ENMU may be dropping Zia name

and David Stevens

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The Zia symbol, which appears on the New Mexico state flag, has been used as the symbol and title for women’s athletics at Eastern New Mexico University since 1981. Students voted to discontinue its use Thursday.

Eastern New Mexico University students have voted 2-to-1 to recommend the university discontinue using the Zia sun symbol and the name “Zias” for the women’s athletic teams.

A university news release said the vote, conducted Tuesday through Thursday, was 446 to 221.

The issue will now go to Steven Gamble, ENMU president, to offer a recommendation to the Board of Regents at its April 24 meeting.

Gamble has said the student vote would weigh heavily in his recommendation.

ENMU has used the “Zias” nickname for its female sports teams since 1981, newspaper accounts show.

Monday Memo, a weekly ENMU publication, recently reported the proposal to change from Zias to Greyhounds was spearheaded by Robert Graham, director of ENMU’s alumni affairs.

Graham said the measure supports a 2014 resolution by the National Congress of American Indians, which supports the Zia Pueblo’s “reclamation of their cultural rights in the Zia Sun Symbol.”

Graham, paraphrased in the Monday Memo, said: It is an ethical issue in not exploiting a small New Mexico tribe of less than 700 people that does not have the resources to legally battle entities that use its symbol.

Gamble said the university’s Alumni Association has voted to change the symbol and many on campus and in the community appear to be supportive of the change as well.

But there is opposition to any change, including ENMU graduate and Portales native Scot Stinnett. He said the university’s interest in making a change is based entirely on getting more money from licensing its Greyhound logo. The university cannot license the Zia symbol, which is used on the New Mexico state flag and on state-issued license plates.

“Are we going to stop using that (New Mexico) pledge (which mentions the Zia symbol) because of this? Is Eastern going to stop letting people recite it?” Stinnett said.

“Are we going to change the name of Guadalupe Hall, because Guadalupe was a Catholic saint?

“The point I’m trying to make is we didn’t find our moral and religious conscience until there was a marketing agreement at stake.”

Gamble and Ronnie Birdsong, special assistant to the president, confirmed the university signed a contract with Learfield Communications in February to trademark and register the Greyhound symbol to ENMU.

But Gamble said the trademark is “a minor thing in the overall picture. ... For me, that doesn’t factor into my recommendation at all. First, I will factor in the student vote and second, whether it’s the best thing for the university or not.”

Stinnett’s daughter Sarah joins her father in opposing a name change.

“I’ve been in eastern New Mexico my whole life, and I’ve always known them as the Zias, and now that I am a Zia (basketball player), how I feel about it is it represents where we’re from, and that’s why I’m opposed to changing it,” Sarah Stinnett said.

The resolution passed by the National Congress of American Indians last year states that “the People of the Pueblo of Zia are concerned that the unauthorized, widespread and commercial use of the Zia Sun Symbol cheapens its religious and cultural meaning and disregards its origins.”