Editor’s note: The following memo was sent on Monday to members of the Iowa State community. It’s author, Derrick Rollins, details his thought process in concluding that the university should rename Catt Hall. Carrie Chapman Catt, an ISU alumnus whom the hall is named after, is under fire for allegedly making racist remarks during her crusade for women’s suffrage.

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Date: Sept. 15, 1996

To: President’s Cabinet Members, Deans, and DEOs

From: Derrick Rollins, Advisor to the President’s Cabinet on Diversity and Chair of the African American Studies Program

Subject: The Renaming of Catt Hall

On Monday, September 16, 1996, an article will likely appear in the ISU Daily including an interview I gave on the Catt Hall controversy on Friday, Sept. 13. I permitted the interview because I had considered writing an article this weekend. That evening, a member of the September 29th Movement called me. The Daily had contacted him and he was concerned that I might be offended by some editorial comments made about me in the Daily. It is not my purpose here to comment on these conversations; if you are interested, I encourage you to read the article in the Daily.

This weekend, maybe even just a few hours ago, I realized the great impact the discussions on Friday were having on my view of the Catt Hall issue.

Those discussions forced me to take a close look at some things that, maybe, I really wanted to avoid because looking at them openly and honestly would force me to get involved in an explosive issue. However, I am writing this letter to share with you why I feel the only humane thing to do is to commit one’s self to the renaming of Catt Hall (on Friday I had a neutral stance on this issue).

I did not come to the conclusion that Catt Hall should be renamed easily. On the forefront of my resistance was concern for the promises made to donors that the building would carry the name of this great woman of history.

However, there is a greater issue involved here than the honoring of one of ISU’s most famous graduates. What’s being tested by this issue is our commitment to making ISU a university that respects the rights and feelings of all our students, staff, and faculty, and our resolve to eliminate any person or object that creates an environment of alienation, hostility, and disrespect toward any group of our citizens. (Nobody ever said the commitment to diversity would be easy.)

When I first became aware of Catt and her controversial racist history in the Suffrage Movement in September of ’95 I had very little knowledge of the tactics she used to win the right for women to vote.

After long discussions with a number of people on both sides, including Jane Cox, and after conducting my own research, I concluded that Catt strongly demonstrated an attitude of political racism. I personally don’t see how anyone could study the facts and reach another conclusion She used race, in the worst kind of way, to gain support for the passage of the l9th Amendment. Whether she was personally racist is not the issue — she was politically racist. Why did I share this? I shared this to say that the conclusion that the September 29th Movement has drawn about Catt’s racist politics is backed on sound evidence and not irrational, insane, and racist thinking.

Thus, I have concluded that strong enough evidence exists to accept their perception that she was politically racist, and that their perception should be honored with sensitivity, respect, and understanding. Hence, the issue is no longer whether Catt was politically racist, but whether members of the September 29th Movement are significant enough to really matter.

Their perception is important because it is this perception that makes them feel insignificant, unwanted, and mistreated.

It is this perception that makes it difficult for them to walk by Catt Hall and unable to go inside; it makes them question their true acceptance on this campus. We are not going to change their perception of Catt, especially since the history does not appear to exist to allow such a change. Thus, our actions must be based on the effect the name is having and not on debating whether the September 29th Movement is wrong in the way they are feeling.

Imagine that, for the new Engineering, Teaching and Research Complex, a name was proposed of an ISU chemical engineering graduate who won the Nobel Prize but once led a national campaign to exclude women from engineering, exclaiming “that they were weak, intellectually inferior, untrustworthy, and incapable of the logical thinking necessary to solve scientific problems.”

If this knowledge came out after the building received this name, and if our women engineering students became very disturbed by it to the point that they refused to enter the building, many people would be “up in arms.”

Is there a donation or person worth this cost? Of course, a difference in the example that I just used and the Catt situation is that the September 29th Movement and its followers represent a part of the minority community with fewer numbers and much less power. This country has a dark history of the powerful majority selfishly degrading and destroying minorities to gain more wealth and power.

The only real recourse the minority citizen has ever had is the hope that a significant number of the majority population would be led by their hearts and consciences to do the right thing, even if it was not the popular and “politically” expedient thing to do.

I have heard arguments that if we start renaming buildings because of character we would have to deal with renaming many others. I don’t know if (sincere) pressure will exist for renaming other buildings, but should even this stop us from doing the right thing? One thing that makes [these] issues so important is the fact that it’s happening now and not in the year 1805. Will we be people of integrity and true to our commitments? How will history judge us on this issue?

As I stated above, we are being tested. Our commitment to diversity is being tested. Our commitment to create “an environment which encourages fairness, equity, creativity, support for intellectual freedom, and respect for the rights of all who work and study here” (from “A Plan for Creating a Multicultural and Diverse Environment at Iowa State University.”) is being tested. We have an opportunity to make a great statement and silence those that say our commitment to diversity is only political.

We have a great opportunity to be known as the school so committed to eliminating climates “inhibiting freedom, self-respect, self-esteem, and achievement” that it renamed a building of one of its most famous graduates.

Thank you for considering these comments, and I encourage you to pass this memo on to others in your department.