Pennsylvania students want name change for Lynch Hall because of racial overtones By Martin Barillas see note please
http://www.speroforum.com/a/VKHDXRETKD56/76862-Pennsylvania-students-want-name-change-for-Lynch-Hall-because-of-racial-overtones?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=LIDPKNVJAC10&utm_content=VKH
Oh sweet irony….will they also demand that the incompetent Attorney General Loretta Lynch who shares all their “sensitivity” change her name?????rsk
Students at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania are demanding that administrators change the name of a building on campus that they find offensive. Lynch Memorial Hall, which bears the name of the institution’s Depression era president, should have a name change because of “racial connotations” associated with the term “lynching.”
The students, most of home belong to the campus Black Student Union, wish to expunge the name of Dr. Clyde A. Lynch who served through the Great Depression and the Second World War. He raised $55,000 to build a physical education facility that was later made into classrooms. Adjusting for inflation, the money Lynch raised would now surpass $725,000. Lynch died in 1950.
Lebanon Valley College is a private institution. Among the demands on the part of the Black Student Union are racial sensitivity training for faculty and staff, as well as diversity workshops. Other demands include: surveys of the racial climate on campus, facilities for different gender identities and disabilities, in addition to protocols for officials in responding to allegations and acts of bias. The demands were made on December 4 at the predominantly white institution.
Tamara Baldwin, president of the LVC Black Student Union, says that the demands were “pretty reasonable.” Those demands, aside from the requested name change, have been warmly received by LVC. College President Dr. Lewis Thayne said is considering the demands and looks forward to discussions. He said that some of the changes are “instep with those already being discussed by the administration.” He will address the demands at the LVC third annual Symposium on Inclusive Excellence on January 21, 2016.
After the event at the campus’s Miller Chapel, Tamara Baldwin, president of Lebanon Valley College’s Black Student Union, said they hope to “level the playing field, for all marginalized people on campus,” to “make sure their voices are heard and that all the things they are lacking on campus are acknowledged.”
Even while media were present, organizers “discouraged” video and photographs, according to Pennlive. This was sought, allegedly, to create a “safe space” where students felt free to speak without fear of repercussion or self-censorship. At the event, students spoke about their personal experiences in childhood and at the college with racism. Speakers welcomed the event, which followed a week-long series of protests, as part of a national movement.
Critics of the movement on campus expressed dismay over the organizers’ use of profanity, for example, while some expressed opposition to fellow students’ goals.
Advocates for change appeared unabashed, claiming that consensus is building in their favor. Associate Professor Michael Schroeder told the media that LVC feels like an island, but that it is caught up in same currents affecting the rest of the United States.
Lebanon Valley College currently has 1,608 full-time undergraduates enrolled. Of these 3.1 percent are black or African American, 2.4 percent are Asian, 2.2 percent are mixed race, 0.3 are international students, 0.2 percent are Americn/Alaskan natives, and 83.6 percent are white.
Critics of the proposed name change for Lynch Memorial Hall were outspoken. One wrote “Do they think Mr. Lynch made his money by lynching people? Perhaps the hall should be knocked down and level(ed) and all the classes held there can continue under the sky.” Opponents of the name change want the building’s name to stay the way it is.
Comments were rife on Twitter. Someone self-identified as MrGChristopher tweeted his concern that students at Lebanon Valley College may turn “racial activism” into a joke.
Protesters at Yale University similarly demanded for the removal of the name of John C. Calhoun’s from a residential college on campus. They spoke of Calhoun’s support for the institution of slavery in the 1850s. However, LVC supporters say there is no comparison.
Student activists have acknowledged that Dr. Clyde A. Lynch had no known links to the practice of “lynching” but said that the name of the building recalls a time when blacks and others were summarily executed by hanging without a trial by “lynch” mobs. At the very least, protest organizers want Lynch’s first name and initial added to the building’s name.
The Oxford Dictionary says that the term “lynching” stems from the American Revolution and to a certain Captain William Lynch of Virginia who held a kangaroo court that persecuted fellow Americans who had been deemed loyal to the British crown. According to the dictionary, “People called this illegal punishment Lynch’s law or lynch law.”
Some critics remained unappeased, while others wonder whether the names of U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and places like the White House or Lynchburg, Virginia may be the next targets of scrutiny.
Tuition and fees for Lebanon Valley College surpasses $36,000 per annum.
Comments are closed.
