Charge to the Names and Places Committee
On September 8, 2020, the Board of Regents issued a bold statement about the University’s past ties to the Confederacy and the ideology of white supremacy underlying it, saying:
Therefore, the University of the South categorically rejects its past veneration of the Confederacy and of the“Lost Cause” and wholeheartedly commits itself to an urgent process of institutional reckoning in order to make Sewanee a model of diversity, of inclusion, of intellectual rigor, and of loving spirit in an America that rejects prejudice and embraces possibility.
To support this mandate, the University will convene a “Names and Places Committee” (NPC) to evaluate every instance of a location on the Domain that is marked by a personal honorific to determine if the contributions of that person to the University outweigh their association with actions or causes which are contrary to the articulated values of the University – to include support for the Confederacy and/or the assertion of an ideology of white supremacy. The NPC will write a final report that will include recommendations for retaining or removing honorifics on the Domain. The final report of the NPC must consist of two things: (1) an explanation of the rationale by which it evaluated the appropriateness of retaining the existing honorifics which they applied to every place on the Domain, and (2) a recommendation of whether or not to retain the honorific of every place on the Domain. The NPC is NOT TASKED with offering alternative honorifics to places which they recommend should be changed.
The NPC will be led by two co-chairs and it will be supported by Secretary of the University. The work of the NPC will commence not later than June 1, 2021. They will make an interim report to the Vice-Chancellor by December 1, 2021, and they will complete their work no later than June 1, 2022. The final report of the NPC will be submitted to the Board of Regents, who have ultimate authority for naming all places on the Domain, during their June meeting in 2022.
