Tuesday, Nov. 19, Student Assembly Senator Mayer Tawfik ’27 proposed and passed The Naming Architecture with Meaningful Epigraphs (N.A.M.E.) Resolution in the SA, advocating for more inclusivity with regards to student voices when naming new buildings on campus. This comes in response to students’ frustration that the names of residence halls are honoring people with legacies not in alignment with the current student body, and the values that the College of William and Mary claims to uphold.
Tawfik also had personal motivation for moving forward with the resolution, as he believes students should have a voice when it comes to making long-lasting decisions such as the naming of buildings.
“I thought there isn’t student representation in the naming process at all, and a lot of the controversies that arise are somewhat of a surprise to administration, and that comes from a lack of having students in the room when they’re talking about different names,” Tawfik said. “Someone who’s a representative could be like, ‘this isn’t my personal view, but I could see how students could be upset from this.’”
The resolution was introduced to the Senate Tuesday, Nov. 12 and was assigned to a committee where it received feedback the following Sunday. It passed voting the next Tuesday, Nov. 19, one week after it was introduced.
Tawfik sees the passage of this resolution as a sign of its significance for all students.
“I think it’s important that the people who occupy certain buildings, like residence halls, people who occupy classrooms, are proud of the legacy that the school is honoring through that building, and are proud of that person’s achievements and that person’s reflections of the school’s values,” Tawfik said.
Tawfik and other senators intentionally wrote the resolution to be open-ended, allowing for a wide range of ways it could be implemented when discussing future steps with College administration.
“I didn’t want to put concrete action steps, and then go and have those conversations and find out steps one through five are impossible, or you need to try again,” Tawfik said. “So the language is a little vague on purpose to where we can have those conversations, understand our knowledge, how it’s flawed or where it needs expanding, and then evaluating the steps after and being like, okay, we misunderstood the process. This new version of the process, maybe we can pivot and include students that way or find specific gaps where they’re not represented.”
Dozens of individuals from other multicultural organizations and advocacy groups on campus signed the resolution, demonstrating that there is widespread support for this outside of Student Assembly.
“The great thing about Student Assembly is everybody is involved in a whole lot of things,” Tawfik said. “And because of that, when you have a team as good as ours, and these are all class of ’27 senators, and class president, these are all people I know well and people who put a lot of work into the projects they pursue. So they came on the sponsors and instantly started to reach out to their circles and the organizations they’re involved in, and that helped a lot.”
In an email to The Flat Hat, Diana Kim ’25, former director of the Asian American Student Initiative, described why she was the first non-Student Assembly student to sign the bill.
“Last year, the Asian American Student Initiative (AASI), to which I was the director at the time, submitted a Letter of Support asking the Board of Visitors to consider historic Asian American William & Mary students when naming the newly constructed buildings. So, based on previous work alone, this bill resonates with me as an institutional course of action to have a more inclusive consideration of names that best represent the stories and people on this campus. Names have power. It tells us about the lived stories of the spaces we currently occupy. And those stories tell us what we value. I hope this bill pushes William & Mary to consider people they may not have known about before or might not have considered otherwise,” she wrote.
SA Secretary of Finance Jacob Stein ’25 explained his support for the bill.
“I chose to support the N.A.M.E. resolution because I feel it’s important for students to be included in the decision making as to whom the university honors. If the university wishes to consider as many diverse perspectives as possible with respect to naming, student perspectives must be among them,” Stein wrote.
Tawfik explained that because the process happens so fast, members working on the resolution have to be very deliberate with what they include and fully understand what they hope to get out of it when it is passed. Then, when they receive feedback on the resolution, they can determine what is helpful and not helpful.
Even though there are many students already involved, Tawfik is planning on reaching out to other organizations who are passionate about advocating for student voices. One item that is specified in the resolution is the creation of a committee in the SA that will oversee the process of integrating student voices into the naming process. Tawfik hopes to recruit people who are not in SA, and in this committee, members will have conversations about what can be done, delegate tasks to people in different social circles and hear other points of view.
Even though campus administration does not always act in the ways the student body would prefer, Tawfik acknowledges that there are different priorities administration has to consider which guides their decision making.
“There’s a lot of things behind the scenes that we don’t get to see, the finances, the administration, the academic stuff, so it’s important to keep that in mind while you’re in dialogue to be open with the possibility that what you know could be widely off base from what is reality,” Tawfik said. “And you may have misunderstood the process and it’s too simple or too complex and you’re like woah, this isn’t what I expected.”
In an email to The Flat Hat, Camille Batts ’26, Lead Chair of the Committee for Contextualization of Campus Landmarks & Iconography shared her reasons for signing the bill, especially given her work on campus.
“My primary line of thinking was that anything that brings naming/renaming to the forefront of people’s minds is always something I advocate for– something that makes people think a little bit deeper about why things are named what they are and who makes those decisions,” she wrote.
She elaborated on how the bill connects to CCL&I.
“I also think this resolution aligns with CCL&I (The Committee for the Contextualization of Campus Landmarks & Iconography) and our efforts towards a more inclusive landscape on campus. We are under Student Assembly, so it was great to see this resolution being put forward by them. As a committee, we face a lot of challenges in getting people to care. We see a lot of support for our petitions and larger advocacy initiatives, but not as much support for the research efforts that are just as important. There’s a layer of apathy that is definitely an issue on campus, but also in the world at large, that I feel we have to get over before reaching people,” Batts wrote.
She recognized the Student Assembly’s important role in advocating for students particularly in these instances.
“Additionally, I think having a resolution such as this, demanding more student involvement in these processes, coming from Student Assembly is important. Student Assembly is meant to represent and speak for the student body and, in this case especially, they are. This could be a big step towards student involvement and overall transparency in naming/renaming practices at the College. My biggest hope, however, is that this bill opens the door for change on campus in some of the standing buildings as well. I hope this also eventually puts an end to the cycle of problematic naming practices,” Batts said.
Tawfik will continue to look for people and organizations who want to be a part of the committee to move forward with student inclusion regarding the residence hall naming process.
