George Washington U. Students Want to Erase Churchill, Madison from Building Names

Students at George Washington University are pushing to change the names of two buildings on campus that have served as tributes to Sir Winston Churchill and James Madison.

According to a report by Campus Reform, students at George Washington University are fighting to change the name of two buildings on campus that are named after Sir Winston Churchill and James Madison.

In a post made to Instagram, GWU’s Black Student Union argued that Madison Hall and the Churchill Center should be renamed.”Churchill oversaw the construction and operation of concentration camps in Kenya and South Africa,” the post reads.

“As a slave owner himself on his Virginia plantation, James Madison perpetuated and advanced systemic oppression and the societal mistreatment of African Americans,” the post continued.

In the post, the GWU Black Student Union argued that several buildings on campus should be evaluated for a name change. The organization highlighted a university policy that requires them to receive 500 signatures before presenting their proposal for a name change to university administrators.

We are excited to announce the Reconsider the Names campaign. Students have been calling for name changes for years and administration has been reluctant to listen. On June 29, 2020 administration approved a new renaming framework that requires 500+ signatures from the GW community. Which will start the process of building special committees. They will do more research on each name and pass it along to the board members to make a final decision. This is just the first step in a long journey of creating change at GWU.

Breitbart News reported in January that UC Berkeley is changing the name of its law school building in response to an outcry by members of the community. The building had been previously named after John Henry Boalt, who was behind the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act which prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers.

Stay tuned to Breitbart News for more updates on this story.