I read Celia’s post and commented under it, but I decided to make another post about it instead. Like Tess and I said in class, along with Celia agreeing, we have to face our past and learn from it to not repeat wrongful actions. Like in sports, we watch films of our own games to see where we went wrong to try and change it for the next competition. If we did not have the film to see where the breakdown occurred, we would just keep running into that same barrier. Keeping the names as is, is ok, but I think we need to have a plaque or a way for people to know how our school was founded, why it is so screwed up, then how it will get fixed and stay that way. So to use my sports analogy, we can see the play that was drawn, why it broke down, and how we can fix it to not happen again.
Adding the Mitchell to the Freeman building is a good step, but if they put a little nice signage out next to the name of the building, that could be helpful.
I think having a plaque discussing the history is a good first step; however, it is important to try to understand from the perspectives of the students on our campus (and all students) that feel that these names marginalize them/perpetrate too many bad parts of history, and realize the damage the names have done and continue to do to these students. Like you said in your example of watching films of your games to see where you went wrong and try to change it, we need to look at the history, both good and bad of the names, realize the wrongdoings and amount of people these names are affecting, and work together towards not “hitting the same” barriers again and creating meaningful change, and realize why a plague on the building by itself may not be enough.