The UNC Board of Trustees has just renamed, by a vote of 10 to 3, Saunders Hall to Carolina Hall. They also approved the placement of a marker that reads "we honor and remember all those who have suffered injustice at the hands of those who would deny them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The Board cited the board of trustees 1920 citation of Saunders' leadership of the Ku Klux Klan as one of his accomplishments. As Sallie Shuping Russell said, the discovery that the board had highlighted Saunders' leadership of the Klan back in 1920 was a "game changer." (And I've said before the reasons why someone is honored with a building name, along with what is known about them, are important factors in the renaming calculation.)
I'm generally against renaming, but as I remarked as recently as this morning, if you're going to rename any buildings this should be high on the list. This also opens up the question whether there should be more buildings renamed, such as Ruffin Hall. But the Board is responding to this question with a resolution that they will not rename any more buildings for the next sixteen years. (That number was chosen because it is four full generations of students.)
This decision has been in the works for a while -- it was a little more than a year ago that I put up my first post on Saunders Hall. I want to try to figure out when the sand blasters arrive, because I'd like a picture of this for the files. At the very least I'll have to chance the essay I was going to write about the Saunders Hall controversy; today there was a redistribution of cultural capital. More thoughts on this shortly.
I found the new name, Carolina Hall, to be most original. Much thought must have gone into that.
Posted by: Bill Turnier | June 01, 2015 at 10:03 PM