Historic posters must not be shown: Erase history!

The Yale football team’s victory over Dartmouth Saturday was tainted by program booklets that featured racially insensitive portrayals of Native Americans on the cover.

The booklets, which were printed to commemorate the football team’s 100th game against Dartmouth, included eight historic renditions of program covers from past years, half of which contained offensive depictions of Native Americans that included Dartmouth’s unofficial former mascot, the Indian.

One cover showed a bulldog chasing the Native American figure up a tree, while another featured a Yale football player lighting the figure’s clothing on fire. The Athletics Department issued an apology for the programs Sunday.

The image of the cover surfaced on social media Saturday when Mary Kathryn Nagle, executive director for the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program, tweeted out a picture of the program, criticizing the “dehumanizing images of redface.”

Students’ condemnation of the cover took off after an image of it was posted on the Overheard at Yale Facebook page Sunday afternoon.

Later that day, Director of Athletics Thomas Beckett responded on behalf of Yale Athletics and issued an apology for the offensive images in a schoolwide email.

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