What’s next for names?

When the University names a building for someone who has made a substantial donation, the policy and procedure is clearly spelled out in Carolina’s current naming policy. But the requirements for naming a building in honor of other individuals are not as detailed.

With the prospect of renaming several buildings on the horizon as the Commission on History, Race and a Way Forward examines individuals tied to slavery, the Confederacy, racism and anti-Semitism, the need for updating Carolina’s naming policy has taken on new importance. A new Ad Hoc Committee on Honorific Naming Policy met for the first time on Dec. 11 to start the work.

The forming of the committee is the latest step in the University’s reconsideration of the names on its buildings. The process includes the Board of Trustees’ decision in June to lift a 16-year moratorium on removing names from campus buildings and in July to establish a policy for the removal of names from buildings.

Later in July, the board voted to remove the names Charles Brantley Aycock, Julian Shakespeare Carr, Josephus Daniels and Thomas Ruffin Sr. from buildings on campus. The Commission on History, Race and a Way Forward continues to research the backgrounds of other historic figures whose names may be considered for removal in the future.

“We now have three buildings on campus that remain unnamed, and so we have some opportunity here for the renaming of these buildings and we need a process for that,” Guskiewicz said in giving the committee its charge. “We want the people that we honor on campus to reflect our values today. We want a process that brings in voices from across campus and especially those that have often been ignored.”

Vice Chancellor for Development David Routh chairs the 14-member committee, which includes current trustees, members of the current naming committee as well as staff and student representatives. The committee will focus on Carolina’s honorific naming policy, which now only has the requirement that the person be honored “solely for services rendered to the University, State, nation or society-at-large.”

George Moses Horton Residence Hall

Honorific naming examples from the more recent past include:

• the 1998 renaming of the University Laundry to the Kennon Cheek/Rebecca Clark Building to honor two persons who led University housekeepers during the 1930s and 1940s,
• the 2007 naming of the George Moses Horton Residence Hall for an enslaved poet and
• the 1992 renaming of the Undergraduate Admissions building to Jackson Hall in honor of Blyden and Roberta Jackson, a married couple and two of the first Black faculty members at Carolina.

“I think we’ve had an underdeveloped honorific naming policy section for a while,” Routh said. A revised section “will guide discussions on the renaming of these buildings that are in scope right this second. But it will also be what governs our regular traffic of any honorific namings that come to the naming committee.”

Most of the discussion at the first meeting focused on setting up topics to be considered: the procedure for nominating an honorific name, public involvement in the naming process, qualifications for honoring an individual, similar policies at other universities and how to decide whether a building’s name should honor an individual at all.

“It is not necessarily only appropriate to use the names of people, but it is also possible to talk about some very, very important events and locations. We want to make sure we’re expansive enough,” said Joseph Jordan, director of the Sonja Hayes Stone Center for Black Culture and History and interim vice provost for academic and community engagement. “A building named for ideals that we hold, central to who we are, might also be appropriate. Who would have a problem with Honesty Hall?”

Student representative Kira Griffith, president of the Residence Hall Association and a Chancellor’s Science Scholar, also encouraged more expansive thinking about names. “One of those ideas is about potentially recognizing the land that UNC is sitting on and the history behind that and the groups that have been ignored or excluded in the story of the development of UNC.”

Routh proposed an ambitious timeline for the committee to come up with a revised policy that can be approved by trustees and then used for the first time to christen the three nameless campus buildings — Residence Hall One in Lower Quad (formerly Aycock), Student Affairs building (formerly Carr) and UNC Student Stores (formerly Daniels) — by the beginning of the 2021-22 academic year.

“When students come back in August — and we’re hoping they will — they’re not moving into Residence Hall No. 1 or going into a building that’s unnamed,” Routh said.

To keep the momentum going over the winter break, smaller groups of committee members will meet informally to brainstorm ideas to be discussed at the committee’s next meeting in January.