'Strickland' vote comes in April
Published March 20, 2007
Three MU student governments have come together to propose a name change for the General Classroom Building, and the Board of Curators will vote on the change at its meeting April 5 and 6 at UM-Rolla.
The Legion of Black Collegians, the Missouri Students Association and the Residence Halls Association passed joint resolutions advocating the renaming of the GCB to Strickland Hall in honor of Arvarh E. Strickland, the first full-time black faculty member at MU.
"We are very confident that the board will vote in favor of changing the name by a large majority," RHA Vice President Nate Ballance said. "GCB is such a generic name, so the vote should pass."
MSA President Rachel Anderson said she also supports the bill.
"It was supposed to be on the last curators' agenda, so we would really like to see it get passed," Anderson said.
UM system spokesman Scott Charton could not be reached for comment Monday evening.
MU doesn't have a building named after a prominent minority figure, but Strickland wasn't the first name proposed.
In 1989, MSA President A.J. Schnack gave considerable thought to renaming the building Martin Luther King Hall. But a proposal never made it to the Board of Curators, and the building has since remained unnamed.
The argument against the name Martin Luther King Jr. was that King hadn't attended MU nor made any financial contributions as other minority figures had.
MSA, RHA and LBC have also discussed changing the name of College Avenue Hall to Martin Luther King Hall, but Anderson said the talk has been mild since the beginning of the semester.
"Right now we're focused on trying to get GCB renamed," Anderson said. "There has not been a lot of talk about renaming College Avenue this semester, more of the talk happened last semester."
Ballance said because Strickland is alive, he had the choice of which building he wanted named after him, and he chose GCB.
"There is no timetable set yet for renaming College Avenue, but RHA supports the name change," Ballance said.