Confederate Memorial Hall at Vanderbilt University is back in the news again. The liberals that run Vanderbilt want to change the name of the hall to get that evil word "Confederate" (which means 'allied') off the front of the building. They claim that because of the memorial, their diverse faculty and student body cry themselves to sleep each night. (Okay, maybe I embellished that last part)

The building was built in the 1930s in part by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Their stipulation for helping build the hall was that it be named 'Confederate Memorial Hall' in honor of the Tenesseans who died in the Civil War.

Vandy claims that the contracts are no longer valid (they are old and dusty) and that they can rename the buildings as they please. Unfortunately for the heritage group, the evidence presented in court shows that the contract was largely oral, and what was written down was not signed. It also probably lacked words like 'forthwith' and 'heretofore'

But in my biased Southern opinion, the Daughters of the Confederacy make a very compelling argument. How can the building remain a memorial if they change the name? Indeed Vandy admits that they want to change the name for the sole purpose of making people forget about Confederates.

Also, the 1920s and 30s were a different time. People stuck to their word and an oral contract was often good enough. And the college has honored that contract for the past 75 years. If it wasn't valid, why didn't they add a corporate sponsorship as soon as the cement was dry?

Both the faculty and the students need to lighten up.

I am reminded of the kerfuffle over Lee Hall, the dormatory I lived in during my first two years at Virginia Tech. The residence hall is named after Claudius Lee, Class of '96 (that's 1896). Lee had a long and meritorius career at Virginia Tech and was a member of the faculty for 50 years. He was considered a "mechanical genius". Well, apparently someone somewhere found an old 1896 yearbook from Lee's undergraduate days that listed him as the "father of terror" and presented the "K.K.K" as a campus organization. A 1997 investigation revealed that it was just a tasteless student prank, but even 100 years after the publication the ensuing commotion resulted in proposals to change the name of Lee Hall to "Diversity Hall". (Which would have resulted in a lack of annual giving from Ravenwood.)

Cooler heads prevailed and both the ad hoc committee and University President recommended keeping the name. To help diffuse the issue, the committee even noted that "no school in the South - that is, no historically-white four-year public institution in the former Confederacy - enrolled a black undergraduate before Virginia Polytechnic Insitute did, in 1953. Tech's early encounter with desegregation came without court order, and preceded every white land-grant school in the ten states of the former Confederacy."

Of course Virginia Tech also has a large Corp of Cadets and the U.S. Military integrated at about the same time, but that's beside the point.