Greetings from Arkansas! Just read this letter to the NCAA from Kupchella and wish to register my support. I saw it on the Mississippi State forum. The response from the Bulldog fans has been 100% behind the President of your University. Unlike those who suspect that fighting this self-righteous exercise in mental masturbation from the NCAA will damage you nationwide, I strongly believe that UND will come out in a far stronger position by means of litigation over compliance.
The NCAA is by no means invincible as it regards issues that fall outside their traditional capacity to regulate athletic events. When I was living in Georgia as a child, the Universities of Georgia and Oklahoma took the NCAA to court over their monopoly on television rights. It took some time, but the two schools triumphed over the NCAA, their dollars, and their legions of lawyers.
Your issue is much more relevant in my mind. The NCAA can dictate to its member institutions the number of scholarship players it can carry, the number of games in can play, and it can even dictate to member programs the size of their media guides. But they have never had control over how a program or a University chooses to identify itself. It is a power that goes beyond their mission statement and regulations and it would not stand up in any court regardless of how many lawyers they possess in their retinue. Where would such a power grab lead? Would the NCAA be able to threaten a University with sanctions whenever it deemed the policies of an institution harmful to a certain segment of the population? Could they force Baylor, Carson-Newman, Oral Roberts or Mercer to end their association with "Born-Again" Christianity because they disagreed with the positions held by those Chrisitian organizations? This is a slippery slope.
Your President and quite a few posters on this thread made a great point referencing the NCAA's McCarthy-like broadbrush of UND. They have deemed your logo racist and offensive, as if UND harbors an environment harmful to minorities. If you give in, then you have essentially admitted that they were right. Considering all the good that you offer for Native Americans within your state and region, such an admission would be an intellectual desecration of UND. You can't let that stand unchallenged.
The money expended in such a fight would be considerable, but I believe that the public relations benefits from taking the fight to these would-be social engineers in Indianapolis would more than make up for it. Such a lawsuit would force an actual consideration of the strength of UND's programs for Native American students, its efforts to seek consultation from the Sioux on the presentation of their athletic programs, and the tasteful manner in which your program conducts itself on the field (As your President noted in comparison with Florida State University.). Not only would you win the lawsuit, but you would also win considerable national regard for your programs. The NCAA would come off as an ignorant bully as your reputation gained by the courtroom comparison.
Apologies for the long-winded post. You are not backing down, nor should you ever do so. You have more support outside North Dakota than you'll ever know. That support will only grow if this case ever gets to trial.