Seminoles, Chippewas, Choctaws: How do schools outside Utah with Native mascots support their students?

Editor’s note • This story was produced in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit news organization that supports local newsrooms in reporting on higher education, and the Pulitzer Center’s StoryReach U.S. Fellowship.

When the NCAA asked the University of Utah to drop its Utes team name, then-President Michael Young was surprised.

The U. leader quickly defended the name for being tied to a specific tribe and honoring the Ute people — with their permission. And he chastised the leaders of the NCAA for considering it among the “hostile and abusive” Native mascots at other colleges that also made the 2005 list asked to change their names.

“I wonder pretty seriously if they actually have a clue what we’re doing,” Young said at the time.

What has the U. been doing — then or now — to support the Ute Indian Tribe in exchange for using its name?

In the memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with the tribe, the U.’s primary obligation is to help Ute students pursue and attend higher education. Every version of the agreement has included that promise since the first written MOU was signed in 2003.

But the MOU does not require the U. to encourage Ute students to choose the U., to admit any set number, or to track, report or improve any metrics related to those who enroll. And the scholarship the U. promised the tribe in 2014 has no numerical requirements — some years, it isn’t given out at all, even if a student who qualifies is attending. The unchanged award amount doesn’t fully cover the cost of tuition at this point.

Martha Macomber, the educational coordinator at the U. who works directly with the Ute Tribe in implementing the MOU, says she keeps track, independently, of the number of Ute students going to the university. She says roughly one to three enroll each year, counting both officially enrolled members of the tribe and self-identified Utes.

The university has cited the Ute Tribe’s small and declining population as the reason for the small number of Ute students admitted.

“The way I see our work is to support all students and try not to differentiate treatment based on tribal affiliation,” said Samantha Eldridge, who is the director of the newly renamed Center for Native Excellence and Tribal Engagement. The name change was prompted by the state’s anti-diversity bill aimed at higher education.

When Eldridge was an associate instructor at the U. in 2013, she pushed for the school to drop the Utes name and feather logo. Now she is responsible for working with Indigenous students and tracking the students who receive the U.’s Native Student Scholarship, which is for students who are enrolled members of any of Utah’s sovereign tribes. Six recipients, so far, have graduated, she said.

Here’s a look at what other colleges with tribal names do.

Catawba College tracks tribe’s students for success

In 2005, when the NCAA prohibited teams from having “hostile or abusive” mascots, it questioned 18 schools, including the U. and Catawba College in North Carolina.

That private school had used the “Indians” name in athletics since 1925 to represent the local Catawba Nation in neighboring South Carolina. Like the U., by the time the NCAA issued its letter, Catawba College had stopped using a live Indian mascot and removed renderings of Native Americans from across campus. It also started using its Block C logo, much like the U. did with the Block U.

Catawba College said it wanted to keep its nickname and imagery in honor of the local tribe. The chief of the Catawba Nation wrote a letter supporting that. And the school was granted an exception.

In return, the college started offering a scholarship to Catawba students in 2007. It started slowly, with the agreement setting out that one student would be granted money every four years. An award covered the student’s tuition for a full four years, though, including any inflation or tuition hikes; the cost of one year at the private college is about $33,000.

The scholarship was expanded in fall 2022 to select a new student annually. The president or vice president at the college can also now choose to approve additional scholarships for qualified members beyond that, said school spokesperson Jodi Bailey. And the school has chosen to do that every year since the change, Bailey said.

The Catawba Nation has a looser requirement than the Utes to be considered an enrolled member, based only on proving lineal descent from its historic enrollment lists instead of meeting a specific blood level. Today, there are 3,300 members; the Utes are just under 3,000.

Catawba College publicly accounts for the members it enrolls: It had four students enroll last fall and five this fall. It also publicly acknowledges its poor graduation rate among tribal students so far; it says through its tracking, it has been aware of that issue and has been working on it.

The school expects its first Catawba graduate since the agreement this coming spring.

Florida State provides no money, no tracking

When the NCAA granted exemptions to the Native mascot policy, it did so for five schools. The other three were Florida State University (the Seminoles), Mississippi College (the Choctaws) and Central Michigan University (the Chippewas). The schools each showed they had a partnership with a specific tribe — rather than using a generic Native mascot.

Florida State, for comparison, has a student body about the size of the U.’s, with roughly 45,000 students. Like the U., 0.3% of its students are Native.

It operates its agreement similarly, having no specific promises — but unlike the U., Florida State does not provide any money to support tribal students.

The public school’s relationship with the Seminole Tribe of Florida has existed since the 1970s. And the tribe’s chair said in 1982 that the sovereign nation alone should get to decide if the school could use its name and imagery, and the Seminoles approved of it.

As far as an exchange goes, Florida State “does not provide any financial support” to the tribe, said university spokesperson Amy Farnum-Patronis. Though some Seminole clubs and chapters sponsor student scholarships, the school does not offer one.

It also does not track how many students are members of the tribe or whether those students graduate, outside of listing prominent Seminole alumni on the school’s website.

Instead, Florida State frames the tribe as a partner, with both working “side by side to ensure that use of its name and iconography is done with respect and permission.”

The tribe actively participates in annual homecoming events — which was something members pushed for and is similar to the U.’s annual Ute Proud football game. And it has redesigned athletic uniforms to feature the Seminoles’ distinctive patchwork.

The school also continues to portray Chief Osceola, a real Seminoles chief, as its mascot with an individual riding a horse onto the field before games.

Two schools in between

Central Michigan University similarly does not provide any funding to the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe for using its name.

The agreement there, instead, is to make it a smooth transition — from accepting credits to application help — for students who want to transfer from Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College to the university.

Additionally, CMU offers a general scholarship, the Native American Advancement Award, that is given to one new freshman each year, though it is not reserved for a Chippewa student.

Meanwhile, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians funds its own scholarships for students from the tribe to attend Mississippi College. The school does not offer funding in exchange for using the tribe’s name and imagery.