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U. community shares reactions to Wilson Legacy Committee Report

Following Monday’s release of the Wilson Legacy Committee’s report, many members of the University community expressed that the decisions of the University Board of Trustees, especially the decision to keep the name of Woodrow Wilson, Class of 1879, on the Wilson School and the Wilson College, were not a surprise.

Anchal Padukone ’16 said she thought it was necessary to have a conversation about Wilson's legacy and what we encourage when we honor figures by naming a building or program after them.

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“While there were some people who were vocal about the importance of the name change, there were many others who were indifferent,” she said.

Briana Payton ’16, a previous board member and a current senior advisor of the Black Student Union, said that she was disappointed, but not surprised, by the recommendations in the report.

“I think it would have been amazingly progressive and noble to rename the [Wilson] School; it would have been a huge symbolic victory,” Payton said.

She said she understands why the University cannot feasibly rename every building that was named after a historic figure. However, deciding to shut the door on renaming any of the buildings on campus was a huge step in the wrong direction, she added.

Payton said she felt as though the report downplayed the egregious moral failures of Wilson. That’s not to say that anyone who has had moral failures shouldn’t be honored, but we should be more honest about the positive and negative legacies of the people that statues and buildings in the University are named after, she added.

She said that this might be done practically by including accurate narratives about these figures in college tours or in plaques around the campus.

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“I felt that the recommendations were superficial and not enough to say anything substantial,” Adalberto Rosado ’19 said. “For instance, using the phrase ‘encourage and support diversity’ doesn’t translate to tangible action.”

Rosado said he believes the report neglected to explain the reasons why the University was evaluating Wilson’s legacy in the first place. The report also did not mention the full demands of the BJL issued during the protests they held in November, he noted.

Rosado said that when it comes to ‘encouraging diversity,’ he would have liked to have seen more concrete initiatives, such as the number of diverse faculty that the University would like to hire, or a goal for more majors that would focus on topics of diversity and inclusion.

Andra Turner ’19 said she wasn’t surprised by the report, because to change the name of the Wilson School would have been a big change for the school at this point in time. She added that she thinks it is possible that such changes will occur in the future. As other universities and institutions across the United States experience similar movements for inclusivity, she believes there will be more of a push for the University to do the same.

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“I think that a lot of students thought that the decision [not to rename the Wilson School] was expected,” Josh Freeman ’18, co-founder of the Princeton Open Campus Coalition, said.

Freeman said that the contents of the report were unexpected in that they recognized that the University should be more diverse and inclusive. He added that we should confront and discuss Woodrow Wilson’s legacy and the history of the University.

Due to the precedent that was set in this report, he said looking forward that he didn't think that changing the names of buildings, as a whole, would be successful. He added that doing so would probably not be feasible except in the cases of evident manifestations of hypocrisy, such as the situation of the Center for African American Studies being housed in Stanhope Hall.

In 1915, the Trustees of the University namedStanhope Hall in honor of Samuel Stanhope Smith. Smith was the seventh president of the University, who in his Essay on the Causes of Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species Stanhope postulated that bile infections led certain skin colors to have a yellowish appearance, which became black in tropical climates.

Wendy Belcher, associate professor of Comparative Literature and African American Studies, said the decision to retain the name was a missed opportunity to contextualize the contributions of people of color to the University.

"How wonderful it would have been if the college had been renamed for Toni Morrison, a[n African-American] Princeton professor who won the Nobel Prize for Literature and is one of the great voices of the 20th century," she said.

In addition to considering the legacy of Wilson, under the subheader ‘Further Actions,’ the report recommended that the University establish a high-profile pipeline program to encourage more students from underrepresented groups to pursue doctoral degrees, modify its informal motto and make a concerted effort to diversify campus art and iconography.

In response, Freeman noted that while he fully supports a pipeline program that would allow students to move to the next level in their academic career, he feels like the program would have less of an impact when it comes to changing student culture.

He added that any change in student culture regarding issues of diversity and inclusion would have to come from cooperation within the student body themselves and not the administration.

Zhan Okuda-Lim ’15, an alumnus of the Wilson School, noted that in 2013 the Trustee Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity identified the pipeline program as a solution for addressing diversity among graduate students school and faculty.

“It’s been three years since the Ad Hoc committee, and we see the trustees bringing up this issue again. I’d like to know to what extent the University has or has not moved on some of these proposals that were brought up three years ago. And if this is being rehashed now in 2016, where is the University going to from here?” Okuda-Lim said.

Rosado said that he thought that the change of the unofficial motto from "Princeton in the nation’s service and in the service of all nations" to "Princeton in the nation’s service and the service of humanity" was irrelevant to the conversation about diversity and inclusion, especially since it is the University’s "informal" motto.

“We should remember that the names on buildings, or awards, or professorships are just one part of the broader conversation on diversity and inclusion on campus, and the issues facing students. So while symbolism is important, it is not the only important issue we should be concerned about,” Okuda-Lim said.

Payton commented that she preferred the term “nations” in the motto.

“When I hear humanity, I hear neutrality, and I know that neutrality always becomes defaulted to concepts like white, straight, male,” she said.

Okuda-Lim noted that he has heard a wide variety of reactions from fellow alumni and current students, some who are happy about it, some who are upset.

“I just hope that everybody who is invested in this will use their freedom of expression to share their opinions with one another and realize that at an academic community there is a responsibility to examine our own biases and to discuss the biases that others bring to these conversations," he said.