On Friday, the oldest high school football rivalry in the state resumes as Berlin plays at Ripon.

It may be the last meeting between the Berlin Indians and the Ripon Tigers. That is because by this time next year, Berlin will have to have another nickname besides “Indians,” thanks to the state Department of Public Instruction, which ruled that Berlin’s “Indians” is derogatory.

Or perhaps not. The Mukwonago school district won in Waukesha County Circuit Court when a judge declared the Indian mascot law unconstitutional under the provision in which a DPI examiner decides whether the mascot is permissible. The judge ruled that having a DPI examiner, attorney Paul Sherman, decide was a conflict of interest. Sherman also decided that Berlin can’t be the Indians anymore, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Kevin Binversie describes how we got to this silliness:

Under Wisconsin law, school districts are placed under a quasi-judicial procedure before the state’s Department of Public Instruction, or DPI, if any complaint from a district resident is filed against the school. It would then be up to a DPI bureaucrat to decide if the mascot “promotes stereotyping, pupil harassment, and discrimination.”

Each of the four schools — Osseo–Fairchild, Kewaunee, Mukwonago and Berlin — hit with complaints violated the law. Since these rulings came down, Kewaunee changed its name from Indians to Storm before a hearing took place, and according to the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association, Osseo–Fairchild has yet to determine a replacement for its old nickname, Chieftains.

Four other school districts — Gale–Ettrick–Trempealeau, Menominee, Poynette and Wonewoc–Center — switched their nicknames in the past four years. Menominee School District officials told WEAU-TV in Eau Claire in September the reason for their switch was out of fear that they may be the next target of a complaint to DPI.

This law likely was intended as the start of a second attempt to purge Native American mascots in Wisconsin. In the early 1990s, under fear and threat of costly lawsuits, many school districts backed away from their original nicknames. Sheboygan South’s Redmen became the Redwings, and the Indians of Seymour became the Thunder. Meanwhile, dozens of schools known as either the Raiders or Warriors found themselves in binds over whether their logo would lead to costly litigation.

The law stipulates that only one complaint from one school district resident is required to start the nickname-erasure process. (And it certainly demonstrates the times we live in when governmental bodies make decisions because of fear of what a higher level of government will do to them.) Read the Save the Berlin High School Mascot! group on Facebook, and you will conclude that the complainant in Berlin’s case did it out of spite to his neighbors.

Additional controversy in Berlin’s case comes from the Berlin High School Homecoming parade, where three students carried this sign:

My wife, who  is part American Indian (which means our kids are too), grew up on a farm between Lancaster (Flying Arrows) and Potosi (Chieftains). Northeast of Lancaster is the Riverdale (Chieftains) and Seneca (Indians) school districts. Potosi is in the same athletic conference as Belmont (Braves) and Black Hawk (Warriors). South of Ripon is Waupun (Warriors), and west of Ripon is Wisconsin Dells (Chiefs).

This is not limited to high schools. After I announce the Tigers and Indians Friday, I’ll be announcing Ripon College against Beloit College Saturday afternoon. Ripon used to be known as the Redmen, reportedly (though this is not clear) to honor 1920s Ripon football player and coach Donald “Red” Martin. The Redmen became the Red Hawks in the 1990s. Two weeks ago, Ripon played Knox College, which changed its nickname from the Siwash (formerly a local tribe) to the Prairie Fire for the same reasons.

The Democratic-controlled Legislature passed and Gov. James Doyle signed the anti-Indian-mascot bill (which included no state aid for the expenses of replacing a mascot, making it yet another unfunded mandate) after major lobbying by the Wisconsin Indian Education Association, which claims that “Indians are people — not mascots.” So, you ask, where is the effort to extend this people-not-mascots initiative to places like Stoughton (Vikings), Freedom (Irish), Sparta (Spartans) or Oostburg (Flying Dutchmen)? Why are, in order, Norwegians, Irish, Greeks or Dutch Wisconsinites not fighting to eliminate those nicknames? (For that matter, one would think given Ireland’s history with Great Britain that the Irish would be trying to eliminate the nickname of my alma mater, Madison La Follette — the Lancers and our English logos.)

There are two reasons. The first is that the WIEA claims to have education on its side. It has an entire page of the supposedly pernicious effects of Indian mascots on American Indian children. Read through, and you’ll get an idea of the progressivism at its worst, tyranny of the experts, psychobabble, political correctness and, to borrow George W. Bush’s phrase, soft bigotry of low expectations inherent in educational research today.

Binversie brings up the other reason:

With the Mukwonago decision now out there, it may be the opportune time to repeal the current flawed law or simply correct it. State Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, has been working on repeal legislation for a year and said last week’s decision could spark enough action inside the Legislature for his bill to move out of the Assembly’s Homeland Security and State Affairs Committee.

Nass is cautious about its chances for success though, blaming backroom dealing among committee chairman Karl Van Roy, R-Green Bay, Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, and moneyed interests fueled by tribal casinos.

“From the beginning, Chairman Van Roy has refused to allow this bill to move forward in the committee process,” Nass said. “Chairman Van Roy’s decision has previously been backed by Speaker Fitzgerald based on the strong opposition of the state’s Indian Tribes, especially the Potawatomi Tribe.”

Van Roy was one of two Republicans to vote for the original legislation in 2010.

Thanks to Indian tribal gaming, the tribes are big political players in this state. Given tribes’ support of Democrats ever since the federal court ruling that allowed tribal gaming as long as the state allows such gaming as a lottery and bingo (which was in part paid off by Doyle’s indefinitely extending tribal gaming compacts a decade ago), Van Roy and Fitzgerald are mistaken if they think they’re going to get more tribal money or votes by burying the bill in committee. The spurious accusations of racism against Republicans haven’t gone away in the two years since this legislation became law, have they?

There are some interesting local ironies. The 14th Senate District is represented by Sen. Luther Olsen (R–Ripon), a Berlin High School graduate. The 14th also includes the Weyauwega–Fremont School District, which shares Berlin’s nickname. Yet Olsen has not publicly (as far as I know) come out to support repealing the bill. Olsen’s Recallarama opponent, Rep. Fred Clark (D–Baraboo), who voted for the bill when the Democrats controlled the Assembly, never bothered to explain where Berlin, Weyauwega–Fremont and other Indian-nicknamed school districts should get the money to change athletic and band uniforms, insignia on athletic facility walls, and other uses of the logos.

The other irony is in the circuit court decision, as Mike Nichols notes:

As he said during his deposition in the lawsuit against him and [Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony] Evers, he works for DPI, whose leadership is on record as saying it wants to get rid of all race-based nicknames. The way the law and DPI are structured, it would probably be impossible for Sherman to be fair to school districts and keep his job.

The process, in other words, is biased against districts that happen to have harmless nicknames tied to the American Indian history of their communities.

The districts are getting railroaded because, under a state law [Circuit Judge Donald] Hassin said he finds “uncommonly silly,” a single complaint filed with DPI against a school district will almost certainly result in the district having to find a new nickname.

The district gets a hearing in front of someone such as Sherman — but the result is essentially predetermined because the burden is not on those who complain to prove the districts are discriminating with their nicknames. The burden is on the districts to prove they are not.

This, it turns out, is about as easy as proving you’ve never swallowed a salamander or worn pink underwear. You can argue all you want that you find salamanders unappetizing and much prefer lavender, but how do you prove it?

Patrick Gasper, spokesman for DPI, said the department is required to uphold the law and hasn’t decided whether to appeal Hassin’s decision.

Maybe they should make a different sort of appeal: one to the Legislature to get rid of the officially silly law once and for all.

Until then, there are dozens of school districts in Wisconsin where a citizen could file a complaint and, without proving anything, get DPI to aid and abet in labeling the district discriminatory — no matter what the facts are.

Too bad the folks who fight so hard against bias don’t recognize it in themselves.

The final irony is that no one chooses an athletic mascot for the purpose of self-derogation. Most athletic logos are chosen because of the kinds of qualities inherent in the symbol — strength, bravery, endurance, cleverness,  and so on. (Berlin’s “Indians” are named for the Mascoutin tribe, which formerly lived in the area.)

If there is any derogatory intent, it’s found not in the athletic teams, but in their opponents should they, for instance, call to “Scalp the Indians” or “Sink the Vikings” or whatever. That is covered in the WIAA’s and Midwest Conference’s admonitions, announced before games, against derogatory cheers. But if that weren’t the case, so what? (Neither the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution nor the Wisconsin Constitution give you the right to not have your feelings hurt or to not be offended.) Binversie points out:

But is it racist to have a mascot of just “Indians” or something like “Blackhawks,” the second-most common Native American mascot name in Wisconsin?

Hardly.

Mascots are not meant by design to be divisive entities in their communities, but instead they are rallying point, something the community can get behind and join. This may be why those committed to the extinction of all Native American mascots in Wisconsin also are opposed to letting communities decide these matters on their own through local referendums.

They know the votes aren’t there to get the outcome they would prefer, so they are left with resorting to using the governmental cudgel of DPI to get what they want.

The law needs to be changed to give, at minimum, communities a voice in their own defense, if not just a voice before their own state government. If it can’t be changed for the betterment of that principle, then it needs to be repealed outright.

What happens next in Berlin is an interesting question, because it gives the school district the unappealing choice of spending thousands of dollars defending itself in court, or spending thousands of dollars getting rid of all the logos, particularly given the unpopularity of the latter choice. The Berlin School District’s administrator told WFRV-TV that the school district wouldn’t appeal. On the other hand, a public meeting about the mascot will be held Monday evening. (And given the Waukesha County decision and the similarity to the Berlin case, one wonders if the law now can be legally enforced, since the constitutional flaw was in how the law was written.)

I’m surprised no one has yet brought up the R-word — recall — against any Berlin school board member who supports eliminating the Indian mascot. Unlike the recalls over public employee collective bargaining, eliminating the Berlin Indian will cost the school district significant money. If I lived in the Berlin school district and the mascot was changed against my wishes, I would certainly feel free to never again vote for any referendum the school district sought, whether for a new school building or to exceed revenue caps.

This is the sort of thing that makes people hate government. To assuage a special interest group, state government mandates spending millions of dollars (the collective cost of erasing Indian mascots from Wisconsin) and/or otherwise depriving us of our liberties and our traditions in the name of trendy social change. Who benefits from getting rid of Indian mascots? No one.