The Naming Committee has officially finished all of its seven forums.

Throughout the forums there has been a strong and clear majority opinion: change the name of Douglas Hall.

We at The Daily Eastern News agree.

Over the last decade this issue has been debated within the Naming Committees, across Eastern’s campus and in the surrounding communities. Over ten long years have been spent going back and forth on a very simple issue.

The historical significance of one of famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas is incredible, but it is significant to Charleston, not to Eastern. And while we applaud the way the debate has been memorialized in a museum at the county fairgrounds, we see no real value in having a building named after Douglas on our campus. 

Not only did he have no involvement with Eastern, but he is not a man worthy of naming honors at an institution that claims to pride itself on diversity and inclusion. 

Douglas did not believe in the diverse society we live in today, he would have frowned upon it and that is not something the Eastern community should want to celebrate.

At Eastern we celebrate and honor the differences between each other, we seek to learn about other cultures, we do not look down on people who are not the same us.

As the Naming Committee dives into the hardest part of their committee work so far, we hope that they remember what makes this university great and recommend that the Board of Trustees change the name of Douglas Hall.