While the MU Faculty Council and the University of Missouri Alumni Association Governing Board encourage restoring the school’s original name by dropping “-Columbia”, the other system campuses in St. Louis, Kansas City, and Rolla don’t want the Columbia campus to claim the name they all share.
Thomas George, chancellor of the St. Louis campus, has recently spoken out in strong opposition to the name restoration, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Wednesday. Why is he so against this? “Isn’t it obvious?” asks Bob Samples, director of university communications at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. “We feel that the name change as proposed by the Columbia campus threatens the integrity and the strength of the University of Missouri system.”
Samples says four separate entities at the university (the Student Government Association, the Alumni Association, the Faculty Senate, and the Chancellor’s Council) have all spoken out against the name change proposal. The Chancellor’s Council released this statement, which George quoted in his State of the University address earlier this month: “The University of Missouri System has a statewide mission of teaching, research, service and economic development… The current effort by the Columbia campus in many regards is a means to claim and reserve this mission solely. We do not believe this is in the best interest of the state nor do we believe it is the best direction for the UM System.”
The University of Missouri was established in Columbia in 1839. In 1963, the University of Missouri system was created. Each of the four schools took the University of Missouri name followed by a hyphen and the city’s name. Incidentally, the Rolla campus will in January be renamed Missouri University of Science and Technology.
Check out what MU has to say here.
Leave a comment