By Jessica Bies

The Mankato Free Press

WELLS — A Wells man has called into question the appropriateness of United South Central Schools’ rebel mascot, which is not only modeled after a Civil War Confederate, but sports a large, white mustache.

The figure is painted all over the school and stamped onto the concrete walls of its new gym, Michael Virnig said. But he can’t, for the life of him, figure out what it represents or what kind of message it is intended to send.

“I’m trying to figure out where it came from and who made it,” he said last Thursday. “What does the rebel represent?”

He asked School Board members the same thing Jan. 20, during the public comment portion of their regularly scheduled meeting.

Virnig doesn’t have any children at USC, but said there are two major issues with the mascot: it is an inherently masculine figure, incapable of representing the district’s female athletes, and it represents the Confederate South.

(The current mascot has a red and blue uniform, but nothing else to indicate that he is a Confederate. A prior mascot was armed and looked more like a soldier.)

Superintendent Jerry Jensen doesn’t know either. The mascot was chosen 22 years ago, when USC was consolidated and long before Jensen was even hired. None of today’s School Board members were in office then either, though Steve Navara said he remembers how the mascot was selected.

“There was a student group from the former South Central High School, the Wells Easton School and a representative from the Freeborn school,” he said. “There were National Honors Society students who presented different options to the student body, who voted on it.”