Medicine Hat High School is accepting name suggestions through its social media pages. The school announced last September it would be moving away from the names 'Mohawks' and 'Kwahommies.'--NEWS FILE PHOTO
mcranker@medicinehatnews.com@mocranker
Medicine Hat High School is asking the community for help in renaming its clubs, teams and programs.
The school announced last year that it would be moving away from the names ‘Mohawks’ and ‘Kwahommies.’
“After a few years of conversation with our staff and what’s going on in the world, lately the world hasn’t been a real great place, we felt we needed to have more serious talks about our name,” school principal Boris Grisonich said in September. “We don’t believe that 50 years ago we got permission to use that name.
“After a little bit of talking it was decided to use a new name. What we tell our kids it means to be a Mohawk is through our eyes, not theirs. We didn’t think that was fair.”
Now in a new year, the school is using community engagement as part of the renaming process.
The school put out a call for name submissions earlier in the week on its social media pages, and had received 41 submissions as of Tuesday afternoon.
Medicine Hat Public School Division Assistant Superintendent Corey Sadlemyer says the school will be accepting submissions for about a month.
“I think it’s around a one-month process on taking suggestions,” he said. “As part of all of this, our school division is developing a process for any school to change its name, or for a new school to come up with a name.”
The high school will continue to use its M logo for all of its teams, clubs and school related initiatives.
People in the community are encouraged to submit names to the school, but are reminded that they need to be appropriate.
“We’re not going to accept offensive names,” he said. “We’re not going to accept offensive words, and people need to make suggestions culturally appropriate.
“Anyone in the community is welcome to submit names and we hope the community engages in a positive way.”
People can find link to submit name ideas on the MHHS Facebook page, in the comment section on a post from Monday.
