UND President Gives NCAA A Good Smacking Around Over Sioux Nickname Flap

From an open letter sent by UND President Dennis Kupchella to the NCAA:

Your intrusion into an area in which you had no business intruding has actually done considerable harm here and probably elsewhere. In order to leverage your opposition to Indian nicknames, opponents here have appeared to endorse your assertion that the environment here is hostile and abusive. Ironically, this has included some of the very people whose job it is to recruit American Indian students, and who have repeatedly said publicly, that we have the most supportive environment in America for Native American students. This will likely have the effect of driving Indian students away. We appear to have no choice but to pursue litigation as the only way to set the record straight.
The NCAA’s handling of our case has unfortunately left the impression that the nickname issue is an Indian vs. non-Indian issue here in the Dakotas. Rhetoric surrounding the latest Executive Committee decision implied that if we are forced to give up our nickname, it will be the fault of a single tribal leader. These impressions are, of course, false. Most Native people here are either supportive of our nickname or consider the issue trivial. There are both Native and non-Native opponents of all nicknames. We must do something to clear this up so that race relations here are not strained as a result of what you’ve done.
Should we stand firm and, with the support of North Dakota tribes, keep our nickname, we will, of course, be able to show substantial financial harm. Since we recently hosted the West Regional Hockey Tournament, it will be easy to show the benefit to the University and to the community almost down to the penny – a benefit we would lose under your policy.
I have not until now mentioned the fundamental unfairness of depriving our student-athletes of earned home-venue advantage. This strikes many of us as hostile to, and abusive of, the very group the NCAA is supposed to protect. This, we believe, is also fundamentally irrational.
Perhaps the most amazing thing is that through all of this – except for stirring things up – you have accomplished nothing. Your stand against Indian nicknames and logos – a stand that seem to start out against all references to races and national origin – fizzled before it started when you left out Irish, Celtics, Vandals, and a host of other names. Then, for highly convoluted, hypocritical, and in some instances mysterious reasons, you exempted the Aztecs and other American Indian nicknames at the outset and, following that, you exempted the use of Chippewa, the Utes, the Choctaws, the Catawbas, and the Seminoles, leaving the NCAA position on even American Indian nicknames about as solid as room-temperature Jell-O. All of this was, and remains, highly arbitrary and capricious.

Read the whole thing.