UT board votes to change dorm name

[sonias]

Since Texas was getting slammed for this in GD this week - might as well post the result. A unanimous vote to change the name.

Houston Chronicle 7/15/10
UT board votes to change dorm name
The University of Texas' governing board voted unanimously this morning to rename a dormitory and park named after former leaders of the Ku Klux Klan.

"There has never been any doubt in my mind about what direction they were going to go," said regent Printice L. Gary of Dallas, the only African-American to serve on the board.

The new names will be Creekside Residence Hall and Creekside Park.

The dormitory, built in 1955 on the banks of Waller Creek, was named for William Stewart Simkins, who taught at the law school from 1899 to 1929 and previously had been a leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Florida.

I have to say that I never heard the back story to the dorm's name when I was at UT, but I'm glad they stopped honoring a racist. They did the right thing.
:applause:

[sonias]

1. Interesting article from Daily Texan on this issue

Daily Texan 6/30/10
Students still split over Simkins hall debate
Second forum gathers feedback on renaming Simkins dormitory

(snip)
Some students were concerned that if Simkins Hall, which was named after a former Ku Klux Klan member and UT law professor, is renamed, it will start a frenzy on campus to rename all the buildings and statues that commemorate people who do not hold ideals that conform to modern standards.

"If we do change the name of the dorm, we need to draw a very clear line and say that this is why what Simkins did was too far, and he shouldn’t be honored with a building named after him," former Student Government representative Alex Ferraro said. "This campus is full of buildings and statues that are tributes to people who were not consistent with the values that we have now."

I would tell Alex if the campus is full of buildings and statutes who were named after people like Simkins - it's time for them all to go. Why protect them? The U.S. is all about re-writing history. Why stop at Universities?

It's one thing to have a hall/display etc and clearly mark it "Confederate exhibit" or something like that so that it is a historical display, it's quite another thing to keep a position of honor as a building name throughout history.

Actually UT makes a lot of money selling building names. It was always supposed to be reserved for people that were deceased. But in 1995 the University "sold" the rights to the Biology Building to http://www.utwatch.org/corporations/freeportfiles/texan-951117d.html">Jim Bob Moffett of Freeport-McMoRan fame. Hopefully future generations will see the error of that honor too and rename that building as well. For now the money Moffett "endowed" the university with was quickly rewarded.


:shrug:

[sonias]

2. UT strips Klansman's name from Austin dorm

AAS 7/15/10
UT strips Klansman's name from Austin dorm
(snip)
Regents also voted to change the name of Simkins Park, a small green space next to the dorm that had been named after Simkins' brother, Eldred Simkins, who served on the university board from 1882-1896.

(snip)
The issue sparked in May after former Texas law professor Tom Russell published an online article detailing resistance by the university to integration in the 1950s and 1960s. Texas named the dorm after Simkins in 1954, the same year the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision ended legal segregation.

(snip)
In a campus speech in 1914 and an article two years later in the alumni magazine, Simkins said he never drew blood as a Klansman. He did, however, admit to assaulting a black man, participating in a train robbery and sowing fear in Florida's "black belt" as a masked night rider.

:kick:

[sonias]

3. UT Weighs Change for Dorm Named for KKK Leader

Texas Tribune 7/15/10
UT Weighs Change for Dorm Named for KKK Leader

The story of this old dorm — a locked, two-story brick building beside a half-empty creek — would have been unremarkable save for its namesake. The university that once admired law professor and Ku Klux Klan organizer William Stewart Simkins now largely scorns him, and its board of regents meets today to consider whether the tree-shaded residence at a noisy San Jacinto Boulevard intersection that bears his name still should.

(snip)
Finally, on Friday, President William Powers Jr., concurring with the advisory group, recommended that the regents change the name. If the University of Texas System Board of Regents sides with proponents of the name change, the campus will rid itself of what officials and Russell say is the only Klan-associated name on a building here. Others, though, are uncomfortable "rewriting history" by changing the name, and some see no need for the brouhaha around Simkins Residence Hall, the last remaining all-male dorm on campus. And the fiery campus debate has been fueled by myths about the dorm and other campus landmarks named for heroes of the South. Whatever the regents decide, UT won't be the last college in the former confederacy with a Klan claim to fame.

There are at least four others, said Russell, the legal historian who authored the Simkins paper while at UT and has since moved to the University of Denver (for a change of scenery, he said). The University of Alabama has Bibb Graves Hall, named for the alumnus, former Alabama governor and member of the Montgomery chapter of the Klan. Bob Jones University in South Carolina also has a residence hall named after Graves.

Interestingly there are 4 other universities who have have the KKK name problem. UT has at least cleaned up their problem.

:kick: