chartered in 1809, opened its doors with twenty-four students in 1824. Its beautiful residential campus is located in southwestern Oho, in the valley of the Little Miami and Great Miami Rivers. These rivers were named for the native Miami Indians, who lived in the region from 1700 until most of the tribe was forcefully removed to Kansas in 1840 and then to Oklahoma in 1867. It is from this region and for these people that Miami University is named. Today, Miami is a selective, liberal education, doctoral university with twenty thousand students on three campuses.
Upon amving as Miami's nineieenth president on January 1, 1993, almost immediately I encountered the continuing and frequently heated topic concerning the name of our athletic teams, the Miami Redskins. To many people, the term is considered racist or at least highly insensitive; to others, it is a name reflecting great pride in the region and in the native peoples for whom the Uni- versity is named.
For most of Miami's first hundred years, the nickname was not an issue as the teams were referred to as simply Miami, Big Red, or similar names. In 1916, the athletic teams were described as the Big Red Team, but the college yearbook, Recensio, was designed with an Indian motif and key seniors were identified as "Big Chiefs." The yearbook contained the "Scalp Song," coauthored by Alfred Upham, who later became the fourteenth President of the University. In the intervening years, there were no Indian motifs in the yearbook until the 1923 version, when pictures of Indian sculptures appeared. In 1927, the term Tribe Miami was first used, there were pictures of students dressed as Indians, and the athletic lettermen were described as "Tribe Miami."
In 1931, the term Redslun appeared in the Recensio. In 1932, the Redskin logo appeared, first on cheerleaders' uniforms and then on various campus images. The 1936 Alumni News states that "Miami reveled in the name 'Big NEW DIRECTIONS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION. no. 93. Spring 1996 0 Jwcy-8ur Publishers