But what does "move on" look like?
Probably a new mascot. I thought this idea was silly when it was first broached, and that we would be fine just living life with our "I" (and the SHIELD, y'all), but I've been proven wrong. This has somehow remained a source of contentiousness and embarrassment for over 10 years.
I don't know about anybody else, but I would like to keep the name "Fighting Illini" and from my understanding of its origins, it is ambiguous at best. Losing the Chief made it
more likely that we'd be able to keep it, not less (despite what everybody crying "slippery slope!" would have you believe), because without the Chief imagery, there's a pretty strong case to be made that "Fighting Illini" came into existence as a sort of demonym for Illinoisans or Illinois students, and it can easily return to being just that.
Continuing to fight these pitched battles over the War Chant and these rogue Chiefs is detrimental to that goal and is providing people who would do away with "Illini" plenty of ammo to say "See? They said it was just the Chief, but it's something deeper, and more change needs to happen."