Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 24, 1993                   TAG: 9403180011
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: F-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

VERY UN-P.C.

More specifically, the Minuteman of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst prevails. He's still the school's mascot despite an assault on his race, his sex and his musket.

For the Minuteman is, alas, a man, and a white man at that, and to have him as a university mascot these days is an affront to some. It is now inappropriate, among a handful of students, anyway, to honor a white man who is armed, even one remembered as a hero of the war that won our country's independence.

Without the Minuteman and other Revolutionary War fighters (all armed with guns, the brutes, instead of wet hankies), every one of us might be sipping tea and paying taxes to Queen Elizabeth.

But establishing a nation was deemed an unworthy contribution to merit such a high honor as being the university's mascot. It is an honor, that is, when the mascot is a white male. The distinction was disrespectful when the mascot was the Redman. The university abandoned him in 1972 as culturally insensitive.

Luckily for the forces of reason, the alumni of the university - educated, it seems, in more tolerant times - demanded that the Minuteman stay at his post despite the protests of some female athletes, and there he remains.