Every day I walk past Gilman and Spedding Hall on my way to a lab in the Materials Science Department. The buildings were named for great scientists who distinguished themselves in chemistry and metallurgy, and it is fitting that the buildings which bear their names house chemistry and materials science programs.

Were these men racists? Classists? Xenophobic? I have no idea, but I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.

What I do know is that their accomplishments in chemistry and metallurgy are not derived from or dependent upon such prejudices.

This is why, for me, the Carrie Chapman Catt Hall name is a disgrace.

She is an ISU alumna and worked hard for white women’s suffrage to be sure, but her means tarnish any of her dubious accomplishments.

She is not simply guilty of uttering a single, to use Jischke’s words, “regrettable” racist comment, but instead is guilty of basing a tremendous part of her suffrage campaign on racism and xenophobia.

She traveled to different parts of the country giving speeches which played on the prejudices of others to win support, at the expense of many different minority groups.

Catt believed the enfranchisement of immigrants and other minority groups (including African Americans, Asian Americans and Latino/as) was to blame for many problems of the nation.

She supported the use of literacy requirements and poll taxes to prevent “the ignorant vote.” In the words of one of the September 29th Movement’s founders, Meron Wondwosen, “Catt spoke of human liberty in one breath and in another advocated the use of woman suffrage as a means of maintaining Anglo-Saxon dominance.”

Were her efforts for the greater good?

Was the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 worth it? Catt’s sisters of color in the South wouldn’t share that privilege until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1964.

We can’t know how history would have been different without her tainted campaign, but I, for one, am sick and tired of hearing the utilitarian mantra.

There were certainly other less objectionable courses of action, and other women who fought for suffrage took them.

To those who believe Catt’s bigoted comments were simply part of this noble strategy to enfranchise white women, and did not reflect her personal feelings, I say listen to her hurtful words after the 19th Amendment.

In 1939, she said the average immigrant “has tremendously lowered the standard of our civilization.” This and other comments reveal that Catt was as bigoted as her suffrage speeches suggested.

In short, Catt was a mouthpiece of division and not diversity.

The building’s name presents another irony in that it houses a host of multicultural programs including African-American studies and Latino studies.

Programs promoting the very groups that Catt demeaned in her speeches. Coupled with the exclusionary way in which the hall was named and the current stonewalling efforts of the administration with regards to reexamining the naming process, the Catt Hall issue is one big slap in the face to minority and non-minority students alike on this campus.

The more you look into it, the more it stings.

How can a university with the lofty goal of being the best land-grant university in the nation ever hope to get there by ignoring its students?

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Simon Huss

Graduate student

Materials science and engineering

September 29th Movement