Here’s how USC will decide which buildings with racist past will be renamed
Is there a formula for weighing all the good and bad a person has done across a lifetime?
A commission examining building names at the University of South Carolina didn’t come up with one on Friday, but they did spell out the criteria they will consider for renaming campus buildings named after figures tied to slavery, the Confederacy and segregation.
Using nine approved criteria, South Carolina’s flagship university is moving closer to deciding which parts of its 220-year-old Columbia campus will come under scrutiny and potentially be renamed by the Presidential Commission on University History.
Next, members will do the painstaking work of applying the criteria to a list of building names on the university campus and evaluating whether a name change is justified, said former USC President Harris Pastides, co-chair of the commission.
“Without qualified criteria we have confidence in, we cannot go forward and do the work before us,” Pastides said.
The criteria approved by the commission Friday are:
▪ (If) the namesake’s actions/behaviors sought to, or had the effect of, oppressing groups of people based on their race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, and the oppressive action, behavior or viewpoints in question are inextricably connected to the namesake’s career, public persona, or life as a whole.
▪ Though other aspects of the namesake’s life and work are noteworthy to the University or the greater community, the namesake exhibited offensive behavior or viewpoints outside of their career or public persona.
▪ Documentary evidence demonstrates both the extent and the intentionality of a namesake’s actions regarding allegations of oppressive behavior.
▪ Documentary evidence demonstrates a significant level of evolution or moderation of the namesake’s behavior and/or views.
▪ Honoring the namesake demonstrably jeopardizes the University’s integrity and materially impedes its mission of teaching, research, and public engagement for all community members.
▪ Honoring the namesake does not align with the Carolinian Creed, the University of South Carolina’s values statement which discourages bigotry and emphasizes respect for the dignity and rights of all persons.
▪ Honoring the namesake significantly contributes to an environment that excludes some members of the University community from opportunities to learn, thrive, and succeed and contradicts our mission of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
▪ Removal of the name would not impede viewpoint diversity or fail to acknowledge the historical complexity or holistic contributions of the individual to the University or the public.
▪ The namesake was found to have committed a serious violation of a state or U.S. law during that individual’s lifetime, prior to or following the naming recognition.
USC President Bob Caslen created the commission in October 2019 to study the issue of renaming buildings in the midst of national debates around the Confederate flag or statues of prominent people from the Civil War era. That mission was only brought more sharply into focus by a series of large racial justice protests across the country over the summer.
Even with the criteria spelled out, commission members seemed unsure how the criteria should be applied, especially the second point, which originally said an individual’s “offensive behavior” was “not central to career or other work of importance to the university or community.”
It was pointed out that could be read in an individual’s favor, or not, potentially creating confusion in how buildings should be evaluated.
“If a politician wrote a bad check, that’s offensive behavior, but it doesn’t negate his career,” said board co-chair Val Littlefield.
University archivist Elizabeth West cited a non-USC example in James Henry Hammond, a 19th-century S.C. governor, senator and namesake of Columbia’s Hammond School who also committed serial sexual abuse of his own nieces.
Members revised the language to, in Pastides’ paraphrase, go from “he’s a bad guy, but he did some great things” to “he did some good things, but he also did some bad things.”
Other members stressed that any criteria they come up with wouldn’t give them a “scorecard” to perfectly evaluate each situation objectively. When it sounded as if the commission may delay taking action on at least some of the suggestions on Friday, historian Walter Edgar, who helped draft them, became frustrated.
“I don’t think any human being has created a document that can’t be misinterpreted if someone wants to misinterpret it,” Edgar said. “If we can’t move forward now, let’s fold up our tent and go... We’ve been at this for over a year.”
USC board trustee Dan Adams proposed an additional criteria that the “namesake’s actions for reconciliation over their life be taken into account.”
“In my lifetime, I’ve seen two very public situations of that,” Adams said. “When the president (Joe Biden) spoke at Strom Thurmond’s funeral and discussed reconciliation, and when (U.S. Rep.) Jim Clyburn spoke at Sen. (Fritz) Hollings’ funeral.”
But others resisted that criteria, with history professor David Snyder saying, “In my field, ‘reconciliation’ has very specific connotations. It’s not a word we use casually. My very strong advice is that not be in the criteria.”
Adams’ suggestion was ultimately voted down.
After Friday’s meeting, the three co-chairs — Littlefield, Pastides and West — issued a joint statement on its next steps.
“The Commission has been deliberate in its review of our university’s history, which includes the names of our buildings but also looks at the full scope of how the university has evolved, its history and the important need to share that history with the public,” they said. “The additional tasks of the Commission should not be missed or lessened in value. The Commission has sought public input to ensure different points of view are considered.”
The body has held hearings where members of the public — mostly students and faculty — have argued for renaming several buildings, including the campus wellness center named for the late Strom Thurmond, an S.C. governor and longtime U.S. senator who at one point was one of the most prominent segregationists in national politics.
But student leaders have expressed concern about the pace of the commission’s work. A letter this week from the student government’s two top leaders said, “this flagship institution is currently falling on the wrong side of history.”
A university spokesman this week said the commission will produce reports through at least June, which would mean the Legislature would not be able to take up any of its recommendations until it reconvenes in January of next year.
The commission has already taken action in one area, asking the S.C. Legislature to rename a dormitory named after J. Marion Sims. Sims was a pioneer in the field of gynecology, but gained much of his knowledge from experiments he performed on enslaved women.
State lawmakers will have to sign off on any commission proposals, since the state’s Heritage Act — passed after a legislative compromise removed the Confederate flag from atop the State House dome in 2000 — requires the two-thirds approval of the Legislature before changes are made to public historical monuments.
Last summer, a lawsuit was filed asking the S.C. Supreme Court to declare the Heritage Act unconstitutional, and state Attorney General Alan Wilson has said in an advisory opinion that the act’s supermajority requirement should be discarded.
This story was originally published February 13, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
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