CARLISLE, Pa. — The Carlisle Borough Council voted to retire the official Carlisle crest, citing concerns with stereotyped imagery and its status as an "outmoded symbol."
At its February workshop meeting last Wednesday, the Council said retiring the crest is effective immediately. Officials did not indicate any concrete ideas for a replacement.
Carlisle councilors and Mayor Sean Shultz say the crest does not represent modern-day Carlisle and reinforces harmful stereotypes of Native Americans. The crest, pictured above, features both a Native American man and a "frontiersman" who are looking at each other from opposite sides of a shield that has imagery of the the Bible and "other symbols of Carlisle's past" on it, according to Shultz.
"I can appreciate that the designer in the 1950’s may have wanted to depict the Native American history in this area, but that is a rather naïve, inaccurate view of our history especially in light of the atrocities of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, and it objectifies the Native American," wrote Shultz in an email sent to FOX43.
Shultz also noted the crest is not the result of a former Carlisle community effort. Rather, it only stems from the mind and approval one designer: William Edel.
Edel designed the crest and served as the president of Carlisle's Dickinson College in the 1950s. His influence on the crest, as Shultz noted, is easily recognizable in the depiction of Dickinson's Old West building drawn just above the shield.
According to Shultz, Edel created the crest in the 1950s by himself since he and his friend – Frank Masland of Carlisle's Masland Carpet Works – wanted to give something to the people of Carlisle, England when they visited the town of the same name.
"It seems this coat of arms was purely a product of a couple of prominent individuals of Carlisle at the time, and not a product of any public engagement," said Shultz, who explained the crest then eventually became Carlisle's informal symbol during Edel's time.
Shultz says he and the Carlisle Borough Council will create a new logo that incorporates community input. They hope to outline a process for designing a new symbol at next month's workshop meeting and expect to approve a replacement by the end of this year.
