Early this month, about 15 students, most of them black, gathered in front of Saunders Hall, seemingly just one of many scenic brick buildings on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Then the students hung nooses around their necks and held up signs that read: “This is what Saunders would do to me.”
Born in 1835, William L. Saunders graduated from the university in 1854 and was a North Carolina historian and a member of the university’s Board of Trustees. He was also a Confederate colonel during the Civil War and a chief organizer of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina.
It’s those last, troubling details that have spurred a student movement seeking, among other things, to rename Saunders Hall.
“Not so much am I frustrated at Saunders and his hate and his legacy of violence,” said Omololu R. Babatunde, a senior in Chapel Hill who is part of the movement. “I’m really frustrated at the university who allowed this building to stand so long. It makes me feel like we’re foreigners in a space where we don’t belong.”
Such a sentiment would give nearly any college administrator pause. At Chapel Hill, concerns over the name have prompted a review by the trustees, who have been gathering research and opinions for months.
That review won’t stop at Saunders Hall, said Charles G. Duckett, one trustee. There are other buildings and monuments on the campus that are named for now-controversial historical figures or that honor the Confederate era.
“How do we address the history of the university and its ties, good and bad, to various people?” Mr. Duckett asked. “We’re seeking a comprehensive solution. How do you define where you would and would not take a name down?”
As Chapel Hill grapples with striking a balance between history and sensitivity to students, similar debates are roiling universities across the country, particularly in the South.
Taking the Chisels Out
In 1954, as a response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the University of Texas at Austin named a dormitory for William S. Simkins, an active Klansman who had taught law at the institution for 30 years. For nearly five decades the name stood, until Thomas D. Russell, a professor of law at the University of Denver, wrote a research paper about Simkins and the university. Mr. Russell’s paper, published in 2010, sparked a national conversation. Later that year the university renamed the dormitory.
Now, Mr. Russell said, more universities are aware of their racial histories and are debating how best to make amends.
Changing the name of a campus building is just one way to acknowledge a troubled past, he said. But when administrators weigh such a decision, they have several key questions to consider.
Among them: Will the move set a dangerous precedent? Many people in a university’s history might have held opinions that would be considered offensive today, Mr. Russell said, and a line must be drawn.
And then there are the brass-tacks concerns. For example: Could this affect fund raising? “People won’t want to give the university money if it seems like they’ll take the chisels out and remove the names,” Mr. Russell said.
And how will the university’s constituencies—internal and external—react?
A continuing battle at Clemson University demonstrates how tricky that question can be. Tillman Hall, a centerpiece of the campus, takes its name from Benjamin Ryan Tillman, a university founder who was also a virulent white supremacist. Some students and faculty members have called for the university to rename the building.
Those calls have met with a backlash. An online petition called “Save Tillman Hall,” which seeks to maintain the building’s current name, has gathered more than 6,000 signatures in less than a month. A university spokeswoman said Clemson was not considering any proposal to change the name.
Meanwhile, the University of Mississippi has been examining its own connection to slavery. Recently, among other reforms, the university renamed a campus street, Confederate Drive, as Chapel Lane.
Donald R. Cole, assistant to the chancellor for multicultural affairs, said there was some external backlash to the change, but students and faculty members were mostly supportive. Educating people in the state about the university’s racial legacy and its lasting effects has been key to making changes, he said.
The university, he said, also had to decide what to do with the campus’s Confederate Statue and Vardaman Hall, named for James K. Vardaman, a former governor who advocated white supremacy. The university did not rename any buildings, but it plans to provide “appropriate historical context,” in the form of plaques, alongside the structures.
“Slowly but surely, we’re beginning to dismantle the symbols associated with slavery in our institution,” he said. “If we could, we would give a blanket command to do so throughout, but we recognize that the opposition would probably not allow us to do that.”
One Man, Four Campuses
Last year Duke University renamed Aycock Hall, a dormitory that had been named for a former North Carolina governor, Charles B. Aycock. Aycock was known as the “education governor” for his support of public schools, but he also held white-supremacist views and supported disenfranchising African-American voters.
Michael J. Schoenfeld, a Duke spokesman, said the decision had been made for several reasons. For one, the building’s name predated Duke itself, as the dormitory was built when Duke was Trinity College. And Aycock didn’t have a direct connection to either Trinity or Duke, he said.
“We believe that it is no longer appropriate to honor a figure who played so active a role in the history that countered” the university’s values of inclusion and nondiscrimination, wrote Richard H. Brodhead, the university’s president, in a letter to students who had championed renaming the building.
Aycock’s mark, however, has been left on other buildings across the state, including at East Carolina University, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and Chapel Hill.
Some students at Chapel Hill have also called for the university’s own Aycock Residence Hall to be renamed. The trustees will provide an update on their progress at their next meeting, in late March, and the board’s final report could mention that building.
Other institutions in the state are also mulling the Aycock name. Trustees at East Carolina will decide whether to rename the university’s Aycock Residence Hall this month.
And Greensboro administrators recently formed a committee to examine a possible change in the name of that institution’s Aycock Auditorium.
Charles C. Bolton, a history professor and co-chairman of the committee, said campus administrators hadn’t received any specific complaints about the name but wanted to deal with the issue pre-emptively.
Correction (2/10/2015, 6:02 p.m.): Because of incorrect information provided by Mr. Cole, this article originally misstated the University of Mississippi’s decision on its Confederate Statue and Vardaman Hall. The university is not in the process of deciding what to do; it has already decided to install explanatory plaques alongside the structures. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.