For many at the university itself, the long-running battle has become a distraction that is hurting the athletic program as a growing number of teams refuse to play the school.
North Dakota’s sports teams are barred from taking part in post-season NCAA games as long as they wear the logo.
NCAA teams like Minnesota and Wisconsin, North Dakota’s biggest rivals, refuse to play teams with Indian nicknames.
Athletic director Brian Faison Faison said the women’s basketball team, for example, was forced to cancel two games with the Iowa Hawkeyes because of the logo.
“There’s definite consensus now that in order for us to move forward, the nickname and logo need to be retired,” said Mr. Faison.
First adopted in 1930, the Sioux nickname was given ceremonial sanction in 1969 at a Sioux pipe ceremony and has since been at the center of petitions, lawsuits, sanctions, an official retirement of the logo and, subsequently, an official reinstatement.
After the school lost a legal battle with the National Collegiate Athletic Association over the logo, the State Board of Higher Education announced in April 2010 that the iconic Sioux logo would be retired. University officials initiated the change from the Indian head logo to an intertwined white and green “ND,” a logo from the early 1900s.
That decision angered some residents including Frank Blackcloud, the 47-year-old spokesman for the Committee for Understanding and Respect, one of the organizations fighting to save the logo.
“The name was given forever in the pipe ceremony of 1969,” Mr. Blackcloud said. “We should be grandfathered in.”
In March 2011, the state legislature passed a measure forcing the university to retain the logo and reactivate its web address of fightingsioux.com.
A bill passed in a special legislative session eight months later rescinded the order, again dooming the mascot to extinction in December 2011.
This past February, supporters of the nickname gathered 17,213 signatures, enough to bring the issue to a popular vote tonight, the first time the people of North Dakota have had a direct say on this issue.
Regardless of the outcome, the issue will not die tonight: a Sioux group is trying to get a state constitutional amendment requiring the school to keep the nickname on a ballot soon.
