Lansing's J.W. Sexton High School selects new mascot

LANSING — J.W. Sexton High School students and graduates soon will be known as an eight-legged arachnid with a painful stinger.

The Lansing School District Board of Education reviewed four mascot finalists to replace the former Big Reds moniker. The final student ranking included J-Dubbs, Scorpions, Cardinals and Big Dawgs.

Trustees chose Scorpions by an 8-0 vote. Trustee Amy Hodgin was not present.

“We wanted to have something that was brandable and marketable. That would have been very difficult with a J-Dubbs mascot,” said Gabrielle Lawrence, president of the Board of Education. “This lets us have an image we can put on football helmets and wrestling mats and things like that.”

Members of the Native American and Sexton communities have called the former mascot an offensive nickname that was derogatory toward Native Americans, and the district set about finding a new mascot the community could support.

Student support for J-Dubbs as the new mascot was clear in the final vote, Sexton Principal Dan Boggan said, with a “fairly large split” between the top choice, J-Dubbs, and the second-most popular, Scorpions.

Lawrence, a Sexton alumna, and students said J-Dubbs has been part of the school’s vocabulary and culture for decades. Rachel Willis, vice president of the board, said the school will continue to be known as “J-Dubb Sexton.”

“No matter what the mascot is, the school will always be J.W. Sexton. You will always be J-Dubb Sexton,” she said. “We are not taking away the name of the school.”

Two students who spoke for the student body during Thursday’s meeting prior to the vote, Christopher Manuel and Joseph Kyle, both supported the mascot change and hoped to see J-Dubbs selected.

Manuel said the school has always been known as J-Dubb.

“Ever since I’ve been here, I’ve been here since seventh grade, all I heard was J-Dubb. Before I was even here at Sexton and I was watching the football games, every talk between family and friends was J-Dubbs. The school is known as J-Dubbs. It’s a very powerful school.”

Kyle’s uncle and all of his siblings went through Sexton. He has rarely heard the school referred to as J.W. Sexton. It’s always been J-Dubb.

“This is what our alumni, our students, our stakeholders came up with,” Boggan said. “This is important to our community, our alumni. It’s a culture thing.”

With the new mascot selected, the school district will quickly look to select a new Scorpions logo. During the process of creating and selecting a logo, community members will have several opportunities to provide feedback.

Lawrence said they hope to have the new logo selected before winter break, which begins Dec. 26.

The final mascot and logo will be unveiled during a future pep rally. Official hope to have both the new mascot and logo fully introduced and implemented by the start of the 2023-24 school year.

Plans to drop Big Reds as the school’s mascot and begin searching for a new one were announced on July 7. The school district received an $87,500 grant from the Native American Heritage Fund to support the effort. The Native American Heritage Fund helps fund projects aimed at eliminating insensitive school mascots, while honoring Native American culture and history.

Boggan previously estimated the rebrand will cost about $250,000. Officials requested the full $250,000 in their Native American Heritage Fund grant request. Lawrence previously said any leftover costs not covered by the grant would be covered by the school district.

District officials said they planned to apply for a second grant from the Native American Heritage Fund in 2023.

Big Reds has been Sexton’s mascot and nickname since the school opened in 1943 in what was then Central High School. The logo has changed several times over the years. The last change came in 2014 when the logo changed from a Native American wearing a headdress to a red block “S” with a 2 in the top right corner.

Last year, Lansing School District received an addition $47,712 grant from the Native American Heritage Fund to rebrand Riddle Elementary School and drop it’s former mascot, the Little Reds. Rhinos became the new mascot, named in part after Potter Park Zoo’s former black rhino calf Jaali.

Sexton joins several other schools in Michigan to drop Native American mascots, including Okemos Public Schools and its transition from Chiefs to Wolves, and Saranac Community Schools, who replaced its Redskins mascot with Red Hawks.

About 392 Native American students are enrolled at Lansing School District, according to Ramona Henry, the Native American coordinator for the Lansing School District.

Contact Mark Johnson at majohnson2@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ByMarkJohnson.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Lansing's J.W. Sexton High School selects new mascot