BELLINGHAM — Will the new mascot for Bellingham High School be the BayHawks, the Raptors or a capital B?
Those are the choices going before people connected to Bellingham High School, which is changing its mascot from the Red Raiders to “promote equity and inclusion,” Principal Linda Wise Miller said in a message on Tuesday, May 18.
The current mascot has a “racialized history” and the renaming effort is about “inclusion and social justice,” according to previous Bellingham Herald articles.
The Red Raiders have been the high school’s mascot since its opening in 1938.
For the school’s first 61 years, the mascot was represented by a Native American warrior logo.
In 2000, the logo was changed to a red-tailed hawk to align with school district bylaws, passed in 1996, that required school mascots “be respectful of different cultural values and attitudes, and will depict individuals and groups with fairness, dignity and respect.”
But the mascot name remained the same.
Then, in January, Bellingham High School announced it was forming a task force to rename the mascot — part of a national movement to cast off offensive and insensitive names and logos, and prior to the introduction of a Washington state measure that would bar public schools in the state from using Native American names, symbols and images as their school mascots, team names or logos.
The state measure has since been approved and signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee. It doesn’t apply to schools within Washington state’s 29 tribes.
Pick a new name
Families, alumni and others with a past, current or future link to Bellingham High School have until noon Tuesday, May 25, to provide their feedback on a new mascot by voting online.
They have four choices.
- BayHawks, which is described as a large raptor that’s similar to an osprey.
- Raptors, as in velociraptor, a dinosaur.
- Raptors, as in a bird of prey.
- The letter B, described as a collegiate B that has represented the high school since its start 83 years ago.
Once a new name has been selected, a new design will be created.
