Next Tuesday, July 18, 2023 will be a big day in Wakefield – if things go as planned. But if past is prologue, that’s a big “if.”

The School Committee says that it will vote that night on a new Wakefield Warrior logo. Since this is at least the fourth time that they’ve said this in the two and a half years since they cancelled the traditional logo, I’ll believe it when I see it.

At their June 27 meeting, the School Committee was presented with yet two more new “final” logo options, after the two previous “lightning bolt” finalists, which members gushed over at their June 6 meeting, were quietly removed from consideration. The lightning bolt designs were gone in a flash after student survey on the last day of school rejected them in favor of a new option added to the mix at the last minute: a simple circle with a “W” inside it.

It was nothing short of a miracle that they were able to conduct this student survey on the final day of school. In June 2022, the School Committee announced that it was putting off a decision on three entirely different logo “finalists” until the fall “due to the legitimate challenge in designing, reviewing, implementing and collecting survey data at the very end of the school year.”

But that was then. This is now.

In 2023, not only were they able to conduct a survey on the last day of school, but they have subsequently done a summer vacation student survey after yet another new logo finalist miraculously surfaced since the previous survey!

If you’re confused, you’re not alone. And we’ve barely scratched the surface of this endlessly convoluted “process.”

Given all the student surveys that have been conducted, you might get the impression that it was the high school students who wanted to get rid of the traditional Warrior logo in the first place. But the students were never asked that question on any survey.

If you attended last week’s Independence Day Parade, you know why.

The state champion Wakefield Warrior football team rode on a flatbed truck waving flags featuring two versions of the traditional Warrior logo: the side-facing one and the front-facing Indian warrior.

Could it be that the students, just like the voters in the 2021 Town Election, wanted to keep the traditional Warrior logo?

When I very innocently posted on Facebook my parade photo of the football players waving their Warrior logo flags, it quickly generated hundreds of “Likes” and positive comments.

The usual Fellowship of the Miserable also weighed in, lecturing that “30 football players don’t represent all 800 students at Wakefield High School.”

That’s funny, because ever since the Youth Council voted 7-1 to recommend getting rid of the traditional Warrior logo in November 2020, we’ve been told repeatedly that those kids represent the entire WHS student body, even though the Youth Council has zero connection to Wakefield Public Schools. Its members are appointed by the Town Council. At the time that the Youth Council recommended getting rid of the old Warrior logo, its chairman was a St. John’s Prep student.

Of course, the anti-logo forces didn’t dare directly criticize the high school football players for waving the Warrior flag. So instead, they attacked the messenger.

It mirrored the other recent flag controversy in town.

In May, the local Veterans Board formally requested that on Flag Day only the American flag be flown on town-owned flagpoles. Considering all the sacrifices that our veterans have made, it was a tiny ask and would have cost the town nothing to grant the request.

But by a vote of 4-2, your Town Council said “No” to the veterans.

I wrote a news story on the decision and later wrote a column supporting the veterans’ position.

Naturally, the flag-haters didn’t dare go after the veterans who made the request, so again, they bravely attacked the messenger.

Which is fine with me. Just another day in paradise.

But it raises an interesting question. What qualities do veterans, football players and the old Warrior logo all represent that give rise to such enmity?

How about strength, virility and valor? Those used to be considered admirable traits, but not in our present emasculated society.

Still, the image of those football players proudly waving the Warrior flag in the parade offers a glimmer of hope for the future.

Apparently not everyone in our local educational collectives is fully on board with the program.

Not yet, anyway.
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[This column originally appeared in the July 13, 2023 Wakefield Daily Item.]