Banished Satan Logo Resurfaces to Bedevil Mission Viejo School

Mission Viejo High School’s grim-visaged devil logo upset enough parents in 1986 to spur school administrators to banish the scowling demon to mascot purgatory.

Seven years later, after students settled on a bulldog for the school’s emblem, the devil has resurfaced, creating controversy on campus.

Since caps bearing a devil logo cropped up last fall and were sold to members of the football team, some parents are complaining again--this time because school officials are pressuring students not to wear the horned image.

“We moved from Iran to escape this kind of fanatical thinking,” said Sarvin Danesh, the mother of a 17-year-old student who claims that he was suspended for wearing a devil-adorned cap.

“This is not what I want to teach my son,” she said.

The furor is not limited to parents and the student body. Football Coach Mike Rush said he resigned March 5 largely because he was asked to sign an agreement with the school administration making him responsible for what his players wore.

“I left because the situation was so toxic to me with all the issues that had an impact on control,” he said. “I was to be held responsible for what a kid wears to school. It was a professionally threatening agreement.”

Although the school’s nickname remains the Diablos, meaning “the devils” in Spanish, administrators said that students with caps bearing the old icon are asked to leave them home or cover the devil with tape.

However, Principal Robert Metz said he is enforcing the 1986 ban on the devil logo because the image offends some parents and the community. He also denied that any student has been suspended or threatened with suspension for wearing the cap or any other item with the devil logo.

“There are those who find the depiction offensive and those who don’t,” said Metz, principal on the 1,740-student campus since 1981. “We don’t need to be offensive.”

Metz declined to discuss why the football coach stepped down, saying only that Rush “chose to resign. That was his decision.”

The devil issue rose again last fall, when caps with the red-faced icon slipped past the scrutiny of the football coaches who had invited a vendor on campus to sell sporting goods.

In response, the administration sent a memo to its athletic department reinforcing its position that high school items should bear the official bulldog mascot, Metz said.

“Mission Viejo High School items should reflect what the mascot is. Period,” he said. “The devil, the demonic depiction, does not represent Mission Viejo High School.”

He said only a few parents are upset by his efforts to keep the devil off campus. Parents say they have formed a 14-member group seeking to give students the right to rescind the policy and vote on a school mascot.

The group is scheduled to meet with Saddleback Valley Unified School District Supt. Peter Hartman on April 14.

Since 1966, when the school opened, the campus has used the Diablos as its mascot name, although using a fierce longhorn bull as its official symbol.

But over the years, the fire-breathing bull somehow gave way to depictions of the devil. The devil mascot--with its tough red face and horns--proved popular with the students, appearing on football helmets, cheerleading uniforms and yearbook covers. For years, a particularly grim-looking devil appeared in a weight room mural.

By 1986, complaints from Christian parents about the devil imagery reached a peak, and school officials banned the image, but kept the Diablos nickname as a compromise in part to save the school the expense of changing all its uniforms and booster items.

The choice of a new school logo was left to students, who in 1986 voted for the bulldog. The devil icon was not offered to students as an option.

Since then, students and parents say the bulldog mascot has failed to catch on, mainly because it does not have anything to do with the school’s popular nickname.

“It just seems hypocritical that we can’t be what we are,” said sophomore football player Todd Keneley. “We have this little drooling dog, with the shaggy eyes. It’s really lame. They went from one extreme to the other.”

Ginny Garner, president of the school’s 800-member booster club, said most parents are not upset with the administration ban on the devil logo.

But some parents contend that their children have the right to select the symbol they want for their school, even if it is a devil.

“It’s their mascot, let them pick it,” said Arleen Brown, who has two children at Mission Viejo High. “If they want to pick a pink elephant, that’s fine with me.”