Vote Against Mascot

* The Times reports that the San Diego State University student council has voted to boot its mascot, Monty Montezuma, after hearing Native American students complain that the mascot is “demeaning and racist” (Sept. 28). That is a wise move. San Diego State should not have as its mascot an emperor or a people whose acts managed to gross out the likes of the Spanish conquistadors. The Spanish observed as many as 20,000 war captives sacrificed to the gods at once in religious ceremonies on various occasions by the highly civilized and sophisticated Aztecs. The cruelties of these elaborate and lengthy ceremonies are best left undescribed.

The use of native peoples as mascots trivializes and romanticizes them--as do politically correct complaints about such use. A public university, especially, should not give the impression that the Aztec people were in any way different from European Americans, Europeans, Chinese, or many, many other mass murderers who have disgraced human history.

DAVID L. RECTOR

Costa Mesa