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Uncertainty fogs road back to plan to strike building names

Jenny Sieg & Giana Williams / GNP contributors


It’s paused with no unpause in sight, but there’s an air of hope that ECU will get back to the matter of renaming buildings.


Hope faded a year ago when the ECU Board of Trustees (BOT) paused the latest effort to rename five buildings that were named after figures tied to white supremacy.


Hope came back shortly afterward when the then new chancellor formed the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Commission. But, hope may once again fade. There is no clear indication that this commission will unpause the process.


Greenville News Project has spent the spring semester looking for the status of the renaming initiative. It looked through emails and other documents through public records requests and conducted interviews to discover where the process really stands. It found that there appears to be a will to restart, but no definitive way forward.


How hope came and went


The process started in October 2020 when now-former Interim Chancellor Ron Mitchelson founded the Ad Hoc Naming Committee to look into the namesakes of all campus buildings. The five names originally brought to the BOT for review were Sallie S. Cotten, James L. Fleming, Thomas J. Jarvis, James Y. Joyner and Robert H. Wright.


The committee officially met for the first time on Jan. 22, 2021, and decided to propose the removal of four of the five names which were Jarvis, Joyner, Cotten and Fleming. Eventually, the BOT requested that a draft of standards to rename buildings on campus be made.


The committee spent months drafting and researching the history behind the namesakes and the final draft was given to Chancellor Philip Rogers on March 31, 2021. Vern Davenport, who was the BOT chair at the time, announced the pause of the renaming process on April 23, 2021. He justified the pause as a time to take a more “broad and holistic” approach.


Since the pause, the draft of the standards is currently in the hands of Rogers. The status of whether or not these standards will be used for future conversation is unknown.


For Rogers, however, the pause is not “a formal pause, but more of a reset and an expansion of scope in the process.” The DEI was made in an effort to take a broader and “more holistic” approach. But, there has yet to be a subcommittee made with the charge of renaming buildings.


Mitchelson told GNP that he was not happy about the pause and said he hopes to see the DEI Commission return to the conversation of renaming buildings in the next year.


“While I am personally disappointed with the pause, as a chancellor I have deep respect for process and differing views,'' Mitchelson said. “It became clear to me that while the campus community rallied behind the proposed name changes, our board wanted a deeper and more comprehensive process, including a set of standards.”


The unknown status of renaming


Rogers said the DEI Commission was designed as a collaborative effort to address issues of diversity, equity, inclusion and race on ECU’s campus. The Student, Access and Success Subcommittee was the first subcommittee launched, however, it does not address the renaming of campus buildings.


He said the Culture, Climate, and Communication Subcommittee will be launched next, and as the steering committee is working to create the charge of the group, he is “certain that building names and historical analysis will be an important part of that conversation.”


Rogers, who took on the position as chancellor during the renaming process, said there are various factors to consider when trying to build an inclusive and equity-minded campus and his hopes were to ignite a campus-wide dialogue.


“We can’t rely on a singular authority like a chancellor, or a Board of Trustees, or a senior team, or a particular segment of our community to address it on our own, own their own,” Rogers said. “It takes mobilizing everybody together in a collaborative way from the ground up, to be able to look at an issue holistically as an organization.”


The purpose of Rogers’ launch of the DEI Commission was to lead a comprehensive and adaptive conversation about issues together as a campus community. Rogers said he believes it is important to not focus on too many aspects at one time and that is why subgroups have been made to build upon issues together.


The charge of the Student Access and Success subcommittee was to consider key research data and community perspectives to help develop recommendations that will incorporate strategies to create a more equitable and inclusive campus, Rogers said.


Hope is back, maybe


Allison Danell, who is co-chair of the DEI steering committee, provided a draft of the Culture, Climate, and Communication charge, which does not specifically address the renaming issue or any plan to resume.


However, when asked about the renaming issue specifically, she said the “ECU’s historical and contemporary landscape” will include a “historical analysis.”


The draft of the charge says, “Ever focused on the mission of ECU, develop a set of recommendations to further cultivate an inclusive, respectful working, living and learning environment for all Pirates.


“Consider ECU’s historical and contemporary landscape and its significance in our campus climate and impact on belonging for all campus members, with a special emphasis on the experiences of those with minoritized and marginalized identities.”


During the renaming process last spring, the BOT requested that a set of standards be made in addition to already existing standards to help review and rename buildings on campus. Shortly after the standards were written, drafted, finalized, and given to Rogers, the pause came.


When asked about whether or not the draft of standards, which was finalized in March, would be used by the committee to continue the conversation on renaming the five buildings, Rogers said “they are fully empowered to leverage any data, past analysis, perspectives from the campus.”


No promises, no guarantees


Mitchelson said the BOT committee wanted a set of standards on the building names. He said he created an Ad Hoc Naming Committee in order for them to look at the four buildings carefully. The Ad Hoc Naming Committee made the naming recommendations to Mitchelson, while he presented the recommendations to BOT on Feb. 11, 2021.


Mitchelson said it was clear that BOT members were “uncomfortable” in judging the recommendations. Although the recommendations were made, Michelson said the chancellor has the authority to make the recommendation and that the BOT owns the naming rights.


“So I felt fine. I felt like I reflected what the campus community wanted. And, you know, we had a pretty representative committee that did the work ended up by Gerry (Gerald) Prokopowicz,” Mitchelson said.


“We had three students, we had two faculty members, we had a representative from University Council, so we did all the stuff we were supposed to do and I was pretty comfortable with what we were recommending reflected the spirit of the campus,” He said.The administration at ECU has always been more progressive than the BOT when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion, Mitchelson said.

Throughout ECU’s history, he said, the administration seems to be the one pressuring the BOT for change.


John Messick was the fourth president of ECU, and Mitchelson said Messick pushed the issue of desegregation to the BOT at the time. He said Leo Jenkins, fifth president and first chancellor of ECU, was “loud and clear” about needing to change the issue of segregation at ECU.


Mitchelson said that with former Chancellor Steve Ballard, the renaming process with Aycock Hall, which is now Legacy Hall, was tense and the conversation was a largely debated issue.


“So in general, the administration reflects, I think in general, what the university community has wanted and has pressured that. And the trustees have always been more conservative in that regard, always,” Mitchelson said.


“And so this particular Board of Trustees sort of fits that vein a little more conservative in their thinking and really uncomfortable in judging the recommendation.”


Sieg and Williams produced this story for the spring 2022 class, In-depth Reporting Capstone.

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