Devils Lake school board president Paul Goulding was unsure Monday of what may or may not happen at tonight’s meeting involving the new school’s name and the mascot name.
Tonight is the night representatives of the Student Council will submit to the board the three most prevalent names it has surveyed among all the community’s students. It is a project that has been ongoing for the past few months.
He didn’t know if the board will seek more information beyond obtaining the three names tonight. Or, whether the issue will be dealt with immediately. Dealing with it immediately seems to be his preference.
“Personally, it’s something I’m very tired of, and I’d prefer to deal with it tonight and be done with it,” Goulding said on Monday.
“I’ve talked with old board members of 20 years ago and it’s something they dealt with. I think we should deal with it once now and do it right and be done with it.”
Being just one of five persons on the board, however, Goulding said it may be presumptuous of him to say he wants the issue resolved tonight, once and for all.
He says it’s a very inflammatory issue, to which there is no answer that will keep everybody happy. And he’s tired of out-of-town news media types who have been kicking it around and having fun with it for weeks and weeks.
“I think we should deal with it tonight, be done with it, and get it out of our hair,” added the Board President. “All some of those guys look for is something to fight with and fling mud over.”
Goulding said in some ways he’s disappointed with the way the issue has been handled, but in other ways, he feels the board has given a fair hearing to all the parties involved.
There have been several open school board meetings which featured wide-open forums for varying lengths of time. Members of the Student Council have been legitimately heard, editorials have been penned and written, letters logged, personal visits, and telephone calls endured.
In essence, everybody has had their fair hearing on the issue. There seem to be no new arguments or opinions forthcoming that have not already been heard. “And that’s the most we can do,” said Goulding.
“As to whether we’ve dealt with it real gracefully, I’m not sure? We could have sidestepped the issue and maybe had a public vote on it or done some other things with it, but I think we’ve been pretty fair.”
Goulding said he, personally, is ready to make a decision tonight, but he can’t speak for his remaining members of the Board.
Tonight’s input from the Student Council representatives will be very important, he said. And so will the results of the lengthy and time-consuming polls they conducted on the entire issue.
Goulding said it’s a decision he’d like to have some respect for. But, because of the circumstances surrounding the whole thing, he’s not sure if that will be possible either.
“It has involved a lot of non-productive time by this board,” said Goulding. “This whole name thing is rather insignificant to me. Our educational process is going to be around a long, long time, regardless of what our team and school names are.”