Boston University may retire mascot name ‘Rhett’ due to ‘Gone with the Wind’ connection

American universities must be in a competition to see which can out-stupid the other.

Yesterday news broke that a college was considering changing its wasp mascot — the insect, mind you — because some think it relates to the acronym WASP for “White Anglo Saxon Protestant.”

Boston University now is making a similar move.

According to The Boston Globe, BU president Robert Brown announced in an email Wednesday that the school is looking into “retiring” the name of mascot “Rhett” because “community members” are concerned about connections to the classic novel/film Gone with the Wind.

Brown noted that the mascot (a Boston Terrier, by the way) was chosen by students in 1922 and “sometime later” was nicknamed “Rhett” for Rhett Butler, the male lead in GWTW.

Brown conceded the name may have been a “playful pun” on the school’s color of scarlet, but added “it was a short leap for students — or perhaps a sports publicist — to link Rhett to Scarlett O’Hara.”

“Despite this seemingly cute connection between the movie and our mascot’s name, the fact is that the movie’s portrayal of the American Civil War, postwar reconstruction, and slavery is offensive,” Brown added. “And it is reasonable for people to question why, at a university founded by abolitionists, we have a mascot nicknamed for a character in a film whose racist depictions are completely at odds with our own tradition.”

David Adams

Article URL : https://www.thecollegefix.com/boston-university-may-retire-mascot-name-rhett-due-to-gone-with-the-wind-connection/