There are millions of species in the animal kingdom, thousands of mythical creatures, and hundreds biblical figures in our world today. Of all of these, I don’t think that a school can possibly think of a mascot more inappropriate and insensitive then Seoul Foreign School’s “Crusader”.

Crusaders were religious fundamentalist, mass murderers of the middle ages who waged over a dozen wars against several ethnic groups. Human rights were flagrantly disregarded in these crusades, killing thousands of Islamic civilians as well as utilizing child soldiers to fight their “holy wars”.

Some may argue that to a group of people, the crusaders represented and still stand for being “god’s soldiers” and contend that the crusades were heroic events where god’s servants fought for their beliefs.

But one could make the same argument about Jihadists and Nazis. That doesn’t mean they are appropriate as being high school mascots.

Seoul Foreign School is an international school that travels to internationally in academics and athletics with other international school throughout the world. Most of these schools, unlike SFS, are non-denominational.

The school has every right as a privately funded institution to patronize the crusades and take pride of the history, but to interact with multi-ethnic groups and engage in friendly competition internationally with such a name is not only arrogant, but highly offensive as well.