{"id":6514,"date":"2021-03-10T23:24:32","date_gmt":"2021-03-11T04:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/?p=6514"},"modified":"2021-03-10T23:24:32","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T04:24:32","slug":"thoughts-on-building-names","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/2021\/03\/10\/thoughts-on-building-names\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Building Names"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Make no mistake. To name a building after someone is to glorify that person.\u00a0<span style=\"font-size: 1rem\">I don&#8217;t think that the argument for keeping the names of Ryland and Freeman Hall in order to preserve the institution&#8217;s history holds water. That&#8217;s what museums and textbooks are for. I think that the decision to add John Mitchell Jr&#8217;s name to the building, without removing Freeman&#8217;s name is a massive mistake. The purpose of including Mitchell&#8217;s name is to honor his legacy, but by leaving Freeman&#8217;s name on the same building, the university is sending the implicit message that the lives and contributions of the two should be praised and valued\u00a0<em>equally<\/em><\/span><span style=\"font-size: 1rem\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 1rem\">You can&#8217;t have your cake and eat it too. You can&#8217;t say &#8220;we condemn the racist ideologies and actions that people like Ryland and Freeman represent&#8221; and also say &#8220;but their contributions were vital in making the university the wonderful institution that it is today&#8221;. The university has to pick a side. Will we revere people whose beliefs and actions are considered horrific today, or not? It&#8217;s disturbing to see the university make the same choice repeatedly, no matter how they try to dress it up and pretend that they&#8217;re in the right for &#8220;preserving history&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Make no mistake. To name a building after someone is to glorify that person.\u00a0I don&#8217;t think that the argument for keeping the names of Ryland and Freeman Hall in order to preserve the institution&#8217;s history holds water. That&#8217;s what museums and textbooks are for. I think that the decision to add John Mitchell Jr&#8217;s name [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4477,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-responses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4477"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6515,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6514\/revisions\/6515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}