Editorial: Moving on from the Chieftain name

Cynthia Prairie | Dec 22, 2023 | Comments 8

By Cynthia Prairie
©2023 Telegraph Publishing

It’s time to move on from the chaos and drama that has plagued the board of the Green Mountain Unified School District since last March, when a reconstituted board took over and a volcano of anger and distrust over the future of the “Chieftain” name upended the normal flow of work.

As we reported today, on Thursday night:

Board member Steve Perani of Cavendish apologized for creating anti-chieftain posters that some took as offensive but were never supposed to hit public view;
Member Scott Kendall of Andover, who also faced complaints of his own for his social media posts criticizing members of the public who had appealed to the state the board’s earlier vote upholding the name, made a motion not to censure Perani;
Embattled board chair Deb Brown of Chester, who has been allowing vice chair Adrienne Williams to lead many of the recent meetings, resigned, citing the effects of a concussion she suffered weeks ago;
And the board took a re-vote on the Chieftains name and finally jettisoned it on a 6-3 vote. This happened after a member of the Abenaki nation said that her tribal council had no problem with the name “Chieftain” since Abenaki leaders are known as “chiefs.”

Now, the principal of Green Mountain Union High can concentrate on developing a plan to find a new name and maybe a new mascot to represent its sports teams. Or maybe not. Are they really necessary?

Either way, let the current and future GM students decide. We adults have certainly made a mess of the whole situation, acting more like children than the children themselves. If only we fought for school funding as hard as some fought to keep a contrived name that for years has been controversial.

Forget rebranding. The pro-Chieftains faction has made it clear with the clothes they wear that for them the Indian head and the name are forever tied together.

The name is further tainted by months of board dysfunction, not just because — as the Abenaki member Cindy Wubbenhorst pointed out — the Abenaki use Chief, not Chieftain, and the discarded mascot image was of a Plains Indian. Pretty ridiculous all the way around, isn’t it? Who said education was better “back then.”

But one of the most damaging consequences of the Chieftains fight has been the loss of Two Rivers Supervisory Union Superintendent Lauren Fierman who, after the first botched vote that kept the Chieftains name in May of this year, resigned because as she said she could not support it. Having the superintendent and three board members resign over this particular subject should have been enough of a hint to the remaining members that this issue needed a temperate reconsideration.

Fierman has been a knowledgeable, forthright, thoughtful and stabilizing figure for much of the school community. She has faced difficult situations from the moment she became principal at Green Mountain High in 2018: the 2018 flood at Chester-Andover Elementary that forced GM to make room for 240 young students and the February 2019 school threats, one of which forced police to lockdown, then evacuate the the school and its grounds. Then in 2020, when she became superintendent, she had to manage remote education when the Covid lockdown hit the schools. Her decision-making skills in crisis have been her strong suit.

Fierman’s background in law has brought a clear-eyed common sense to the board. And her understanding of the school community has surpassed that of her predecessors. It may have something to do with the fact that she actually bought into the community when she became principal of Green Mountain. Unlike other principals and superintendents, she purchased a home and moved into the community. Just living in our school community affords her special insight into our children’s needs.

She will be missed.

Speaking of being missed: Where was the state Agency of Education in this whole mess? It was supposed to hold hearings and make a decision before the fall 2023 start of school on whether the board violated the law by saying that the Chieftains name was not racist. There have been months of delays.

Then for months, the state and the AOE ghosted not only The Chester Telegraph but all those who appealed the GM board decision. At this point, the AOE seems to be an unreliable and feckless partner. But Thursday night’s decision by the board to jettison the name won’t mean that the AOE is freed from the issue. Stay tuned.

Filed Under: Commentary • Telegraph Editorial

About the Author: Cynthia Prairie has been a newspaper editor more than 40 years. Cynthia has worked at such publications as the Raleigh Times, the Baltimore News American, the Buffalo Courier Express, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Patuxent Publishing chain of community newspapers in Maryland, and has won numerous state awards for her reporting. As an editor, she has overseen her staffs to win many awards for indepth coverage. She and her family moved to Chester, Vermont in 2004.

Editorial: Moving on from the Chieftain name

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Editorial: Moving on from the Chieftain name

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