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EDWARD LIN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Fourth-year American literature and culture student Angel Perez makes known his opposition to the use of American Indian mascots.

By Kelly Rayburn

DAILY BRUIN SENIOR STAFF

krayburn@media.ucla.edu

Two days after the California State Assembly voted down a bill that would have banned American Indian mascots in California’s public schools, members of the American Indian Student Association at UCLA were declaring victory.

“We are victorious. No one has gotten this far before,” said Crystal Roberts, a fifth-year psycho-biology and American Indian studies student who led a Meyerhoff Park speak-out that advocated the abolition of race-based mascots.

Tuesday, Assembly Bill 2115 – called the California Racial Mascots Act – was defeated with bipartisan support, 35-29. The bill would have been the first state-wide legislation in the United States to require public K-12 schools, community colleges and California State Universities to change their mascots. The UC, governed by its own Board of Regents, would not have been directly affected.

About 100 schools – including Arcadia High School, which sends many of its “Apache” graduates to become “Bruins” each year – would have had to change their names.

Opposers of the bill – including assembly Republican Leader Bob Cox, R–Fair Oaks, who rallied Republicans to join a few Democrats to vote the bill down – said the decision to ban American-Indian mascots should be left to local school boards. Others said the bill represented political correctness to the highest degree.

“I don’t think Sacramento has all the answers for local communities when it comes to deciding a mascot,” said Tyler Wade, legislative director for Dennis Hollingsworth, R – Temecula, who voted against the bill.

Backers of the bill felt otherwise, saying the issue is a matter civil rights.

“Civil rights are not a matter of local control,” said Jackie Goldberg, D – Los Angeles, the bill’s author said in an Associated Press article. “They are a matter of simple dignity.”

At UCLA, students appreciated Goldberg’s efforts and questioned why American Indian mascots are prevalent, while other race-based mascots are not.

“ ... You don’t have the Cleveland Darkies, you don’t have the Orange County Honkies or the Los Angeles Latinos,” Roberts said. “But you do have the Cleveland Indians and the Washington Redskins.”

AISA President Alex Red Eagle, meanwhile, took strong exception with opinions that American Indian mascots honor American Indians, saying those arguments are “just a lot of ridiculousness.”

“(Mascots) do not represent what being an American Indian is all about,” he said.

“You say you’re honoring us. You’re not honoring us. That is absolutely false ... I am not a mascot. I am not your mascot,” he said.

Though earlier in the week Goldberg said she might try to introduce the bill on the floor one more time before today – the last day in the assembly’s legislative term – a spokeswoman for the assemblywoman said she would almost surely wait until next year before bringing the bill up again.

And student supporters, disappointed but not defeated, vowed to fight on.

“We will fight ’til the end,” Roberts said. “We will fight for our children, we will fight for our grandchildren.”

With reports from Christina Jenkins, Daily Bruin Contributor