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George Washington University announced Wednesday that it will retire the school’s nearly century-old “Colonials” nickname after a university committee recommended the change over cultural sensitivity concerns.
In a press release announcing the change, university officials touted the “thoughtful” process that went into the decision to ditch the “Colonials” nickname, which will be officially retired once a new school moniker is selected. The university anticipates the change will take place prior to the 2023-2024 school year.
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“The board recognizes the significance of changing the university’s moniker, and we made this decision only after a thoughtful and deliberate process that followed the renaming framework and special committee recommendation that considered the varying perspectives of our students, faculty, staff, alumni and athletics community,” university Board of Trustees Chairwoman Grace Speights said in the release.
The announcement caps a two-and-a-half-year process that began in November 2019 when the Board of Trustees established the “task force on naming,” according to the university. The nickname gained further scrutiny in July 2020, when then-university President Thomas LeBlanc formed the “Special Committee on the Colonials Moniker,” which ultimately made the recommendation to the Board of Trustees that the nickname be scrapped.
“The committee took its role seriously, reviewing relevant historical research and soliciting feedback widely to produce a report and recommendation grounded in facts and recognizing the division among the community with respect to the moniker,” Mary Cheh, the chairwoman of the special committee, said. “Ultimately, we determined a new moniker would help support unity in our community. I am thankful for and proud of the committee’s hard work.”
The Washington, D.C.-based university said the school community was divided on whether to ditch the “Colonials” nickname, so the committee ultimately determined that because of the division, the name “does not adequately match the values of GW and can no longer serve its purpose as a name that unifies the community.”
The term “colonial,” the university said, was disfavored by George Washington himself and was adopted as the school’s nickname in 1926 “casually and haphazardly,” without “thoughtful university-wide consideration.”
“The special committee identified a significant difference in connotation for the term Colonials,” the university said. “For supporters, the term refers to those who lived in the American colonies, especially those who fought for independence and democracy. For opponents, Colonials means colonizers who stole land and resources from indigenous groups, killed or exiled Native peoples and introduced slavery into the colonies. These are perspectives that cannot be easily harmonized, the committee concluded.”
The release also said that the “use and popularity of the moniker also has declined in recent years.”
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at the university, said in a tweet that the university’s decision to drop the nickname was “based on uninformed and inaccurate objections.”
“The university says that the term no longer reflects the school’s values, which no longer appears to include historical accuracy,” Turley wrote. “The Colonials fought against foreign rule. They were not advocates of colonization. For those interested in GW, that understanding was apparent by even a cursory review our history.”
https://twitter.com/JonathanTurley/status/1537106939762593793?s=20&t=EoVOY25f5f-g38E1BpaXJQ
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University President Mark Wrighton said that now, the community can come together “around a unifying moniker and showcase ourselves as a distinguished and distinguishable university.”
Numerous institutions and organizations have advanced efforts to rename various buildings and nicknames in recent years, with mixed public support. The Washington, D.C., NFL franchise abruptly ditched its “Redskins” nickname in 2020, rebranding to the “Commanders” in 2022, and the San Francisco school board’s focus on renaming school buildings in 2020 instead of working to reopen classrooms is largely credited with costing three members of the school board their jobs in a recall election earlier this year.
