Board of Trustees at Washington And Lee University Votes Not to Change School Name
“We found no consensus about whether changing the name of our university is consistent with our shared values”
This battle has been raging for a few years. The board made the right decision. For the activists who were pushing for change, it’s all about power.
NBC News reports:
Washington and Lee University won’t strip Confederate leader from name
The board of trustees of Washington and Lee University on Friday voted 22-6 not to remove Confederate general Robert E. Lee’s name from the Virginia school’s moniker. The decision came after months of review and a year of racial justice protests across the nation that questioned the veneration of Confederate figures.
“We found no consensus about whether changing the name of our university is consistent with our shared values,” the university said in a statement. “Nor is there consensus on whether changing the name will position the university to be the most successful it can be in the future.”
The school has changed its name multiple times since its 1749 founding as Augusta Academy. It was named Washington Academy after George Washington made a gift to what was then Liberty Hall Academy that “ensured its survival,” the school said.
In 1870, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s name was added “in recognition of his leadership in saving and transforming the school after the devastation of the Civil War,” it said.
“The university today is not a memorial to our namesakes, but a place that provides an exceptional liberal arts and legal education and fosters relationships that bind generations of students, faculty, staff and alumni to each other,” the school said.
Witness the stupidity that the school is dealing with here:
Dismantling structural racism in an institution built to maintain white supremacy will be extremely difficult. How can we trust W&L to achieve the difficult when it can’t do the bare minimum of changing the school name? https://t.co/u6Y9SQopnf
— Gail Deady (she/her) (@Gail_Deady) June 4, 2021
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Comments
I thought the new name was going to be, according to some other wit, “And University.”
“Ampersand” sounds better.
There is no real world significance to changing the name. It is merely an attempt to flex political muscle and intimidate on-campus opposition to the CRT agenda. The fact is that CRT does not have support among the alumni, donor base or Board of Trustees. Instead of trying a difficult issue such as a mandate for CRT, it tried for something easy but symbolic. If W&L agreed to make the name change, the same advocates would come back and demand mandatory CRT, a purge of conservative faculty, etc. The outrage over the death of George Floyd does not equate to a surrender of the governance of W&L, nor should it. I am sure that there will be more Trustees prepared to draw a line in the sand.
What have we here? A university administration that remembers that they (and not everybody else) actually run the university. Shocking. Quite possibly the last one left in America.
The tide may be turning a little. Good. Let’s keep saying no to these radicals that want to run us over a cliff and out of the society we built.
I breathed a sigh of relief that the vote was not even close. However, the DEI infiltration continues and the lefties will not relent until Old George is pulled down from atop Washington Hall and Lee and Traveller are exumed and their bones dragged through the streets of Lexington.