The majority of messages in the server during that time frame — which were forwarded in their entirety to the News — are against changing the name of Calhoun, with justifications ranging from a fear of revisionist history, the need for Yale students to understand the inherent unfairness of life and the concern that changing one name will only lead to future name changes.

“As an alumni group, we were very concerned by the vocal minority of current Yale students who demand these as rights, while belittling those who do not agree they are entitled to them,” Mark Richards ’79 said.

Richards added that he believes students are unfit to make naming decisions, citing lack of real-world experience. “Wanting to change the world for the better is admirable,” he said. “But those with little real-world experience will always fail to improve upon it.”

For Amalia Halikias ’15, renaming Calhoun sets a dangerous precedent. She noted that from her experience at Yale, she believes Yale students are often wrong and student opinions are not always relevant.

“It’s not that I think that Yale should dismiss any argument because it comes from students. They should check to see that each argument is valid in its own right,” she said. “They should not assume that a certain number of students believing something automatically legitimizes that view.”

Numerous students interviewed, though, said that if viewpoints like Halikias’ influence the decision this year, the issue will only resurface again. They noted that while Yale as an institution moves slowly, student protests on issues relating to racial justice have yielded what they consider positive results.

Following protests by the Black Student Alliance at Yale in 1980, Pierson’s courtyard was renamed “Lower Court” from “Pierson Slave Quarters.” And 12 years later, in response to a student complaint, Calhoun College removed a panel from the stained-glass windows in the common room that depicted a shackled slave kneeling at Calhoun’s feet.

“We have to learn that adhering to tradition and blindly holding on is a detriment to progress,” said Isaiah Genece ’17. “Yale is creating students to change the world and take things that were old and make them new.”

Two of the respondents were Jeania Ree Moore ’12 and Ivy Onyeador ’11. For them, and other alumni of color, Salovey’s offer was an opportunity to challenge the long-standing, stagnant narrative of college names and institutional memory.

Their letter, addressed to the President’s Office and the Yale Corporation and published in The Huffington Post, advocated for Yale’s diverse history to be taken into account when deciding names. In the letter, they suggested four names — two African-Americans, one Native American and one white woman — saying such names would continue the tradition of naming colleges after notable Yalies while changing the current narrative. They also noted that eight of the 12 existing residential colleges are named after white Protestant men who either supported slavery as slaveholders or were apologists for the institution of slavery. Over 3,300 alumni have signed on to the letter.

“The naming of new colleges is an unprecedented opportunity to remember figures in Yale’s past that diversify the history remembered in residential college names,” the letter reads, adding that the new names could “claim that Yale’s past speaks to its present and future identity.”

On April 6, 2015, Christopher Lapinig ’07 LAW ’13 and Kaozouapa Elizabeth Lee ’11 co-created the website “New Yale Colleges,” which showcases the names from the letter and further advocates four more options. Among the names suggested are Mary Goodman, the first donor of color to Yale College; Yung Wing, class of 1854, Yale’s first Asian graduate; and Henry Roe Cloud, class of 1910, the first Native American graduate of Yale College.

Lapinig noted that the website serves primarily as a clearinghouse for potential college names, but it is not exhaustive, and he does not expect all communities to be represented by the final two names chosen.

“We didn’t want it to be an oppression Olympics or a zero-sum game where different alumni groups were trying to pitch different alumni to name colleges after,” Lee said. “We were of the opinion that we shouldn’t be advocating for a certain type of college, but rather saying we need to frame the discussion about diversifying names and incorporating all communities of color.”

In December 2014, Holloway announced that he formed two groups to advise him on practical questions relating to the opening of the new colleges. The first group, a steering committee, includes students, faculty, staff and recent alumni. Its job is to articulate the questions that need answers before the opening of the colleges. The second one, a smaller working group made up of only staff, will investigate potential answers to those questions.

All four alumni chosen for the steering committee are in close proximity to Yale: two are staff members, one is enrolled in the Law School and the other teaches at a private day school not far from Yale.

The teacher, Alex Werrell ’13, said that while he was unable to characterize the group’s discussions, he felt that suggesting names for colleges as an alumnus was the perfect way to influence an alma mater.

Even with four local alumni named to the steering committee and Salovey’s 2014 email soliciting input, the process — and the amount of input and power actually wielded by the alumni community — is far from clear.

Lapinig, one of the alumni behind the “New Yale Colleges” website, noted that he had not heard about the task force that Holloway established, and added that he hoped the administration would seek the opinions of alumni not in the New Haven area.

“Overall there is frustration about the process from the alumni perspective,” Lapinig said. “There has long been appetite for alumni to be more plugged in than just one stray survey from the President’s Office, after which many of us didn’t hear anything. The process has been fairly opaque and less collaborative with alumni than many of us would hope.”

***

At Georgetown, unlike at Yale or Princeton, students have managed to rename buildings on racial grounds. After a large student sit-in in November, the university agreed to rename Mulledy Hall and McSherry Hall, residence halls named for Georgetown Presidents Thomas Mulledy and William McSherry — men who sold 272 slaves, in part to eliminate the university’s debt. Today, the buildings have the provisional names of “Freedom Hall” and “Independence Hall,” while their permanent names are under debate.

What was most remarkable in the Georgetown case was the speed at which the administration responded to students’ demands: the day after the sit-in began, President John J. DeGioia announced the university would change the names of the buildings.

Candace Milner, Georgetown ’16, who was involved with the student protests, said while she was pleased the names were revoked, she feels the university only acted when it felt its reputation was at stake. She noted that “it took students getting publicity for [the university] to move at the urgency it should have been moving in the first place.”

But Rev. David Collins, a professor at Georgetown who chairs the group tasked with making recommendations for renaming buildings, attributes the speed of the decision not only to the students, but also to the willingness of key constituencies to agree to the change, citing the long-standing Jesuit community.

“Maybe they’re putting up more of a fight at Yale,” he said.

Collins’ guess is not wrong. And at Yale, concerns are not just coming from alumni.

Jay Gitlin ’71 MUS ’74 GRD ’02, a scholar of American cultural history who teaches the popular course “Yale and America,” noted that as a historian, he is generally averse to name changes. Gitlin said although he doesn’t think his opinion should count more than others’ opinions, there lies potential danger in a name change.

“There’s much frustration about race relations in this country, and I think a lot of young people are very frustrated and that’s the primary reason we’re seeing this,” he said. “As a historian, my impulse and every inclination is to be opposed to the idea of erasing history. I don’t think that’s a good idea; I think that has poor consequences.”

***

One of the first people Augie Rivera met at Yale when he finally arrived in the fall of 1980 was his roommate, Roosevelt Thompson ’84. The two would be roommates for the next three years.

During that time, Thompson — a black student who graduated from Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas — reached great heights at Yale. He was not only a Rhodes Scholar but also a Truman Scholar, a first-round pick to Phi Beta Kappa, a freshman counselor, a member of the JV football team, chairman of the Calhoun College Council, a chairman in the Yale Senior Class Council, winner of the Hart Lyman Prize, secretary of Black Athletes at Yale and an intern for then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton LAW ’73.

Thompson never graduated from Yale. During spring break of his senior year, he died in a car accident.

In a later documentary, Hillary Clinton LAW ’73 said he was “truly one of the most remarkable human beings I have ever, ever known.”

The cause to rename Calhoun College for Roosevelt Thompson gained traction after Alex Zhang ’18 published an op-ed on the subject in the Yale Daily News. In the piece, Zhang, a fellow alum of Little Rock Central High School, argues that Yale should show it values its students while they are students, not just when they are famous alums. In essence, supporters for Roosevelt Thompson College challenge the dominant framework that post-graduation merit should be evaluated.

“I’m of the opinion that the Yale degree is valuable not primarily for how it helps you gain prestige or money or power, but rather for how it opens doors for you and fills students’ lives with a sense of possibility,” Zhang said. “It just seems like when we talk about Yale we kind of forget why we’re here. It’s to have a great four years and to make something really beautiful in those four years, to give yourself to a cause, to become a great scholars, to serve your community.”

In the wake of the op-ed, students and alumni have rallied to support the cause of Roosevelt Thompson. Students, as well as friends of Thompson’s during his time at Yale, have written to the News and shared posts on social media. During listening sessions to discuss the potential renaming of Calhoun College and the naming of the two new residential colleges, Thompson’s name was a pervasive presence.

Zhang said that based on the responses he has received from students and alumni to his op-ed, Roosevelt Thompson College has proved largely unifying.

Slade Mead ’84, the producer of the Roosevelt Thompson documentary Looking for Rosey, visited Yale and spent time with Calhoun students. Mead, an old friend of Thompson’s, said, “I would always ask myself, ‘What would Rosey do?’ When I interviewed people [for the documentary], I found out other people had the same feeling. There’s something really special there.”

For Ceballo-Countryman, excitement around Roosevelt Thompson runs in the family; her mother had Thompson as a freshman counselor. While in favor of changing the name of Calhoun College to Roosevelt Thompson College, she is aware of the need to preserve the history of the name though another method.

“We can have a relation to history without honoring people,” she said. “There’s a difference between having Calhoun on our archways versus putting him on a plaque or historical exhibit in a basement.”

Ceballo-Countryman said that if the name is not changed now, she believes the issue will only continue to resurface in the future.

She asked: “How much more time and energy does Yale want to spend on the question?”