Vardaman Hall to be renamed, other buildings to be contextualized, committee says

The Daily Mississippian The name of Vardaman Hall will be changed and seven other sites on campus will be altered or contextualized, the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on History and Context said Monday.
The committee is currently taking recommendations for the contextualization of Lamar Hall, Barnard Observatory, Longstreet Hall and George Hall, with a deadline of the semester’s end to submit their final recommendations.
Antebellum sites such as the Lyceum, Barnard Hall, Croft and Hilgard Cut are also being considered for contextualizing because they were each built by enslaved people. These sites were determined during phase one of the committee’s charge, which took recommendations through their website starting in August. The committee received 45 buildings or places recommended for change.  In phase one, members of the committee gathered these recommendations and researched each of them in order to form an opinion on whether it needed contextualization. The committee met eight times last semester.
The committee was met with many questions from the the 50 or so students, faculty and community members in the listening session.
Chancellor Jeffrey Vitter speaks at the CAHC Listening Session on Monday at the Inn. (Photo by: Cameron Brooks)
Several students posed questions to Chancellor Jeffrey Vitter who, after opening up the meeting and hearing the introductions led by members of the committee, left.  
“This is something that would be more appropriately directed to Chancellor Vitter, but … I think in the future the chancellor should consider that it’s not always about who has the most pull in the community but who has the most knowledge to commit to the project,” said Tysiana Marino, a senior public policy leadership major and president of the university chapter of the NAACP. “To reach more people should not be that big of a pull for him (Vitter).”
Jackson Lovelady, freshman business management major who asked several questions at the meeting, said he ...


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