Margaret Brumm

MARQUETTE — Longtime Marquette resident Margaret Brumm said the Marquette Area Public Schools Board of Education simply didn’t listen when it came to changing the school’s nickname.

In an interview late Thursday, she said that those in opposition to the nickname change, which the board voted on Monday, are being labeled “racist” for supporting the old MSHS name.

“We were told that even though we didn’t intend to be racist when we wore it, it was racist … that we were too stupid to realize that we were being racist,” Brumm said. “I object to that…. We didn’t put on the uniform to be racist.”

Brumm has pending property rights over the school’s new nickname Sentinels.

On Monday morning, Brumm said she sent an email to the MAPS board, informing members that she has filed the appropritate paperwork to obtain the rights to the nicknames they were considering for MSHS.

She wrote: “Now that you are aware that I have property rights in these names, I will leave it to your attorney to advise you of the risks the school board will take if the school board decides to change the name without first obtaining the property rights I own. I look forward to beginning negotiations with the school board with respect to my property rights in the proposed nicknames.”

The trademarks in question were filed for the following names: “Marquette Sentinels,” “Marquette Reds” and — noticably not one word — “Marquette Red Jackets” according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

All three applications are additionally marked for the specific use of T-shirts only. In order to make sure her trademark is considered “in use,” Brumm designed and ordered T-shirts with each of the names over the weekend.

“I kept expecting the school board to file trademark applications for its last three finalists because that would be something that normally for a trademark rebranding, which I’ve done,” she said. “And they didn’t…. Since they chose not to do that, it’s free for anybody to do. Which I did. It’s perfectly legal business.”

The million-dollar question on everyone’s minds is simply: Why?

Brumm explained that her goal is to persuade the school board to “put a pause on putting this new name into effect” in order to have the board take the following actions: perform a cost analysis on the name-change process, schedule an election within the school district on whether the population is for the name change and bring in people from other communities who have experienced a name change such as this.

She noted that significant name changes, which she said she has experience in performing, “typically run a minimum of a quarter million dollars.”

According to Brumm, who is a candidate in the 109th state representative district, supporters of the Redmen name cite the fact that the name’s origin is from the crimson color of the Harvard sweaters, not the derogatory slur used for First Nations and Indigenous peoples.

“We just didn’t spend that much time talking about Native Americans … it just wasn’t part of our thinking,” she said.

Additionally, she cited that the 60% of people against the name change — as indicated when MAPS sent out a survey to the school district in 2023 — were “not persuaded.”

She continued, “They’ve been yelled at, screamed at, called racist, but they haven’t been persuaded…. Tell me it’s in our best interest. Tell me how Marquette will be better, stronger, a better place to be with this name change. They haven’t done that.”

Her final concern is that taking away the Redmen/Redettes names would “take everything about Marquette that is unique away,” therefore making it “very beige” with “nothing unique about us at all.”

Her trademark move was just one phase of her overall plan, Brumm alleged.

“Phase two, entirely seperate, was this morning, which I’m not prepared to talk about…. I’m prepared for phase three, four, five and six,” Brumm said. “These will all be different activities that are designed to encourage the board to negotiate with me.”

Alexandria Bournonville can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 506. Her email address is abournonville@miningjournal.net.