By LESTER CHANG
Fremont High School seniors Daniel Hackett and Maycher Charig represent camps of students who could easily argue over the school's Indian mascot, which district trustees last year deemed offensive to Native Americans and this year want replaced.
Hackett, who is part Cherokee, points to "Indian strength and pride" when he talks about the logo and wants it to remain. Charig, who is Filipino, said the logo "degrades Native Americans" and wants it removed.
Against questions about what could have been and what will be, 1,600 students and about 100 faculty members at Fremont High School are poised to select a new mascot on Feb. 28, ending a controversy that has divided residents, alumni and students since last spring.
Following two months of work that produced about 120 possible mascots, students recently voted to go with one of these four: cardinals, firebirds, jaguars and wolves (or lobos, the Spanish term for wolves).
Some 470 votes from middle-school students who plan to attend the high school next year also will be added to the final results, said Peggy Raun-Linde, assistant principal of activities at Fremont.
School officials will announce the selected mascot on March 1, and it will be presented to the Fremont Union High School District board of trustees on March 5.
Sylvia Machamer, who led a group to remove the mascot, said she applauded the board's decision to retire the mascot last November and said the selection of a new mascot was "a wonderful idea."
"I think these are exciting times for students there," she said. "It will be a mascot they thought about and selected, rather than one they inherited."
Last May, several Native Americans complained to the board that the mascot was derogatory to their culture and they wanted it changed. But residents and alumni wanted it kept, saying the mascot, prominently displayed in red paint beside a streaking arrow on the wall of the school gym that faces Sunnyvale-Saratoga Road, was part of the history of the area.
"It has been a long hard struggle for years," Machamer said of efforts to remove the mascot. "It has been only in the last five years that people have listened. I know not all people are happy, but through education and time, people will realize that it was wrong to use this mascot."
Hackett doesn't think so.
"I think it should be kept the same," Hackett recently said at the school. "When I look at the logo, I don't feel less self-esteem. I feel pride."
Jamie Kashitani, a freshman, said the mascot should be kept because it is cherished by many residents who grew up in the area and attended the school. "My aunt went there in the 1970s. My friend and his mom and dad went there," he said. "The logo doesn't offend me, and I am not going to vote for the new logo."
Some students said they will vote under protest.
"Many of my friends felt the old mascot should be kept," said a 15-year-old sophomore, who asked not to be identified. "They don't like the logos that have been suggested. But they are going to vote because at least they will have some say."
School official Raun-Linde said students were given a chance to develop 120 suggested mascots and that they and school staffers voted on them, producing the final list of five choices now up for vote. The Fremont razorbacks, saber cats, flames and ferrets were among the less popular suggestions.
Absentee ballots will be sent to students attending De Anza College and students in private high schools who are registered to attend the school during the next school year, she said.
Students who don't vote on Feb. 28 can vote the following day, Raun-Linde said.
Fourteen students and staff members will sit on a special committee to promote the five logos, Raun-Linde said. Down the road, the new mascot will be painted over the existing one.
The effort marks a new spirit of cooperation and understanding at the school about the mascot issue, she said.
"There is peace now. There is a new kind of excitement they are embracing, and they are taking a positive approach," Raun-Linde said. "The Indian issue is history."
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, February 7, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.