Two weeks later, the flyers hang slightly tattered around campus. Christopher Lapinig, CC ’07 LAW ’13, and Kaozouapa Lee, TC ’11, two of six former Yalies who designed the posters and an accompanying website, told me they are pushing these eight names because they showcase Yale’s evolving diversity: “The University looks a lot different both in terms of gender and race and ethnicity than it did when Morse and Stiles were added,” Lapinig said. The proposed candidates—women and people of color who are all Yale alumni—represent parts of the University’s history that remain excluded from its institutional memory.
The alumni campaign started nearly a year and a half ago, when, in November 2014, Jeania Ree Moore, SY ’12, and Ivy Onyeador, SY ’11, gathered over 3,300 alumni signatures for an open letter that implored President Salovey, GRD ’86, and the Yale Corporation to consider diverse candidates for the namesakes. They hope to give further voice to alumni through the website they launched earlier this month. Along with providing profiles and photographs of the various candidates, the website encourages visitors to add their thoughts.
These alumni voices have added to the chorus already vying to name the new colleges. In October 2014, President Salovey sent a community-wide email encouraging respondents to each suggest three names for consideration. Since then, current students, alumni, and faculty have made their opinions known. A cursory Google search brings up pages of information— a Herald cover story from 2012, Yale Daily News op-eds and articles, and mentions on The Huffington Post and Business Insider—that discuss with great interest and passion the rightful namesakes for the next residential colleges.
The names that have emerged from the intense speculation and campaigning have led some to consider the decision preordained. Marissa Medansky, MC ’15, told me that if the colleges are not named after Navy Admiral Grace Hopper and physicist Edward Bouchet—or a different woman and person of color—“I will eat my hat.”
But conversations with administrators about the decision-making process highlight the deep uncertainty that revolves around the impact that these voices do, or should, have. Almost everyone I spoke to had a fervent opinion about what the names should be, yet no one could tell me how the names would be actually chosen, or how their perspectives would impact the final decision. Lee, too, acknowledged the uncertainty surrounding the naming: “It’s kind of a very mysterious process,” she said.
ALUMNI HAVE MADE THE MOST RECENT, VISIBLE attempt to shape deliberations. According to Mark Branch, ES ’86, Executive Editor of the Yale Alumni Magazine, because Yalies’ commitment to the University remains even after graduation, they want a voice in the decision. “Alumni are encouraged to remain engaged with the University, to feel ownership, and [to feel] that their opinion is important,” Branch said. “That’s sort of the way it’s always been at Yale. [The naming process] is not any different.” Lapinig agreed. “Even though we’re not physically at Yale anymore, we’re still invested in the school,” he said.
Lee added, too, that the decision to solicit alumni input was “a very strategic funding and development move.” She continued: “The University realizes that happy alumni will donate and help spur development.” While Lapinig insisted that alumni “have a lot more to offer than just our money,” he, too, acknowledged the financial incentive for the University to at least ostensibly take alumni input into account. “Certainly you guys are welcome to share your opinions, but allowing alumni to have some buy-in opens the door for alumni to donate back to Yale and get more involved,” Lee told me.
Although they have not launched any campaign as prominent as that of the alumni, current students have also seized opportunities to make their own voices heard. Several have penned opinion pieces in the YDN and elsewhere, and others, like Medansky, have shared their predictions on social media.
Earlier this month, members of the Yale Asian American Students Alliance helped put up the flyers around campus. Jessica Liang, TD ’17, Co-Head Coordinator of the Asian American Cultural Center and one the students who helped post the flyers, told me in an email that she thinks students should have a voice in the naming process as well. “In the end, it is the students who will be most affected and influenced by the names of the buildings,” she wrote. “Those names are the words that will constantly populate their tongues as students walk to class, arrange meetings with friends, and refer warmly to their colleges.”
Julia Calagiovanni, SM ’15, said that she admires the engagement of students and alumni—“It’s really cool to see current students mobilize,” she said. When asked about the efficacy of those efforts, however, she paused. “I do have to wonder what happens next,” she said.
It remains unclear whether the decision makers will truly listen to these varied voices. Calagiovanni said that while the administration may well take undergraduate input into account, “Sometimes, their acknowledgement of student support is sort of a symbolic token.” Lapinig expressed a similar uncertainty. “At the end of the day, the [October 2014 survey] form just went into this black hole when it went to the administration, and we haven’t heard from them since.” He said that the administrative reticence is “pretty consistent with how I’ve seen the University handle other things.”
In fact, Medansky— who was so confident in Bouchet and Hopper—doesn’t actually think the end result will reflect a response to alumni and student input. Instead, she thinks that this is an instance where the interests of the different parties involved are “super aligned.” If the future namesakes do indeed belong to a woman and person of color, she said, “It won’t happen because Peter Salovey is sitting and tallying students’ suggestions and being like, ‘This is what we have to do.’”
WHEN I ASKED THE PROPONENTS OF VARIOUS NAMESAKES about the target of their activism—about who the decision-makers actually are—many echoed Branch, the Alumni Magazine editor. He recalled the community-wide email survey through which the University initially solicited input, but as to how the process actually occurs, Branch told me: “I really don’t have any idea.”
People I spoke to cycled through answers varying from “the administration” to “President Salovey,” “the Yale Corporation,” and more. Dean of Yale College Jonathan Holloway, GRD ’95, said that he is not involved in the naming process, and couldn’t tell me about it “beyond the merest of basics.” In an email, Holloway wrote, “It is my understanding that the Corporation, or a subcommittee of the Corporation, will be making the decision.”
President Salovey also identified the Corporation as the decision-making body in the email he sent last October to solicit name suggestions. “The trustees [of the Corporation] will review those suggestions and your new ideas,” he wrote.
According to History Professor Jay Gitlin, the Yale Corporation has always chosen the residential college names. “It has never been a particularly open process,” Gitlin told me.
He also dismissed varied calls for greater student and alumni input. “Naming the colleges is not up for voting, and probably it shouldn’t be,” Gitlin said. “Should people who are here for four years have the same amount of say as people who are stewards of this place for thirty years?” He paused; the beat of silence answered his question. “Probably not.”
Gitlin said that, when the first ten colleges received their names, “Students were not consulted, and the idea that you would’ve consulted students back then probably would’ve produced chuckles.” Students did attempt to influence the decision with Morse and Stiles, however. “People wrote letters,” said Gitlin. Ultimately, though, those efforts did not seem to matter much. “In the end, the Corporation decided.”
Some say, though, that names are less central than they now seem. As Gitlin reminded me, history tells us that the name, though an important symbol, is only part of the story. When the Corporation helped establish the first ten residential colleges, it not only had to select names, but to mold entirely new communities. The University will have to do the same with these two new colleges as well.
“What they will have to figure out is how you connect these colleges to the rest of campus,” Gitlin said. “How do you facilitate their kind of developing an identity and sense of community? That’s a challenge that, in some ways, is at least as important as the name. The name’s just a part of it.”