BISMARCK N.D. — North Dakota’s Board of Higher Education doesn’t want to subvert the Legislature’s authority by attempting to disqualify a law that requires the University of North Dakota’s teams to be called the Fighting Sioux, two officials said Friday.
Separately, a supporter of the university’s nickname and American Indian head logo said the board’s stand has given momentum to a possible ballot initiative that would replace the board with an elected higher education commissioner.
“With the current board, there is no accountability,” Sean Johnson, of Bismarck, told a legislative higher education oversight committee on Friday. “We need to have accountability, and we don’t have it.”
Johnson is a member of a citizens’ committee that campaigned for a June referendum vote on the Fighting Sioux law. The Board of Higher Education contends the law is unconstitutional, and it has asked the North Dakota Supreme Court to block it from coming to a public vote.
The High Court has allowed nickname supporters and the Legislature to intervene separately in the case.
Rep. Al Carlson, R-Fargo, the House majority leader, said if the Supreme Court endorses the board’s legal arguments it will cripple the Legislature’s power to regulate North Dakota’s university system.
The Board of Higher Education, which is part of the North Dakota Constitution, was established by a voter initiative in 1938 in response to then-Gov. William Langer’s decision to sack seven professors at the state agricultural college, which is now North Dakota State University.
