The SUNY Oswego Faculty Assembly has approved the creation of a task force to consider renaming some or all campus buildings, roads and fields with Native American-related names. 

Michael Chaness, the director of the Native American studies department at SUNY Oswego, proposed the Task Force on Haudenosaunee Confederacy Naming on the Oswego Campus with a few goals in mind. 

“My goal is to make our campus a more broad-minded place, to fulfill the goals of the Grand Challenges of race, racism and social justice, [a] three-year program that’s going on [at SUNY Oswego to discuss diversity and societal issues], and to make all of our campus buildings and facilities safe for Native students, Native faculty and Native staff,” Chaness said. 

“There is great power in names and naming and it is the opinion of a number of SUNY Oswego faculty that the dormitories, roads and fields around West campus do not honor the Haudenosaunee,” the task force proposal reads. Commonly referred to as “Iroquois,” the Haudenosaunee “is a confederacy of Nations including the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca [and] Tuscarora.” 

SUNY Oswego is built on the ancestral homelands of the Onondaga Nation, Chaness said. 

“Naming is really hard,” Dr. Lisa Glidden, a professor of political science at SUNY Oswego, said. “It’s a very … political issue not just in terms of objectification of people but also … you have to be concerned about donors and who’s got the power … because names matter, names are really important.”

A common argument for keeping buildings and other structures named after Native American nations and words is that it teaches about and honors indigenous people. 

Glidden suggested people may push back against renaming because they see it as “choosing not to honor native communities” when “they think those dorms were named to honor native communities.”

However, Chaness said that the building and structure names do not honor or teach about Native people.

“I think you should learn about Onondaga people. I think you should know Onondaga people; I think you should know their history and about contemporary Onondaga people,” Chaness said. “After fifty years, the dormitory has succeeded in none of that.”

According to the proposal, the original reasoning behind the names of the buildings was to note the “contributions of the Iroquois to New York State” and the “historical and sociological significance of those nations.” However, the proposal argues that “there is no educational value of living, playing [or] driving in these spaces nor are there any institutional standards for educating students, faculty, and staff about either the ‘contributions of the Iroquois to New York State,’ the ‘historical and sociological significance of those nations,’ or the concerns of contemporary Haudenosaunee peoples.”

“I’m sure there’s going to be a backlash,” Glidden said. “There’s going to be a lot of complaints about it. I mean, people don’t like change. I’m sure that there’s going to be derision for it, just in the current political environment that we’re in.” 

However, Glidden is hopeful that educational content within the task force’s report will lead people to better understand the reasoning behind a potential name change. 

Ninety-six percent of the Faculty Assembly approved the motion, with the remaining 4% abstaining. Faculty Assembly is a governing body on SUNY Oswego’s campus composed of 50 “representatives elected from academic departments, professional staff, administration and the student body,” according to its website. 

On April 3, Faculty Assembly will vote on some final structural details, Chaness said. If approved, the task force will include about 15 people from various groups, including faculty, staff, students, alumni, administrators and Oswego community members. 

The task force will exist through the spring of 2024, the proposal said. Throughout this time, the task force will conduct research, meet with members of the Oswego, SUNY Oswego and Native communities, create a campus education campaign and “recommend next steps regarding the renaming of specific buildings and structures.”

According to the proposal, when the task force completes its final report, “the Faculty Assembly may then choose to endorse the recommendations and ask the Office of the President to bring these recommendations to the College Council.”

The College Council, the oversight and advisory body at SUNY Oswego, will ultimately decide if the buildings and structures on campus will be renamed, Glidden said. If necessary, the College Council will also be responsible for choosing new names. 

Photo by: Abigail Conpropst