Wake Forest University Cancels New Name for Campus Building After Just 19 Days
“A petition against the new name had stated it would create racial trauma.”
This story is a reminder that there are plenty of deeply unserious and unintelligent people in higher education.
The College Fix reports:
Wake Forest cancels new building name 19 days after canceling old building name
It’s the fastest cancel in the history of cancel culture.
It only took Wake Forest University 19 days to decide a new name it had given one of its buildings needed to be canceled.
In defense of Wake Forest, the new name chosen for the building was really, really dumb.
On May 7, Wake Forest University announced it would rename its Wingate Hall to “May 7, 1860 Hall” to mark the date it sold 16 slaves about 161 years ago.
“May 7, 1860, is the date Wake Forest sold at auction 16 human beings that a slave-owning benefactor bequeathed to the institution through his estate. By renaming this building, the University acknowledges participation in slavery, recognizes this aspect of its history and remembers those who labored at the institution against their will,” the university said in a news release at the time.
Washington Manly Wingate was the fourth president of Wake Forest University who held the title from 1853 to 1862, according to the university; after the Civil War, “Wingate contributed to the success of Wake Forest while actively promoting the institution of slavery.”
Fast-forward to May 26, when President Hatch sent a memo to the campus community explaining that officials decided to cancel the new building name.
Long story short, the old building name apparently offended some black students, and the new building name also apparently offended some black students.
A petition against the new name had stated it would create racial trauma.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
New new name: I’m Offended Hall
I am so old I remember when we had adults running many institutions and they would take someone with an embarrassingly bad idea aside and explain that they were embarrassing themselves, and perhaps their university. These days, the leadership is the prime embarrassment.
Name the building after its street address.
Or, apopt the naming convention Cadillac and Acura now use. There are no more Sedan / Coupe deVilles, El Dorados, or 60 Specials. In Acura’s case: no more Legends, no more Vigors. Now, it is all alpha-numeric nonsense that has no meaning of any kind. Acura even went so far as to name one of their vehicles after an explosive (RDX). All done in an effort to sound German I guess.
So, name buildings with random alpha-numeric conbinations. Even blacks and feminists will have to work hard at being offended.
The real reason for that is both to avoid unpleasant connotations in other languages – the apocryphal Chevy Nova/”doesn’t go” and Coca-Cola/”Bite the Wax Tadpole”, for example – and to ensure that when you Google the car’s name, you get the car and not a bunch of irrelevant results. Hyundai and Kia do this for most of their car models.
How about “The Building whose name should not be spoken Hall” or “The building fornerly known as Wingate Hall.”
“Woke Forest Hall”
– Asleep w/a CPAP Forest Hall