A Flagship’s Proposed Slogan — ‘The World Needs More Cowboys’ — Draws Fire Out West

Ed LaCasse, U. of Wyoming

In early April, Ellen Currano got an email from the University of Wyoming’s marketing department asking if she’d appear in a promotional video for a newly proposed marketing campaign. She was surprised, then angry. It wasn’t the idea of being in a promotional video that Currano objected to, but the slogan on which the entire campaign hinges: “The world needs more cowboys.”

“Honestly, I thought it was a joke at first,” said Currano, an associate professor in the department of geology and geophysics. “I thought it was a joke. And then I looked it up on the university web page and saw that no, this was, in fact, serious.”

The tag line has incited a battle on the flagship campus, in Laramie. On one side are faculty members who say it excludes women, people of color, and Native Americans. On the other is the administration, which says the slogan is part of a purposefully inclusive campaign that seeks to dismantle the traditional image of a cowboy and that plays on the university’s mascot. (The university calls its male sports teams the Cowboys, and its female teams the Cowgirls.) In prospective campaign materials, the slogan is accompanied by images of women and minorities, and messages declaring that cowboys are “every sex, shape, color, and creed.”

Conversations about the campaign have centered not only on the popular image of a cowboy but also on the history of Wyoming and the West, where cowboy culture and myth are deeply entrenched. And some faculty members say that on a campus where diversity efforts have been invigorated by a new university president — particularly with Native Americans — inclusivity in messaging should be paramount.

The campaign, created by the firm Victors and Spoils, based in Boulder, Colo., isn’t final yet, said Chad Baldwin, director of institutional communications and leader of the marketing effort, who added that the Board of Trustees could decide on it as soon as this week. If it goes ahead, the campaign will be formally unveiled in the early fall.

‘It’s Very 1950s’

The university introduced the campaign to the trustees, staff, and faculty in March and April. The backlash was quick.

Christi Boggs, an instructional designer and a coach of the university’s Nordic-ski team, is a co-chair of the Committee on Women and People of Color, whose 50 to 60 members advocate for diversity on the campus. The members were “very upset” after learning about the campaign, Boggs said, and quickly wrote a letter to Baldwin and the president, Laurie Nichols, voicing their concerns. A group of female scientists also wrote a letter asking administrators to “embrace a slogan that takes us into the 21st century.”

After fielding similar concerns, the university’s chief diversity officer, Emily Monago, organized a meeting between faculty critics of the campaign and administrators. At that meeting, Baldwin agreed to conduct more market research on the campaign, Monago said.

The concession hasn’t lessened faculty objections, which are twofold. First, the slogan excludes women. “It’s very 1950s to think that ‘boy’ somehow includes ‘girl,’” said Christine Porter, an associate professor of community and public health.

Donal O’Toole, a professor in the department of veterinary sciences and the president of the Faculty Senate, also finds the term exclusionary toward women. “This is a sexist slogan,” he said. “As with many universities, the higher you will go up in rank, the higher proportion of men you find within the university.” And in a state whose official motto is “Equal Rights,” O’Toole said, “we need to make an effort to reach everyone.”

Less obvious but equally important, some faculty members say, is an exclusion intrinsic to the historical and popular image of the cowboy. Tracey Owens Patton, a professor of communication who wrote a book on race and rodeo, said the term “cowboy” originated in Ireland around the year 1000, and spread to several different cultures before arriving in the United States, where the international and racially diverse culture around the term was erased and “replaced with Jim Crow racism and sexism.”

Like Patton and others, Porter said she thinks of a cowboy as a white, heterosexual, able-bodied, and “macho” man, which could be alienating for anyone who does not identify with that image. “If this is the slogan about who belongs here, it’s unacceptable,” Porter said.

Native Americans on the campus have also objected to the use of the term in the campaign. Angela Jaime, director of the program in American Indian studies and a member of Native American Advisory Committee, said the term elicits a negative reaction. “The history of cowboys and Native people, in the context of Native people, has not ever been positive,” Jaime said.

The history of westward expansion and atrocities against Native Americans, and the dichotomy between cowboys and Native people, makes the term problematic for her, she said, and it’s a history that seeps into modern culture. “We can think about stereotypes, right?” Jaime said. “So kids playing cowboys and Indians, and the Indians are always the ones that lose.”

‘Inclusive, by Design’

The popular image of the cowboy as a rugged, masculine, and white frontiersman, embodied by the likes of John Wayne and the Marlboro Man, is precisely why the proposed marketing campaign is so effective, said Baldwin, the communications director. “Every time that slogan is used in any of our materials, there will be an accompanying image or images that are not the traditional idea of a cowboy,” Baldwin said. “That’s why this campaign works — it’s the dissonance between the term ‘cowboy’ and the image that draws attention.”

A proposed promotional video features images of young people, including women and minorities, doing scientific fieldwork, painting, studying, and exploring outdoors. “The world needs more cowboys, and not just the kind that sweep you off your feet and ride off into the sunset,” a voice narrates. “Our cowboys come in every sex, shape, color, and creed. It’s not what you are that makes you a cowboy; it’s who you are.”

A flier touts the slogan as “inclusive, by design,” and states that the campaign “redefines what it means to be a cowboy in the 21st century,” identifying historical figures such as Galileo, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Martin Luther King Jr. as cowboys.

But while the campaign appears to directly address inclusivity, faculty members worry that the need to explain the slogan nullifies the inclusive intent, particularly when the phrase is read by itself. “If you have to explain your slogan, and show a video with your slogan, and have a one-page explanation of your slogan, you have a bad slogan, in my opinion, which should just sit there and stand there and be good by itself,” Boggs said.

For some critics, the campaign goal to upend the stereotype of the cowboy is too lofty. “There’s definitely something to be said about rebranding what ‘cowboy’ means, but that’s something that’s going to take 10 years,” Currano said. “So first you need to have the campaign to change what it means to be a cowboy, and then, OK, we can talk about having that be a slogan of a hopefully diverse and inclusive institution of higher education.”

But Baldwin said the results of a market-research survey conducted by a third-party firm show that the campaign is, in fact, effective in dispelling the stereotype of a cowboy and in enticing prospective students to apply. The survey, of prospective college students nationwide, found that a majority of respondents said the promotional video had changed their perception of what it meant to be a cowboy, and had made it more likely that they’d apply to the university.

‘Several Steps Backwards’

Faculty members say the campaign is a step backward after recent progress in diversity and inclusion, particularly among Native people. Wyoming is a strongly conservative state, and domestic students of color make up just over 10 percent of the university’s enrollment.

Nichols, who took office as president in 2016, has made a concerted effort to reach out to the Native community in Wyoming, and she created the Native American Advisory Committee in 2017. A new center for American Indians is set to open on the campus this summer. Monago was appointed last summer as the university’s first chief diversity officer in its Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

“The president is doing a lot more than we’ve seen any other president do in the same context [in diversity efforts], and I think she has been very responsive to the Native community,” said Jaime, director of American Indian studies. But the slogan is “more than one step backwards. It’s several steps backwards.”

Baldwin said he recognizes that the university isn’t going to “make everybody happy” with a new campaign, especially a campaign that “has some meaning.”

“We felt very strongly that this is positive, and will be received as positive by the key audience, which is prospective students and their families,” he said.

A branding training session for faculty and staff members is scheduled for July 17. Jaime said she plans to attend. “In any situation where you’re taking a stand or trying to fight for your rights or others’ rights, to sit back and do nothing means that you’re complacent and you’re OK with the outcome of it,” Jaime said. “And even if my going to these meetings and speaking out does nothing to change the slogan, I can at least say I didn’t sit by and do nothing.”