Most students walk directly into Howe Library without noticing the brass plaque on the wall to their right.
If they did, they might learn something about the history and commemoration — or lack thereof — of the success of student activism at UVM.
The plaque describes the renaming of the building from the “Bailey-Howe Library” to the “Howe Library.” Many students are unaware of the 2018 name change, when a successful student protest resulted in the building’s rechristening.
That latter detail, ludicrously, goes completely unmentioned in the University’s physical remembrance.
The University of Vermont attempts to hide its recent history of student activism, to the detriment of contemporary campus social justice movements, such as the movement for justice in Palestine.
Before any students let apathy or cynicism cloud their judgment of the encampment for Gaza, they should consider the achievements of recent activists.
Guy Bailey was the president of the University of Vermont from 1920 to 1940. He was also one of the state’s most prominent advocates for eugenics, according to an Oct. 27, 2018 Associated Press article.
Bailey lobbied and fundraised for the movement alongside Henry F. Perkins, UVM professor and the organizer of the Eugenics Survey of Vermont.
He vocally supported its pseudoscientific, racist doctrines of genetic purity and hatred towards the disabled that would culminate in the worst crimes of Nazi Germany.
The advocacy of the organization resulted in the state government’s forced sterilization of over 253 people in Vermont based on their alleged genetic “unfitness,” according to a Feb. 21, 2021 VTDigger article.
Marginalized groups were disproportionately targeted by programs Bailey supported in both rhetoric and action, according to a March 9, 2018 VTDigger article.
His namesake, the Bailey Library, was completed in 1960. It held that name until 1980 when an expansion of the building named for alum David Howe was completed, resulting in the “Bailey-Howe” moniker it would hold for the next 38 years.
Throughout 2018, UVM students mobilized for racial justice in a campus-wide movement. The renaming of the Bailey-Howe Library was among their demands.
The University’s ridiculous refusals on this demand and other issues outraged and energized the student body.
Led by the student group NoNames for Justice, hundreds of students and their faculty allies occupied the Waterman building.
They protested for hours in one of the largest demonstrations in the school’s recent history, calling on UVM to address the concerns of students of color on campus, according to a Feb. 26, 2019 Cynic article.
Their targeted activism, using similar tactics to those of the recent mobilization on campus for Palestinian liberation and divestment from Israel, forced the University’s hand.
Within days, UVM announced the formation of the renaming committee that would ultimately, after months of foot-dragging, remove Bailey’s name and portrait from the building, according to a March 9, 2018 VTDigger article.
Student protestors had, through direct action and the occupation of University property, successfully pushed for and achieved specific goals, including expanded diversity initiatives, according to a Feb. 22, 2018 Burlington Free Press article.
This should be celebrated and commemorated as one link in the long chain of left-wing campus agitation for justice and equality, the most recent of which is student activism in solidarity with the people of Palestine.
Instead, UVM seems focused on hiding, even erasing, the facts altogether.
The library plaque, the school’s official commemoration of the events, totally expunges the central role of student protestors in renaming the building, portraying the board of trustees’s decision as an independent moment of conscience.
Likewise, University webpages about the library’s name change, published on Oct. 26, 2018 and Oct. 30, 2018, omit the role played by student activism in exacting this concession from UVM.
One reading the school’s official history would almost believe that the board had introduced the name simply for the pleasure of changing it.
UVM presents a sanitized version of its past in which progressive change manifests from the casual generosity of shareholders. This is not the truth.
Rather, these changes were the successfully achieved goals of an organized student activism movement against racism that put direct pressure on the University and extracted concessions from an otherwise unwilling administration that had aligned itself with oppressive forces.
They should be remembered as such, uncomfortable as that may be for an administration that, in recent history, has again found itself at odds with student protestors on the right side of history.
Graham Pierce is a senior at UVM with a double major in history and film studies.
The Vermont Cynic accepts letters in response to published material, as well as any issues of interest in the community. Please limit letters to 350 words. The Cynic reserves the right to edit letters for length and grammar. Please send letters to cynicalopinion@gmail.com.
