A school's mascot is its message to the world. This is who we are.
We are … the Wabasso Rabbits. The Moorhead Spuds. We're the Thunder. We're the Nighthawks. The Hilltoppers, the Mainstreeters, the Hubmen.
Mascots beam from banners and murals and team uniforms. They're woven into every high school memory and yearbook. Alumni wear the name across their sweatshirts, proud to have been one of the Roosevelt High Teddies.
But what if you don't like what your mascot is saying about your school?
For generations, the Raider was the face of school spirit in Northfield, Minn.
The winning student entry in a 1956 mascot design contest, the Raider started out as a leering, cutlass-flailing caricature with slanted eyes and a droopy mustache. Half-pirate, half Mongol warrior, all crude ethnic stereotype.
The district tried to soften the mascot's image over years. But even swapping his sword out for a basketball didn't stop students from dubbing him the Racist Raider.
"It just didn't age well," said Northfield Public Schools Superintendent Matt Hillmann. "There was a significant portion of our community that viewed [the Raider] as having accentuated facial features that were really a derogatory representation of Asians."