As I’m sure many of you have already heard, MMSD has gone through with the high school rebranding despite strong protests from the community and students as well the ethical questions surrounding the company they partnered with to create the logos, BSN Sports. For more information on that, you’ll want to read my previous article on the issue.
Now, MMSD Athletic Director Jeremy Schlitz claimed that the new logos were chosen exclusively based on student responses to the surveys last spring, likely because it was painfully obvious that the community was not giving them the answers they wanted. But looking at the results of the surveys—which are only available via filing a public records request—it’s clear that most students weren’t happy either. The majority of us here at VPM wanted to keep our original mascot, and La Follette’s most favored of the new designs earned that status precisely because it was similar to their original. East was the only school whose student body seemed to express a desire for change, and the option they favored was not the one MMSD chose as the final logo!
Evidently, student voice wasn’t as great a factor as MMSD would like to claim it was, making this just another example of the district seeking out community input, only to ignore it when it disagrees with the decisions they’ve already made behind closed doors. For another instance of this, see Henry Riley’s evaluation of the weighted G.P.A. decision.
As for me, my opinions on the whole affair have not changed the slightest. I still think that partnering with a company whose parent corporation is best known for turning cheerleading into a meat grinder for young women is not the move for producing something that symbolizes our community. I still think that there should be nothing about us without us, and that includes the logo design process! We—the students of every high school facing these rebrands—should’ve had input beyond a couple of surveys. I’m still quite upset with the district for squandering this opportunity to build lasting bonds of scholastic identity.
They’ve always talked a big game about how this overhaul will build pride and affirm community, language echoed in their statements about the wider MMSD rebrand, and yet they make very few moves to actually accomplish this. It’s like they’ve convinced themselves that if they can just pick the right hip marketing scheme, surely everyone will collapse to their knees in awe of their business acumen and embrace one another as beloved countrymen. But building community doesn’t work like that. It isn’t a switch you flip, it’s not the latest silver-bullet strategy that’s been sold to you, it’s work. It’s a never-ending labor of love and trust and respect, and honestly? I have not been feeling very respected or loved by MMSD lately.
Granted, they stand firm against the tidal waves of hate emanating from the current Administration. Words cannot describe how grateful I am to go to school in a district that encourages GSAs, that goes out of its way to build more gender-neutral bathrooms, that affirms queer identities as real and worthy of respect.
But as a queer person who occasionally peruses the news, I can’t help but be scared that this support won’t last. We’ve already seen numerous examples of the Trump Administration targeting progressive (i.e., supportive of their students) school districts from Maine to Colorado, holding funding hostage to try and force transphobic policy down their throats, and MMSD has, in the past, been specifically called out as a district that teaches students to “disrupt the gender binary” (which makes the gender and sexuality unit of health class sound a lot more metal than it actually is). I want to believe that MMSD would push through direct federal pressure—and up until recently, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that they would. But their recent lack of transparency, especially in this time of crisis, is somewhat alarming.
This all might seem like a dramatic conclusion to pull from some fudged numbers on a survey and a baffling determination to keep unweighted G.P.A.s, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from occasionally perusing the news, it’s that things are escalating quickly. For now, I still feel as if I can trust MMSD. But if they don’t shape up—if they keep going down this path of obfuscations and disregarded surveys, if they keep ignoring the community they’re supposed to be stewards of—that may change.
