Valparaiso University, a private Lutheran school in northwestern Indiana, announced today that it has adopted the Beacons as its new team name, replacing the Crusaders—a term school officials say has been embraced by hate groups.
The university’s president José D. Padilla said the new team moniker “directly connects to the University’s motto, ‘In Thy Light We See Light,’ and represents the Valparaiso University community in many ways.”
“We are beacons of knowledge for our students’ academic, social and spiritual growth. Above all, we are beacons of God’s light around the world. We light the way for our students, so that once they graduate, they shine their light for others,” Padilla said in a news release.
School officials announced in February that they had retired the Crusaders name following input from students, faculty and alumni. It follows a move from prominent evangelical school Wheaton College, where leaders replaced their “Crusader” mascot in 2000.
At Valparaiso, the decades-long debate over this team moniker has recently intensified. Recent scholarship has shown how the Ku Klux Klan has long used symbols of the Crusades, which were a series of bloody religious wars starting in the 11th century between Christians and Muslims.
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For years, Valpo’s sports mascot had been a helmeted figure in faux armor. But the school’s faculty and student senates each passed resolutions calling for a change and the university’s alumni board of directors supported reassessing the team name’s appropriateness.
Beacons was chosen after a months-long process that included nearly 1,000 suggestions and input from students, student-athletes, faculty, staff and alumni at the 3,100-student university, located in Valparaiso, about 15 miles southeast of Gary.
The new nickname, new mascot and related imagery will be phased in during the 2021–2022 academic year, and Valparaiso’s intercollegiate athletic teams will immediately be known as the Beacons, the school said.
Many of the university’s marks and logos, including its colors and the “Shield of Character,” will remain part of the university’s brand, school officials said.
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4 Responses
It’s unique and we are called to be light in our world.
I like it, and I love the thoughtfulness behind their decision.
Hmm. Not sure if I’m for or against that. The new name is good, but we need to understand the crusades as well. If your faith and life is in peril from subjugating armies wanting to enslave and torture you and colonise every part of your territory, you fight back. But war is terrible. Horrible things happen, the crusaders did some bad things. The Muslims did more, more comprehensively and…well, they started it.
If it was not for Charles Martel, and later Jan Sobieski. Christianity would have been extinguished in Europe, just as it had been in North Africa by colonising, slave trading Muslims.
Let’s be honest here. What we have are some woke educators and students caving to pressure from left wing groups. It is only a matter of time before the name Jesus Christ will be considered offensive and need to be removed from anything associated with this school as well as other Christian schools. When that time comes I have no doubt that the administrations of these schools will bow to that pressure.