Southeast Missouri State University (Cape Girardeau, Missouri)

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Southeast Missouri State University was founded in 1873 when a group of prominent businessmen and politicians successfully lobbied the State of Missouri to designate Cape Girardeau as the home of the Third District Normal School. Classes were originally taught at the nearby Lorimier School until April of 1875 when the first normal school building was completed. Southeast Missouri State College had an enrollment of approximately 1600 students in the 1950's and steadily increased to more than 7,000 students in the 1970's due to low tuition costs, aggressive recruiting, and the construction of Interstate 55 between St. Louis and Cape Girardeau. The College also moved away from its focus on only training teachers and began to offer courses of study in business, nursing, and the liberal arts. Due to this expansion of curriculum and student body population, the college officially became Southeast Missouri State University in 1972. The physical size of the campus also grew in this same period. In 1956, the institution had ten buildings on campus. In 1975, the number had increased to twenty-two buildings.

Until January of 2005, the athletic team nicknames were the "Indians" (men's teams) and "Otahkians" (women's teams). After a movement by Student Government, the Booster Club and the National Alumni Council, those names were officially retired in a ceremony on October 22, 2004 and replaced with "Redhawks."[1] The current mascot is a stylized hawk known as Rowdy Redhawk. The University's original mascot was known as Chief Sagamore and was represented by a student dressed in Native Amerian regalia. Chief Sagamore was retired as mascot in the mid 1980's due to a growing cultural sensitivity to Native American mascots though the team names lasted for nearly twenty more years. The school's athletic teams compete in the Ohio Valley Conference.

It can generally be agreed that Changing the name of the SEMO mascot from the 'Indians' to the 'Redhawks' is pretty freaking weak and major cave to granola munchers and the politically correct crowd who tend to dominate Student Government at SEMO.