In the past few years, on college campuses across the nation, there has been a movement to rename buildings and monuments that could possibly contain the name of a historic figure who had racist tendencies or attitudes during their public careers. Here at Ole Miss, we have our own “Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on History and Context,” created to contextualize many places on our campus that are named after men like L.Q.C. Lamar, a statesman who was Secretary of the Interior and a Supreme Court Justice. The Johnson Commons, named after former Mississippi Gov. Paul Johnson, is also up for examination. If Ole Miss chooses to follow the trends of many other academic institutions, we might rename these buildings, and no matter what happens, money will be spent, time will be wasted and manpower will be employed on this endeavor.
This brings us to the most important question. What does this committee solve? In the state of Mississippi, only 19 percent of people have completed a college degree, one of the worst records in the nation, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. The state is constantly the butt of jokes about failing education and healthcare systems.
The university should be in the business of ensuring that students are able to receive quality degrees, and go into the working world with the skills and knowledge needed to make our university, the state of Mississippi and our country a more prosperous place for everyone. Over the past 20 years, Ole Miss has implemented several changes that market our university in a better way to students coming from different backgrounds who can be distracted by traditions and incidents that happened in the past that carry connotations of racism.
Now, our main focus must be not to be caught up in petty disagreements over buildings named after people that died over a century ago, but instead focus on things like improving graduation and retention rates, fostering a culture of academic excellence, and increasing minority enrollment and graduation rates. All kinds of people in history had prejudices, Washington, D.C itself is named after a man who owned slaves. Think of what we can accomplish if we stop allowing history that occurred over a century ago to divide us.
Trying to change history will not solve our problems or make our campus a better place. Learning from the past, we know that attempts to do so in places like the Soviet Union brought no benefit to the populace. If anything, it will divide our campus into factions, not unite us together. We cannot erase the past, no matter how wrong it might be. Let us not fight the same battles that have divided this university for some time, but instead come together to enact real, meaningful change on our campus and in our community.
Patrick Waters is a sophomore accounting major from St. Louis, Missouri.
