Wash. College Drops Missionary Mascot

Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, has decided to stop using its mascot and its teams will no longer be called the Missionaries. Campus officials cited reasons such as a desire to be more inclusive. They also said that the missionary mascot could be misleading as Whitman is not a religious school. The mascot refers to Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, two missionaries who came to Walla Walla Valley in 1836 but were slaughtered a decade later. School officials said that the nature of this reference meant the mascot had imperialistic undertones.