fleeing a neighboring plantation:
Some weeks after his escape, he was captured, tied, and carried back to his master's plantation. This man considered punishment in his jail, on bread and water, after receiving hundreds of lashes, too mild for the poor slave's offence. Therefore he decided, after the overseer should have whipped him to his satisfaction, to have him placed between the screws of the cotton gin, to stay as long as he had been in the woods. This wretched creature was cut with the whip from his head to his foot, then washed with strong brine, to prevent the flesh from mortifying, and make it heal sooner than it otherwise would. He was then put into the cotton gin, which was screwed down, only allowing him room to turn on his side when he could not lie on his back. Every morning a slave was sent with a piece of bread and bowl of water, which were placed within reach of the poor fellow. The slave was charged, under penalty of severe punishment, not to speak to him … The master who did these things was highly educated, and styled a perfect gentleman. He also boasted the name and standing of a Christian, though Satan never had a truer follower.
I like to think of this story, the tale of a good Southern chap who dabbled in torture, whenever I read something about people paying reverence to the South of old. In my estimation, it very tidily summarizes the type of man Ole Miss' Colonel Reb might very well have been, if he were a real person: a wealthy, august gentleman, who incidentally fought under a terrorist banner for the right to own blacks, but also considered African Americans to be so subhuman that he could slaughter them at will, and by whatever gruesome means he fancied.
Southern apologists -- like Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) in his Wall Street Journal piece "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege" -- like to bandy the statistic that fewer than five percent of whites below the Mason-Dixon Line owned slaves, the subtext being that the rest of the South's whites were as hard off as blacks and, in Webb's words, "dominated by white elites who manipulated racial tensions in order to retain power." (Apparently, to Webb, being poor is comparable to being whipped nearly to death before being squeezed into a cotton gin and starved for weeks at a time.)
Somehow, it seems that Webb and others like him have never considered what else that statistic could mean: that more than 95 percent of white Southerners were complicit in one of humanity's greatest crimes, a crime that, if they'd decided to rise up against it, as their Yankee counterparts eventually did, they could easily have ended.
So why didn't this overwhelming majority of Southerners stage a John Brown-style rebellion en masse, or even a major but bloodless nonviolent protest? That's because, whether he owned slaves or not, the antebellum white Southerner operated under the belief that blacks were animals at best, demons at worst.
Simply consider the way that whites of all classes banded together in the decades after the Civil War to beat, terrorize, lynch, disenfranchise and, once again, torture the newly freed blacks in their midst; then try to rationalize that 95 percent of whites actually wanted to live in harmony with people of color. This is as ridiculous as saying that because the vast majority of Germans didn't work in concentration camps, it's clear that they were friends to the Jews.
Saying that the Civil War was all about slavery is inaccurate and reductionist, to be sure. That said, it was enough about slavery that it is wholly offensive when modern Southerners latch onto outrageous totems like Colonel Reb and the Confederate flag. Say what you will about heritage, but a large part of the Confederacy was hate -- an unvarnished, unreasonable hate that was responsible for the death of millions.
If the South would like to draw on more positive aspects of its history to sentimentalize itself, it should look toward its rich cuisine or its cotillion culture. The Ole Miss beaus may not be as fearsome as a retired Confederate colonel who murdered black people for amusement, but is that old colonel a prototype worth celebrating anymore in a truly civilized and advanced society?
We shouldn't gloss over the fact that some antebellum Northerners owned slaves, or that modern citizens of Boston and New York can be as cruelly racist as any bigot you'll find in Mississippi or Alabama. But the simple fact is that nowhere else in America will you come across so many people who are openly wistful about things and people that represent our nation's most embarrassing, most violent and ugliest period of time.
In Wisconsin, for instance, Gov. Jim Doyle recently signed into law a ban on Indian mascots in public schools, and the Los Angeles Unified School District enacted a similar ban back in 1998. Yet in Oxford, Miss., thousands of Ole Miss students and alumni are uniting to pay homage to Colonel Reb and
In response to the growing criticism, the university retired the Colonel Reb mascot in 2003 and introduced a new mascot, the Rebel Black Bear, in 2010. While this change was an attempt to distance the university from its controversial past, it did not fully address the concerns of those who felt that the Rebel Black Bear was still tied to a history of racism and oppression. In recent years, the issue of the Ole Miss mascot has gained renewed attention.
Students, faculty, and alumni have taken up the cause of changing the mascot once again, arguing that it does not accurately represent the university's values of inclusivity and diversity. Proponents of the mascot change argue that it is necessary to create a more welcoming and inclusive environment for all students and community members. They believe that the continued use of a mascot tied to the Confederacy sends a message of exclusion and perpetuates harmful stereotypes. Opponents of the mascot change, on the other hand, argue that the Rebel Black Bear is a meaningful symbol for the university and should be preserved. They claim that the mascot represents the history and traditions of Ole Miss and that removing it would be erasing an important part of the university's identity. The debate over the Ole Miss mascot change is complex and often emotionally charged. Supporters of the change hope that by replacing the current mascot with a more inclusive and neutral symbol, the university can move forward and create a more inclusive and welcoming environment for all. Those opposed to the change fear that it will erase an important part of the university's history and tradition. Ultimately, the decision to change the Ole Miss mascot will likely be made by the university administration, taking into account input from students, alumni, and other stakeholders. This decision will undoubtedly have a significant impact on the university's identity and how it is perceived both within and outside of the Ole Miss community..
Reviews for "Ole Miss Mascot Change: The Psychological Impact on Students and Alumni"
1. John - 2 stars
I am extremely disappointed with the recent change in the Ole Miss mascot. The old mascot, Colonel Reb, was a beloved symbol of our university for decades. The new mascot, Landshark, lacks the historical and cultural significance that Colonel Reb held. It feels like a complete departure from our traditions and heritage. I understand the need for diversity and inclusivity, but we shouldn't sacrifice our history and identity in the process.
2. Sarah - 1 star
As an alumni of Ole Miss, I am appalled by the decision to change the mascot. The Landshark may be popular with some, but it lacks the charm and grace that Colonel Reb possessed. The new mascot feels forced and doesn't embody the spirit of our university. I miss seeing Colonel Reb on the sidelines, a symbol that connected us to our past and united us as a community. This change is a sad departure from our traditions and a disservice to our alumni.
3. Mike - 1 star
The mascot change at Ole Miss is a disgrace. Colonel Reb represented the history and tradition of our university, and to replace him with a generic landshark is a slap in the face. The Landshark lacks the personality and uniqueness that made Colonel Reb so special. This decision shows a lack of respect for our traditions and disregard for the opinions of the alumni and fans who loved Colonel Reb. I hope the university realizes their mistake and brings back our beloved mascot.