At U. of New Mexico, Long-Simmering Frustrations Over a Seal Find a Receptive Ear

Nick Estes, a doctoral student at the University of New Mexico, decided last spring to design a new university seal.

Using Microsoft Word, he positioned an armed frontiersman and conquistador atop skulls and bones with the words “What Indians?” printed over the image.

Mr. Estes’ version is a satirical take on the real seal, which features the frontiersman and the conquistador, but in place of the bones and the dialogue is a Latin motto. In both the satirical and the official versions, a Zia Indian symbol for the roadrunner stands atop the letters UNM.

Mr. Estes, who is Native American, is one of several students who are campaigning for the seal to be abolished. It’s racist, critics say, because it celebrates colonizers and leaves out Native Americans, who were the victims of violent colonization, as well as a demographic group that today makes up 5.25 percent of the university.

In two years, Mr. Estes hopes to graduate with a Ph.D. in American studies. He will be the first in his family to receive a doctorate, and will join a select group of students: From 2011 to 2015, seven American Indian students received doctoral degrees at the university.

And he hopes by then that the seal will have changed. “I will refuse to display my diploma with that seal on it,” he says.

Colleges across the country have for the past year been re-evaluating building names and other symbols of their racially fraught histories. How the University of New Mexico got to this point — in limbo between discussing a symbolic change and actually doing it — demonstrates the potential power of student-led movements and how administrators might work with them to yield serious talk of concrete action.

“The political climate is right to address” the seal, says Josephine (Jozi) De Leon, the university’s vice president for equity and inclusion, who adds that the controversy over the seal has been a consistent issue since she arrived on the campus, in 2008.

It’s older than that. For decades, many have raised concerns about the image, only to have those complaints go nowhere. It’s the latest push, a concerted effort by Mr. Estes, a Native American student group, and other students, administrators say, that has moved the idea of retiring the seal from a dream to a possibility.

After protests this past spring, the administration began soliciting feedback on the seal and held open forums over the summer. A report on the issue is due in November to the Board of Regents, whose president has already signaled a willingness to change the seal.

The university’s president, Robert G. Frank, says meetings he has had with students, as well as the forums, have been key for a constructive dialogue on the campus. “Everybody gets to talk,” he says of the forums. “It’s a community. We are talking about it.”

“It’s now being seen as a dialogue instead of something where people are out chanting in front of my office or around the university,” Mr. Frank adds.

A Long-Awaited Discussion

The university’s Kiva Club, which is the campus’s Native American student group, credits the progress it has made in pushing the issue to the power of social media, as well as traditional methods of protest.

“Back in the 1960s, my parents were here, and there were issues affecting Native students at that time but they didn’t have a platform like social media,” says Pamela Agoyo, director of the university’s American Indian Student Services division. “The concern was much more contained and usually just within the Native student community,” she says. “It didn’t necessarily rise to getting the attention of the administration.”

Ms. Agoyo, who is also a special assistant to the president on Indian affairs, acknowledges that the students’ efforts “forced our institution to pay attention.”

But if leaders opt to change the seal, Mr. Frank says, it will come at a “non-trivial cost.”

The seal is ubiquitous, appearing on clothing, podiums, and buildings. Before the protests in the spring, Virginia Scharff, an associate provost for faculty development, says she didn’t really notice the seal. Yes, it was on her coffee cups and thank-you notes, but she didn’t pay much attention to it.

The seal is “a remnant of the past and of a partial history,” says Ms. Scharff, a historian. “It feels like something that we need to transcend in order to be a university that embraces the incredible diversity that we have here.”

But the seal is hard to miss at commencement, says Robin Minthorn, who advises the Kiva Club and is an assistant professor of Native American studies. “When you go to graduation ceremonies, the seal is everywhere,” she says. “As a Native American faculty member, I was really sad to see that.”

The seal is also embroidered on graduation gowns. Ms. Agoyo says the students might use their own Native regalia or a piece of jewelry to cover it.

The symbol’s ubiquity could pose a dollars-and-cents obstacle. The university faces steep budget cuts that further complicate the issue, Mr. Frank says.

If the regents opt to change the seal, he says, replacing it will happen gradually to minimize the cost.

“So if we do decide to change it, and that’s a big if, it would have to be done in some very manageable approach,” he says.

‘Just a Symbol’

But the students aren’t focused squarely on the seal. Demetrius Johnson, a senior studying electrical engineering who is president of the Kiva Club, says the seal is just a symbol. “Even if they change it,” he says, “that’s not going to change the way they treat Native people or any of us.”

Last spring the Kiva Club and a local organization called the Red Nation started a petition listing 11 demands that the groups personally delivered to Mr. Frank. The demands include the abolition of the seal, recognition of Indigenous People’s Day, construction of a Native Cultural Center, and more Native faculty members.

Some students say they doubt the university’s efforts come from genuine concern. But, they say, it’s still progress. “I applaud them in their efforts to take that initiative after it was really the initiative of students,” Mr. Estes says. But at the same time, he adds, the response “has really sidestepped the questions of the 11 demands.”

The university is working to respond to some of the demands. Ms. De Leon, of the division for equity and inclusion, is drafting a proclamation to recognize Indigenous People’s Day — which a number of municipalities and universities observe in place of Columbus Day — and another one to adopt the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Jennifer Marley, a junior majoring in Native American studies who is vice president of Kiva Club, says the demands refer back to promises made by university leaders over the years.

“It’s really not too much to ask for with these demands,” she says. “It’s really just basic human rights.”