Boilermakers Protest Purdue's Mascot

WEST LAFAYETTE, IN—More than 200 members of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers picketed outside Ross-Ade Stadium Monday, protesting what they characterized as Purdue University’s insensitive use of a boilermaker as a mascot. “We have worked too hard forging America’s boilers to endure one-dimensional stereotypes like Purdue Pete,” union president Newton B. Jones said. “Pete may be muscular and sensibly wearing a hardhat, but the hammer he brandishes serves as an ugly reminder of isolated instances of violence in the boilermakers’ otherwise proud history.” A similar controversy erupted in 2003, when a University of North Carolina football game was interrupted by 35 protesters afflicted with congenitally tarred heels.