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Faculty and Students Protest U. Richmond Decision Not to Change Names on Campus Buildings

Faculty and Students Protest U. Richmond Decision Not to Change Names on Campus Buildings

“President Ronald Crutcher, who is Black, and the board of trustees said last week that the names won’t be changed because doing so would be inconsistent with their educational mission.”

Cancel culture is out of control and some people are finally putting on the brakes.

Richmond.com reports:

University of Richmond faculty, students protest school’s decision to keep two controversial names on campus buildings

The decision to leave the names of two controversial historical figures on University of Richmond buildings has led to a wave of negative responses. A student government association voted to suspend its operations in protest. The Faculty Senate called for the board to remove the names. And the Black Student Coalition accused the university of upholding a culture of white supremacy.

Pledging a “fuller historical narrative,” the University of Richmond announced last month that it would not remove the names of Douglas Southall Freeman and Robert Ryland from two campus buildings. Freeman, a former trustee and rector, supported segregation. Ryland, the university’s first president, owned slaves.

President Ronald Crutcher, who is Black, and the board of trustees said last week that the names won’t be changed because doing so would be inconsistent with their educational mission. Crutcher pledged to make sure the history of the university is told in a way that reflects the diversity of the school.

“The board of trustees has shown me and others they don’t value student input unless it affirms their own viewpoint,” said Anthony Polcari, who on Sunday resigned from his position as president of the Richmond College Student Government Association.

UR began studying Freeman and Ryland in 2019 when Crutcher commissioned reports on the two men.

Freeman was a UR trustee and rector from 1925 to 1950 and editor of the Richmond News Leader, which later merged with the Richmond Times-Dispatch. According to UR’s report, written by Suzanne Slye, Freeman promoted segregation and disenfranchisement of Black people. He called interracial marriages a “pollution of blood” and supported efforts for eugenics. Though he opposed lynching and mob violence, he desired a segregated society.

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Comments

The Friendly Grizzly | March 23, 2021 at 4:32 pm

“To all who complain: you are free to transfer to other schools, quit, or to retire depending on circumstances.

-signed-

Dean T. F. Grizzly

Sometimes I think resignation is a good thing. A University has many stakeholders, including students, faculty, non-academic staff, and major donors. If the Trustees rejected a student government recommendation saying “You do not accurately express the wishes of the student body,” then the Student Government President should resign. If the Trustees says “We weighed your input along with other factors and are doing what is best for the University.” Then, the resignation is childish show-boating. There is a very good reason that the Student Government is not vested with naming rights decisions.

And yet no mob protesting the Segregationist-in-Chief:

https://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/joe-biden-mourns-byrd-blog-entry-1.1661734 Joe Biden Mourns Byrd

By MICHAEL MCAULIFF

MOUTH OF THE POTOMAC |

FEB 22, 2013 AT 5:04 AM

Vice President Biden, at a GE facility in Louisville, Kent., this morning, remembered Sen. Robert Byrd as a mentor and fighter for his state: > “As we used to say in my years in the Senate, if you’ll excuse a point of personal privilege here for a moment, a very close friend of mine, one of my mentors — a guy who was there when I was a 29-year-old kid being sworn into the United States Senate shortly thereafter; a guy who stood in the rain, in a pouring rain, freezing rain outside a church as I buried my daughter and my wife before I got sworn in, Robert C. Byrd. He passed away today. He was the — we lost the dean of the United States Senate, but also the state of West Virginia lost its most fierce advocate and, as I said, I lost a dear friend. > > “Throughout his 51 years, the longest tenure of any member in Congress in the history of the United States, Robert C. Byrd was a tough, compassionate, and outspoken leader and dedicated above all else to making life better for the people of the mountain state — his state, the state of West Virginia. He never lost sight of home. He may have spent half a century in Washington. But there’s a guy — if anybody wondered — he never, never, never, never took his eye of his beloved mountain state. And we shall not — to paraphrase the poet — we shall not see his like again. And the Senate is a lesser place for his going.”

https://historycollection.com/10-well-known-us-figures-affiliated-with-the-ku-klux-klan/9/

Robert Byrd

Robert Byrd was a Senator from West Virginia from 1959 -2010, making him the longest serving member of that body in the history of the United States. By the latter years of his tenure in the Senate his accumulated power and knowledge of that body were nearly immeasurable. Still he suffered considerable political embarrassment over discussions in the press and other media regarding his membership in the Ku Klux Klan.

Byrd didn’t simply join the Klan. When no chapter was available for him to join, he actively recruited friends and friends of friends, pumping hands, explaining beliefs and tenets, cajoling, persuading, and calling in favors, to create a new chapter in Sophia, West Virginia. He was successful in bringing in 150 new members, who understandably elected him as their leading officer, with the title of Exalted Cyclops. Soon the Cyclops was in correspondence with noted Klansman Theodore Bilbo, explaining his opposition to a desegregated military and deploring “race mongrel(s)”.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/06/19/joe-biden-james-eastland-herman-talmadge-segregationists-civility/

We got things done’: Biden recalls ‘civility’ with segregationist senators s evidence of his ability to forge personal bonds, the former vice president pointed to his 36-year career in the Senate, which stretched back to 1973 and overlapped with the service of leading Southern Democrats. Biden cited the late senators James O. Eastland (Miss.) and Herman E. Talmadge (Ga.), who were steadfastly opposed to civil rights and racial integration.

Biden suggests he has raised nearly $20 million for his White House bid

“I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” Biden said at the fundraiser, where he was introduced by Eric Mindich, an investment manager and former Goldman Sachs partner.

The Democratic presidential candidate, who has led his competitors in early polls of the crowded nominating contest, briefly imitated the southern drawl of the Mississippi cotton planter, lawyer and lawmaker. “He never called me ‘boy,’ ” Biden said. “He always called me ‘son.’ ”

When did students start thinking they can run the school? If they don’t like how the school does things, they can voluntarily become students at another one. There are thousands of ’em. Pick one and transfer.
.