Chippewa Valley calls its teams Big Reds.
Brother Rice High in Bloomfield Hills can keep fielding teams called the Warriors and Chippewa Valley Schools can send the Big Reds into competition.
Federal regulators on Monday dismissed a Michigan Department of Civil Rights request to ban the use of Native American mascots and nicknames, Lori Higgins reports in the Free Press.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has dismissed a complaint filed against 35 Michigan school districts that alleged that the use of such imagery is discriminatory. . . .
The 35 districts cited in the complaint include seven school districts in metro Detroit. . . .
The federal department, in its letter dismissing the complaint, said the information the state department provided “is not sufficient for OCR to infer that racial discrimination has occurred or is occurring.” said Catherine Criswell, director of the OCR office.Criswell said the department had not provided to OCR any specific examples of race-based incidents or identified “any students or individuals who have suffered specific harm because of the alleged discrimination at any of the named school districts.”
The Warriors play for Walled Lake Western High in Oakland.
Though the complaint came from Lansing officials, Higgins writes, it "could have had national implications and would have forced schools to choose new mascots, names or imagery."
Other Metro Detroit schools' athletic nicknames listed in the complaint are the Walled Lake Western Warriors, the Chiefs of Plymouth-Canton High and the Chieftains of Utica High.
Previous coverage:
State vs. Local School Teams: 'The Use of American Indian Imagery . . . Must Cease,' Feb. 8
