You have to admit that to a university highly proud of their communities and traditions like Yale, there’s a “small price” for the alums to pay when the college they went to is just gone for good. While people pay prices for various causes all the time, I suppose Yale didn’t find enough justification and therefore support from their community for this particular one. Apparently some think that not only the name is not doing harm other than the feelings of a few being hurt, but also it can be a “teachable moment”, which I agree is highly controversial. Things are still evolving though and just maybe we will see Yale in the near future be in the position of having to rename Calhoun. They will figure it out without our help. 
"You have to admit that to a university highly proud of their communities and traditions like Yale, there’s a “small price” for the alums to pay when the college they went to is just gone for good. "
I’m not sure why Yale is any prouder of their communities and traditions than any other elite school. This is where it gets just a little too precious and thick.
So –
If Yale DOES change the name… isn’t that – well, not quite whitewashing history – but burying it a little? Because right now, as I understand, Calhoun’s history is in fact tied to Yale and at the same time Calhoun’s ideology is exposed front & center. Renaming the building in fact sort of gets Yale off the hook.
Just wondering… I haven’t made up my mind & wanted to know what you thought.
I have to disagree here about the fact that changing Calhoun’s name on the residential college could somehow whitewash his place in history… changing a name on a building in no way whitewashes anything he did. It only changes Yale’s building names so yes students will have to learn that a building had a different name in the past… and then they will learn why the name was changed… That doesn’t bury any history nor whitewash it.
By the way I was in a store (TJ Maxx) buying my son a map for his dorm wall and we both noticed that several countries had changed names rendering the map out of date… we both laughed … entire countries change their names… it isn’t that big of a deal.
Well, that’s exactly what some of us said a few hundred posts ago, katliamom. Calhoun Hall with a plaque or display or statue (etc) relaying the history accomplishes that - keeps the context and gives today’s perspective on their appropriateness. Renaming it something else without any kind of historical plaque or display means that the history is lost.
Have you been to Berlin? There’s a section of the Berlin Wall still up. It could have been bulldozed. But it’s there precisely because it can serve as a reminder of bad things done over time. If you wipe it away and pretend it never existed, you can’t do that. The lesson is lost. Whitewashed (no pun intended).
@Pizzagirl Imagine that the hall had just been built, and we were deciding right now whether to name it Calhoun or something else. Then nobody would’ve supported naming it Calhoun. So if it’s not the optimal name, why use it? Convention? Tradition? We’re supposed to be educating the next generation for the future, not acting like 18th century aristocrats. If they want to learn about Calhoun, they can open a book.
Yale can change the name of the building and present a plaque explaining that they named the building after a racist and a leading proponent of slavery in the United States. Yale did this 80 years after the guy died. Because you know, Yale ran out of people to honor, slavery is a positive thing, and we might forget history.
I guess the same people who are arguing against changing the name are ok with honoring nazis by naming things after them. After all, it is around 80 years since the nazis started to take hold and if we don’t start honoring nazis, we might forget the history.
The funniest thing is that people would probably object more to naming the hall after someone useless, or, say, John Harvard, than a former active facilitator of the slave trade.
@Pizzagirl Yale is the college known for its residential college system. While some other colleges may have similar system too, it is not a sin to say Yale is one of the elite colleges that have a strong focus on and “sell for” its strong communities.
Maybe we should rename all of the states too. Each state has a racist history.
I agree. On a side note, Yale should probably redact Calhoun’s name from their college records since it would be very insulting that their student turned out so badly.
Hehe.
And the delicious irony of a 25-page thread with only one (I think?) actual Yalie present, much of which is complaining about college students’ complaining.
Someone at the school just suggested adding AJ as the initials of Calhoun. I don’t even know who that is (or, who the other guy was).
@runswimyoga - Thanks for the study.
Yes. You understood what I was saying.
The McKinsey study presents nothing that refutes my post above.
It does not take getting past Page 1 of the McKinsey paper in Post #345 to show that “Diversity Matters” is only a “managerial” hypothesis created after making a clearly conjectured and erred correlation, NOT showing a causal relationship.
At least, the authors are upfront that they are hypothesizing only. So, there is no “proof” of any sorts going on here. It right after this the errors begin. And it surely depends on what one thinks is a reasonable hypothesis.
The authors make two fundamental errors in their assumptions about 1) the companies and 2) the effect of talent. However, I understand the errors in the assumption because without them, the authors’ hypotheses fall apart. Allow me to explain.
Specifically, the study has a two-pronged misleading statement right out in the open: “…that more diverse companies are better able to win top talent…”
This statement is misleading and assumptive because the study does NOT qualify the companies. In fact, the statement erroneously implies the company structure, products and business systems were irrelevant to attracting top talent and that diversity was the driving force in attracting top talent. Does anyone really believe that?
I bet you top diverse talent would laugh in your face if the above was ever suggested to them. Why? Because top diverse talent wants to go and does go to top companies just like anyone else, i.e., they also want to be as successful as possible too.
Therefore, it is not surprising that a top company would continue to perform well and even do better when it continues to attract top talent. And, because more diverse people are attending business school and colleges today, more top talent will be diverse.
What the study needs to show to prove its hypothesis about “Diversity Matters” is to show that mediocre diverse talent improves top companies success simply for being diverse because it is no mystery that top diverse talent would do well. Need to control only for the “diversity” effect and eliminate the “top talent” effect and “top company” effect. Without these controls, the studies are only philosophical in nature, and there is nothing concrete to take from them.
Thus, the questions that need to be studied and answered are: “Does diversity alone at a company improve that company’s success?” More specifically, “Does top diverse talent alone improve the success of historically mediocre and struggling companies?” And, “Does mediocre and poor diverse talent improve the success of historically top companies?”
Until the above questions are answered and the level of the company and the level of the diverse talent is controlled for and only diversity is left, then what the authors are saying is purely academic in nature. Fine in the classroom, but nothing upon which to take hard business decisions.
https://web.duke.edu/equity/toolkit/documents/DiversityMatters.pdf
(Emphases mine)
As some mentioned, the residential college system is different than other standard dorm affiliations. You are connected to your RC for all 4 years- you usually live there, and even if you live off campus for part of your college career, you hang out at your RC when on campus, eat your meals there, visit with the faculty house parents that live there, participate in RC activities, are mentored by upper classmen when you are an underclassman, and in turn pay it forward when you are an upperclassman, etc. It leads to a very strong sense of community. When you meet someone who attended a school with a strong RC system, the first question you ask is “which college were you in?” Some of the Yale alum on cc have their RC coat of arms as their avatar. It is a strong affiliation.
My brother was in Saybrook. He buys Saybrook stuff off eBay. I dated guys in Davenport, Pierson and Branford. I only remember the name of one of the guys, but I can remember which RC they were in (ok, laugh if you must…)
My DS#1 attended a school with a strong RC system, and meeting others from the same RC, even if from decades before, leads to an instant kinship. There are friendly rivalries between the RCs and its history and longstanding traditions that would be affected if a name, even with the best of intentions, were stripped from a RC. Someone from Calhoun would always be from Calhoun. I can see them having a CB and CA type acronym, for “Calhoun before” and “Calhoun after”. It will likely always be thought of as Calhoun - like it or not.
So, it would not be surprising if the Calhoun alums would struggle with this, and feelings can run strong due to the strong emotional connection to one’s RC affiliation. Stripping the name from a longstanding RC is different, IMO, than from some random classroom or administrative building. I agree that it is a teachable moment. Am not minimizing the difficulty of the situation, and the sensitivities, but at present, I would not support a name change. There are other ways to address and acknowledge the history of the person for whom the college was named.
Perhaps we should require all parents with girls named Savanah or Virginia to rename them because those names can be connected with slavery. Same goes for people with sons named Lee, Robert, or Nathan.
Perhaps we should require all posts to be reductiones ad absurdum.
I did have to laugh at Albert’s post because I am the daughter and granddaughter of Virginias, both of whom are within 20 feet as I write this post. No slave owners here though! Perish the thought!
Good heavens, we also need to ban Michael Jackson music. How can we possibly listen to the music of a man who shares a last name with Confederate leader?
Good thing no one names their kid Rhett any more, but the male and female Ashleys have got to go.