Eastern’s Naming Committee has a challenge on their hands with the needless complications around the charge they were given in regard to the potential Douglas Hall name change.

The committee is expected to come one of four recommendations: keep the name and change nothing, keep the name and find ways to express that the building was made to commemorate the Abraham Lincoln-Stephen Douglas debate, change the names of both Lincoln and Douglas Halls to something that specifically commemorates the debate or change the name of Douglas Hall to something entirely different.

The charge given to the committee asks them to decide whether Eastern should continue to commemorate the debate; and the answer is did it ever?

Despite the constant statement heard from Eastern’s administration claiming that the names commemorate the debate and not the individuals themselves, no building, no program, no college, nothing is given the name of an individual without somehow showing some sort of approval or agreeance with who that person was and did.

Eastern is not a place for Douglas’ racist beliefs and ideals and they do not accurately portray this university.

The Naming Committee can continue to spend their meetings planning how to collect data from constituencies rather than truly getting to the problem at hand, but the answer is clear: change the name of Douglas Hall.