Schools
Online Petition Demands Wheeler High School Keep Its Name
The new petition comes two months after another petition argued that Wheeler — named for a Confederate general — should change its name.
EAST COBB COUNTY, GA — Wheeler High School is now the target of dueling petitions — one to change the school’s name, another to leave it as is.
A new online petition to keep Wheeler’s name — entitled “Don’t let them take the name away of our beloved high school” — was posted recently by Wheeler grad Connie Behensky, according to East Cobb News.
“I went to school there along with my 4 siblings they were the best years for us,” Behensky wrote in her introduction to the petition. “We have great memories of our friends and teachers and just the best years of my personal life. You have let them remove our statues you are not going to take this away from us.”
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“I am tired of butt hurt people trying to change history!” wrote one of the petition’s anonymous signers.
Another signer identified only as Dorothy H. argued that it was “ridiculous to change the name of something because someone is offended.
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“Should I change my name of Dorothy because someone is offended by the Wizard of Oz,” she wrote. “I think not. It's my name.”
Several other signers decried the “cancel culture” they blamed for those wanting to change the school’s name.
“First they destroy monuments, then change the names of streets and various sites, then they destroy our country,” wrote Wayne S. of Indiana.
By Monday afternoon, the petition to keep Wheeler's name had almost 500 signatures.
A petition mounted two months ago as Black Lives Matter drew national attention — and that had more than 4,500 signatures by Monday afternoon — argued just as passionately that the school’s name should be changed.
“We are lifelong members of the Wildcat Nation and as parents, alumni, teachers, and students in this community, we believe it is well past time for the Cobb County School Board to rename Joseph Wheeler High School, an institution whose very name celebrates, memorializes, and honors a Confederate general,” petitioners wrote in an introduction.
The school is named for Joseph Wheeler, a Confederate general who later served in the U.S. Army and eventually became a member of Congress from Alabama. According to Alabama.com, Wheeler is one of the few Confederate generals buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He's also one of 11 Confederate generals with statues in the U.S. Capitol, targeted to be removed by Democrats in Congress.
Wheeler’s student body was at one time almost all-white, according to East Cobb News, but is now far more diverse. More than a third of Wheeler’s 2,159 students are Black.
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