A Banished School Mascot's Horns Reappear : Symbols: Devil logo barred since 1986 is cropping up again at Mission Viejo High. Some parents support the ban, but others don't see image as inherently evil and are working to overturn it. (2024)

MISSION VIEJO—

Not that most students seemed to care then, but 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.

Now, seven years after officials got rid of the Lucifer logo and students settled on a bulldog for the school’s emblem, the devil has resurfaced, creating controversy on campus.

Some parents are complaining that since caps bearing a devil logo suddenly cropped up last fall and were sold to members of the football team, school officials have been 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 he was suspended for wearing a devil-adorned cap.

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

The campus furor isn’t limited to the student body. Head 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-- devils in Spanish--administrators acknowledge that students with caps bearing the old icon have been asked to leave them home or cover the devil with tape.

Principal Robert Metz said he’s trying to enforce the 1986 ban on the devil logo because the image offends some parents and the community. He also flatly denied that any student has been suspended or threatened with suspension for simply 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 of the 1,740-student campus since 1981. “We don’t need to be offensive.”

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

The devil issue rose again last fall, when caps with the red-faced caricature slipped past the scrutiny of the football coaches who had invited a private 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 mascot of the bulldog, 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’ve formed a 14-member group seeking to give students the right to rescind the old policy and vote again 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, with a fierce, longhorn bull as its original 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 from time to time 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 Diablos as the 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 was not offered to students as a mascot option.

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

“It just seems hypocritical that we can’t be what we are,” said sophom*ore 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.”

Recently, Keneley tried to circulate a petition on campus seeking to get rid of the bulldog mascot. He said that in only 10 minutes, before a vice principal asked him to put the petition away, he collected 90 signatures.

“It’s nothing satanic at all,” Keneley said. “You’ve got the Arizona Sun Devils, you have the Duke Blue Devils. It’s our own character. It’s just something the student athletes can really get behind.”

Keneley said he was threatened with suspension by Metz for “defying authority” because he was wearing a football booster T-shirt with the devil emblem.

Although former coach Rush said he has not heard administrators talk of meting out suspensions, “the (football players) have told me that’s how they were approached.”

However, Metz said there is no suspension policy for students who persist in wearing the logos.

“What we have asked the students to do is cover the depiction,” he said, “and our kids have cooperated with us.”

But some parents say their children should have the right to select the symbol they want for their school, even if the emblem 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.”

However, Ginny Garner, president of the school’s 800-member booster club, said most parents aren’t upset with the administration’s ban on the devil logo. Other people interviewed said the dispute has stirred considerable anger.

“There’s not a lot of hysteria or concern over this,” Garner said. “There are a few isolated parents who have made this a concern. If they would all channel their energy through the boosters, we could come up with a solution to this problem.”

District trustees have kept their distance from the issue, saying the final decision on the mascot should be left to school officials.

Meanwhile, Metz said he intends on working with the Booster Club to see what, if anything, should be done about the mascot controversy.

But he is adamant that the devil not be allowed, even if the depiction is smiling.