Pekin Community High School District 303

Mascot controversy

From the high school's founding until the 1981 school year, the football team was officially named the "Pekin Chinks", represented by a red dragon logo, done in part to represent the town of Pekin's wrongly supposed relation to the Chinese city of Peking.^[8][9] The team mascots were a male and a female student who would wear stereotypical Chinese attire, calling themselves the "Chink" and "Chinklette", and striking a gong whenever the team scored. In previous eras the community had almost no Chinese American residents.^[10][11]

In 1974 members of the National Organization of Chinese-Americans who took offense to the name suggested to municipal government employees that the sports team should have a different name. The members asked the mayor and the city attorney to intervene but the response was that they were unable to. The area Chamber of Commerce argued that the community took opposition to the idea of the mascot being offensive.^[10] That year, a vote was conducted within the student body to change the name, and the vote ended in a landslide victory for "chinks" at 1,034 votes to 182.^[9] In 1975 the Peoria Journal Star stopped including the mascot name in the publication.^[10] In that year the "Chink" and "Chinklette" mascots were also retired, and between 1975 and 1979, the nickname ceased to be printed on player or marching band uniforms.^[12] Additional publications no longer included the mascot name, and the school stopped displaying statues of the mascots.^[10] However, a second vote received similar widespread support for the name.^[9]

In the 1960s Pekin appears to have not had any Asians enrolled in their high school, but by the 1979–80 school year there were nineteen Pekin students of Asian descent, including four Chinese. At the beginning of the 1980–81 school year, the school board forced a name change to "Pekin Dragons," a name that has stayed to the present. This incurred widespread protest from students and parents, including some students boycotting classes.^[12] Some graduates from the pre-dragon era of the district have expressed a desire for the original name to return, despite it being criticized as being degrading, racist, and lacking common decency.^[8][9] Historian James W. Loewen noted that the name "Dragons" was also problematic, given that Pekin had been notorious for being a statewide Ku Klux Klan headquarters in the 1920s, with the Klan owning the Pekin Daily Times for several years, and with a prominent Klan leader still living in Pekin in 2005.^[13] After a TikTok video brought the former mascot to national attention in 2023, some Pekin alumni again defended the name and arranged to have "Pekin Chinks" T-shirts printed.^[14] As of 2025, such T-shirts are apparently still covertly distributed.^[12]

Kevin Pummill

In April 2019, antifascist activists identified Kevin Pummill, a PCHS social studies teacher, as a member of the white supremacist group Identity Evropa, posting on the group's Discord under the name "Undercover Academic – IL." Leaked messages from the Discord published by left-wing media collective Unicorn Riot showed Pummill posting antisemitic and homophobic messages, as well as bragging about "redpilling" students on immigration and conspiracy theories about white genocide in South Africa.^[15]

PCHS placed Pummill on leave while launching an investigation, at which time the teacher resigned.^[16] District 303 announced the resignation in a news release that left Pummitt unnamed:^[17]

While the resignation occurred early in the process of the investigation, school representatives were able to confirm that the teacher made a number of troubling and offensive posts on a private web-based message board. While the school is not aware of any instances of discriminatory conduct against students by the teacher, any concerns by parents or students should be brought to the attention of the administration.

District 303 Superintendent Danielle Owens later confirmed Pummill's identity to the press.^[18]