Academia, Bizarre

Protesters at Small Pennsylvania College Call For Change In Name Of Lynch Memorial Hall As Racially Insensitive

lynch200px-Lebanon_Valley_College_logoWe recently saw the decision at Harvard (followed by Yale) to drop the historic title of “Master” for the heads of the residential houses due to racial connotations, even though there is no racist connection with the term which originated in England. At the time, I expressed concern over the lack of a clear understanding of when historical terms must be curtailed or eliminated due to misunderstandings of their meaning or origins. Now, students at Lebanon Valley College are calling for the name of “Lynch Memorial Hall” to be changed due to the racial overtones of the word “lynch.” However, “Lynch” is clearly not being used as a verb (which would hardly make such to “lynch Memorial Hall” unless there was a person named Memorial Hall. Rather, it is a well-known reference to Clyde A. Lynch who was president of Lebanon Valley College from 1932 until his death in 1950. This would seem a case where the school motto is instructive in rising above the anger through knowledge: Libertas per Veritatem (The truth shall set you free).

Students are willing to have his first name added but insist that it cannot remain just “Lynch Memorial Hall.” The demand was made by member of the Black Student Union after a week of demonstrations calling for changes at the predominantly white institution.

In 1932, Dr. Clyde Lynch became the 11th president of Lebanon Valley College and took the school through the difficult depression years and World War II — no small accomplishment. He died in office in 1950.

I could understand if the building was named after Captain William Lynch of Pittsville, Virginia — though Captain Lynch was known as someone who stretched the necks of British loyalists through his ad hoc “courts” not blacks.

Loretta_LynchIs there any ability left on college campuses to simply say that some demands by protesters are simply absurd? It might be a good point of clarification . . . at least before the school invites such potential graduation speakers as the current United States Attorney General. . . . Loretta Lynch.
Source: PennLive

30 thoughts on “Protesters at Small Pennsylvania College Call For Change In Name Of Lynch Memorial Hall As Racially Insensitive”

  1. Rosebud Sioux Tribe, SD Council meeting is live now. Law and order. Judicial, courts, judges and cops.

  4. this name change demand is the sort of thing that a couple of wise-ass students might have dreamed up as a joke after one too many of something or other.

  6. Wait until these dull/normal students learn the maintenance dept. use LINCHPINS all over the campus.

  7. It’s more important to focus on quality education, community policing by cops walking the beat in high crime neighborhoods and good jobs in those neighborhoods.

    For example: Within the past two decades in the Richmond, Virginia area (former Capital of the Confederacy) there are multi-million dollar public schools with modern computer labs while inner-city schools at one time didn’t have enough textbooks for teachers to assign homework. Many of the inner-city schools were literally falling apart with plumbing problems or ceilings falling apart.

    The Richmond region has known about this problem for several decades but has made little improvement. Part of the problem is education should have equal a more equal tax base. Although America’s cities create the revenue, residents living in the suburbs funnel the revenue and tax base to the suburbs starving the inner-cities for funds.

    This is what people should be furious about!

  9. I call for the renaming of the states of Alaska, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Wyoming because they are ethnically insensitive appropriations of words from other cultures (Native American, French, Spanish, Norse).

  10. Well, if the school would simply list the names of those who demand the name change we would then have a list of those to Lynch. That is Loretta Lynch. “Hang em high”– I say that each time my half blind guy hangs up the wash. Of course I bark the phrase and only the Dogalogue Machine can interpret my bark. This school is in Pennsylvania? Or Virginia? Or Timbuktu?

  11. This just in: The Association of Sympathetic Students has just petitioned the United Nations to exclude the country of Niger until they change their name. The representative of ASS explained that the country, in question as the spokesperson would not utter the name of the country as it is so distasteful, of Niger is only missing the g that would make it the term which cannot be uttered either. The representative went on to explain that this only serves to remind people of the travesties and horrors performed upon the Negroid people by the Caucasian people as well as the Arab and Semitic peoples and some other Negroid peoples. ASS refers to this as the great cleaning or the new broom. Inch by inch, it’s a cinch.

  13. TinEar is correct. ” It is all about power and the ability to force the college to accede to their demands, no matter how ridiculous.”

    Theodore Dalrymple said it best:

    ““In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is…in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.””

    The students are using standard communist propaganda techniques.

  14. This is what happens when nobody uses the library any more. Everything is done online. Next they will be renaming Black Russians.

  15. Let’s see if common sense prevails with administrators on this college campus. I’m not very hopeful that it will.

  16. This has nothing to do with the name on the building. It is all about power and the ability to force the college to accede to their demands, no matter how ridiculous. And as to their course of study, this IS their course of study. These “activist” students are training to become “community organizers,” not CPAs or engineers or nurses or any other useful occupation.

  17. This is what happens when a small group of people see the possibility of power, they decide that any ridiculous thing is their to demand. Unless checked They also decide that any monstrous thing is theirs to do. It’s way past time for some adult to say enough already.

  18. I wonder if the demonstrators will demand the AG change her last name – – I have some friends with the same last name – hope they don’t have people camp outside their house demanding they change their name –

    this one makes no sense other than to demonstrate the demonstrators are out of their gourd

  19. No wonder we are graduating illiterate mindless buffoons. There is a reason they are students. They are still learning and this bunch is at the crawl stage of crawl, diaper change, walk run. They ought to be studying for finals right about now. Really WHO CARES they are only students not viable contributing responsiible citizens.

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