When it comes to conference membership, having competitve sports teams should be the top priority. Unless some pressidents have a big problem with nicknames (like SCSU's) I do not think that will have much of an impact.
UND is doing what is best for the nickname. If other schools have changed their's, perhaps they should not have been so quick to bow down to the NCAA.
Wasting NCAA resources! What! It was the NCAA who used their own resources to begin this thing. It was also the NCAA who forced schools that had what were deemed to be "hostle and abussive" nicknames and/or logos to waste their school resources on doing a study on them.
A school should not have to have tribal consent. UMass does not have to have consent from the group of people* they are named for. Heck, the Minutemen do not even exist anymore so who could they get consent from?
*Whether a team is named for an Indian Tribe (Fighting Sioux), a nationality (Fighting Irish), some settlers (Sooners), or a historical army (Minutemen) they are all named for a group of people. Why are Indians different then the other groups of people?