Professors Object to University of Wyoming Using ‘Cowboys’ in New Slogan

CNS News – by Emilie Cochran

Professors at the University of Wyoming (UW) are urging the university to “shelve” its new marketing slogan, “The World Needs More Cowboys.”

The university’s athletic teams are named the Cowboys and their mascot is a cowboy, so UW adopted the slogan to encourage more students to attend games.

The professors claim this slogan is sexist and non-inclusive, because it promotes an image of a “white, heterosexual male.” According to the Laramie Boomerang, UW Committee on Women and People of Color wrote a letter to the university that said it should adopt a slogan that instead “represents the diversity of the people and cultures.”

Use of the word “cowboy” invokes a “white, macho, male, able-bodied, heterosexual, U.S.-born person,” Professor of Kinesiology and Health Christine Porter told Boomerang, adding that she is not the only one at the school offended by the slogan.

“The history of cowboys, of course, is much more diverse than that racially, and presumably also for sexual orientation,” Porter said.

However, the university communications director, Chad Baldwin, told Campus Reform that the school is going to move forward with the slogan.