On Saturday Dec. 3, when the Dawg Pound taunted the Australian player on the Valparaiso men’s basketball team with the words, “U-S-A U-S-A”, in a matter of seconds the “Pound” was undermining all the miraculously lofted—but honestly earned over the last couple years—high esteem of Butler in countless hearts across the nation.

This chant was not just an innocent nationalistic chant. It was a mob-mentality goading of a fellow Horizon League opponent team member, and much more, because it smacked of a shocking ignorance and disrespect of the fact that putting out heroic efforts on the same playing floor that afternoon was another Australian, only this one being on the Butler basketball team itself, and whose family was visiting from home which is half the way around the world.

What a travesty, to insult not only Butler’s own player, but also his family when they made such efforts to be at the game and to see what Butler is all about. The Butler University family has perhaps the greatest opportunity of any similarly sized university in history, and that is not to keep winning national finalist basketball titles.

But it is to prove that the national image of admiration and respect that Butler has earned over the past two years as a result of the miraculously over-achieving Butler men’s basketball teams is genuine.

As a result of the recent embarrassment committed by the Dawg Pound in the form of not only a childish, but also fruitless chant, the only avenue open to attempt to salvage the damage done is for all those who participated in the chant to effectively and sincerely apologize to all who heard it.

This likely is not easily done, as the event was televised.

Please, at least apologize to Jackson for God’s sake.

—Norman Stump, Ovid Butler Society Member