Why students at an affluent school want to drop longtime mascot: The Millionaires
At Lenox Memorial Middle and High School in the Berkshire region of western Massachusetts, the longtime mascot is the Millionaires — but if most of the students have their way, it won’t be for long. The decision, however, is not in their hands — and some folks in the affluent town of Lenox don’t want it to change.
During a recent student council survey of the more than 400 students in grades 6-12, about two-thirds of those who responded said they no longer want to be known as the Millionaires, according to Lenox Public Schools Superintendent Timothy Lee. Nearly 80 percent of the students from grades 6-12 answered the survey, which had a number of questions about what they wanted the student council to accomplish during the next school year.
Why?
“The rationale explained by the student council leaders was that Millionaires no longer accurately represented their identity and who they are as a group of students,” said Lee. Students report being harassed by rival teams because of the name, and the Berkshire Eaglequoted Julie Monteleone, a student council member, as telling the district’s governing board recently:
“The term Millionaires has become associated with the top 1 percent of our country, which excludes and burdens a very large majority of the population and currently plays a large role in the division of the United States.”
While the Millionaires has been the school’s mascot since the 1950s — referring to wealthy Why students at an affluent school want to drop longtime mascot: The Millionaires - The Washington Post:
