Students Want Pennsylvania College to Rename ‘Lynch Hall’

Students at Pennsylvania’s Lebanon Valley College presented administrators last week with a proposed list of changes intended to benefit marginalized groups on the campus. Among the students’ demands, reports the website Penn Live, was a call for the college to change the name of a campus building, Lynch Memorial Hall, because of the name’s racial connotations.

The building is named for Clyde A. Lynch, who “led the college through the Great Depression and World War II,” according to the college, and began a campaign that raised $550,000 for a physical-education building. The building, named for Lynch upon his death, was renovated for academic use 12 years ago.

The organizers of the student group have said that they would be satisfied if the college added President Lynch’s first name and middle initial — Clyde A. — to the building to remove the sting of a name that summons a painful past of public hangings of African-Americans.

The word “lynch” dates to America’s Revolutionary War, when Capt. William Lynch of Pittsville, Va., “headed a self-constituted court with no legal authority which persecuted ‘Tories,’” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

College officials said they would meet with the students to discuss their demands before announcing a decision in January.