Wave Maker

In the most recent instance of political correctness run amok on the campuses of America's finest universities, one Josie Harper, the Dartmouth College Athletic Director, has taken it upon herself to apologize to the Dartmouth College student body due to the upcoming men's hockey face-off between Dartmouth and the University of North Dakota's Fighting Sioux:

Josie Harper, Dartmouth's athletic director, wrote a letter to the student newspaper, The Dartmouth, last month about the game, saying: "I must offer a sincere apology to the Native American community and the Dartmouth community as a whole for an event that will understandably offend and hurt people within our community."

Dartmouth, in Hanover, N.H., has decided to set up a committee that will consider whether the school should refuse to compete against teams that use Native American nicknames and mascots....

...Harper called the University of North Dakota's use of a Native American symbol "offensive and wrong."

No word on whether or not Harper is, herself, a member of the Sioux Nation, but it doesn't seem to matter to her that the Fighting Sioux's emblem was designed by a Native American and that, at least in North Dakota, the Sioux don't have any problem with it. Does anyone else really have any say in the matter?

This incident follows the original controversy in which that ever-reliable bastion of diversity, the NCAA, instituted its policy against the "hostile or abusive" use of American Indian names, mascots and imagery:

"But as a national association, we believe that mascots, nicknames or images deemed hostile or abusive in terms of race, ethnicity or national origin should not be visible at the championship events that we control."

See the problem? Deemed by whom to be hostile or abusive? The non-Native American athletic director at Dartmouth? Any fan? Or does one have to be a member of the "abused" tribe to have standing to "deem" the emblem offensive?

I wonder if Ms. Harper sought the input of any members of the Sioux Nation before she sought to defend their sensibilities.

If I were a Dartmouth graduate, I'd be mortified by this nonsense.