Valparaiso University, a private Lutheran university that plays in the Missouri Valley Conference for Division 1-A basketball, and the Pioneer Football League in the Football Championship Subdivision, announced that effective immediately, it is retiring its previous name, the Crusaders, and their teams will call themselves the Beacons instead.
The Crusaders name has been co-opted lately by hate groups and extremist factions such as the Ku Klux Klan.
The original Crusaders weren’t such nice guys either.
Hey, my alma mater!
The school’s motto is “In luce tua, videmus lucem” - “In your light, we see the light”. So, the Beacons makes sense. Honestly, I never thought the Crusaders made much sense as a team nickname.
At least when I went there, btw, it was only nominally Lutheran. Freshman all had to take a Religion class, but I took a World Religions class to fulfill that requirement, and I never encountered anything that even looked like indoctrination or proselytization. Beyond that…well, the Chapel is the architectural centerpiece of the campus, but it was used by various faiths, and I don’t think most students actually attended any sort of services there.
My nephew is about to start his senior year at Valpo. He’s a chemistry major, but is minoring in music, and as a result, he’s had to take several religion classes – his family really isn’t religious, and so, he’s felt like he’s been at a bit of a disadvantage in those classes compared to his more “churchy” classmates.
That said, as @gdave notes, I don’t think he’s been at all pressured to go to church or convert; it’s more about the fact that the music program is partially based around liturgical music, and so, knowledge of the religion behind it is part of the program.
Typically a team name is at least associated with something aggressive or dangerous and may not have a real connection with the school itself. Things like bears, panthers, pirates, wildcats, cowboys, warriors, Trojans, bombers, gators, grizzlies, raiders, etc., etc. My school’s team names were the Raiders, Warriors (back then we had an Indian mascot), and finally the Panthers. None of which really made any sense. Beacons is kind of a milquetoast name. It’s not the worse name but what kind of a mascot do you get out of a beacon?
Sure, and “Crusaders” sounds like kind of a generically Christian-but-still-aggressive team name. But it doesn’t have any particular relevance to Valpo, while “the Beacons” does.
When I went there, anyway, that motto was a big cultural element of the school. The crest centers a torch. The school paper was called The Torch. The school’s ceremonial entrance featured a massive torch. Shortly after I graduated, there was a big alumni drive to raise funds for a fancy new ceremonial entrance, architecturally centered around an eternal flame. The Chapel, which was the architectural center of the campus, was supposed to evoke a torch and/or a star, and was very explicitly designed to be bright, and focus light on the altar.
In contrast, “the Crusaders”…was the nickname of our sports teams. It had no reference at all to anything else in the university’s culture. Unlike some schools where sports is a big part of the university culture, no one I knew self-identified as a Crusader. Alumni symbols were the Chapel, the Torch, and “Valpo”. I’m sure they must have had some “Crusader” tat, but I don’t remember ever seeing it.
As to mascots…it is (or was) a small, private, liberal arts school with small athletics programs. We made national headlines with a Cinderella run in the NCAA Basketball tournament one year, but beyond that, sports just weren’t a big deal. Our football “stadium” was a grassy field next to the gym, with bleachers that could hold a few hundred spectators on either side. The local high school had a better set-up. The image used for our mascot at the time I went there was some sort of generic clip-artish knight in profile, and our mascot costume was, I think, actually a Trojan or similar, because the school didn’t have the money for a custom-designed mascot costume, and that was about as close to a “Crusader” as mass-market mascot costumes got. So, if we get a mascot in a Torch outfit, or they just don’t have a costumed mascot, that’s going to be a step up from what they had when I was going there.
If you’re being literal about a torch it is. But symbolically it can also refer to someone who is a leader, who inspires people, or a guardian to warn people about a threat (like a watchman who lights a bonfire to warn people about trouble). At the minimum you can toss it at someone and set them on fire which is pretty aggressive.
It’s better than a mascot which is a tiny bird or a baby animal, which are inexplicably common in sports.
Heh, yeah. Valparaiso is basically an exurb of Chicago, and the locals who are sports fans are pretty much all Chicago sports fans. One of the pro baseball teams is the Cubs, with a bear baby as a mascot. And it’s hard to get more milquetoast than the “White Stockings”, even if we abbreviate stockings to socks, and agree to misspell it “Sox” because X’s are cool.
The Beacons is a more badass sobriquet than either of those.
As I stated upthread, I’m an alumnus. I’m not at all involved in alumni activities, so I have no idea how any other alumni feel about the change. But even putting aside the current political and social implications of using the nickname “Crusaders”, I think “Beacons” is just a much better fit for Valpo purely on aesthetic grounds.
It occurs to me that you could make a Human Torch-esque mascot which would be pretty awesome.
Not too close to the Marvel character though; you don’t want to get their lawyers on their case. Just use it as inspiration.
It’s positively hyper-aggressive compared to my schools’ team names (Tartans, Violets).
Exactly what I was thinking. That name attached to anything always makes me flinch; flinch, and think (and hope, I suppose) that the people using it probably haven’t read much history.
…socks, the letter A, goldminers in 1849, a variety of small colorful birds, jazz music, various ecclesiastical titles and offices, the color brown…
My high school was the Gondoliers and my college was the Tritons, both of which I believe are unique.
Google gives me the UC San Diego Tritons, the University of Missouri-St. Louis Tritons, the San Clemente Tritons, and the Eckerd College Tritons. Plus the Triton College Trojans.
Gondoliers does seem unique, though.
Damn. I should have checked. I went to the first one.
Gondoliers was Venice High School in Los Angeles (har har). The mascot was Gunther, a caricature of an Italian oarsman. I wonder if he’ll get canceled.
Big Green is not particularly menacing, but it’s better than the previous mascot, the Indians.
My high school mascot, the Colonials, has just been retired.
My high school mascot was Big Red, but he was supposed to be a giant, which is fairly menacing.
My high school mascot was a Trojan. 
So cliche.
“Gunther” being a stereoptypical Italian name, of course. 
It was for the alliteration but now that I think about it, they should have named him Giuseppe