Iowa State President Wendy Wintersteen said Wednesday that renaming Catt Hall would be reconsidered. 

Wintersteen also named the members on the Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming monuments on campus in an email sent Wednesday.

In June, Wintersteen released a statement regarding the history of a plaque that was dedicated to the work of William Temple Hornaday, an Iowa State alumnus and the first director of the Bronx Zoo.

Hornaday also featured Ota Benga, a Congolese pygmy and a Black man, in the Monkey House of the Bronx Zoo. During the weekend in September of 1906, Benga lived in the Monkey House with an orangutan as an exhibit that was set up by Hornaday. 

A rock plaque was placed on the Iowa State campus south of LeBaron Hall in 1927. On June 9, a Twitter thread highlighted the past of Hornaday.

As a response, Wintersteen created a committee for a formal renaming policy and process for current plaques and historic monuments on campus. In the statement announcing the committee, Wintersteen called Hornaday’s actions and attitudes he expressed in response to the controversy as “indefensible, reprehensible and racist.”

Wintersteen named Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Reginald Stewart and Faculty Senate President Carol Faber as the co-chairs of the committee to develop the policy.

“In recognition of Iowa State University’s commitment to research and factual evidence, academic freedom and intellectual inquiry, the university charges the committee to develop a policy to ensure a consistent, evidence-based and historically thoughtful means by which to evaluate historical naming and honors,” Wintersteen said. “This policy will strive to provide integrity, consistency and clarity to the process in order for these principles to endure. When the committee completes this policy, a formal process will exist for the investigation of renaming issues.”

Members of the Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming are:

• Carol Faber, Faculty Senate President (Co-Chair)

• Reginald Stewart, Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion (Co-Chair)

• LeQuetia Ancar, Assistant Director of Engineering Student Services and Director, Multicultural Student Success, College of Engineering

• Sebastian Braun, Associate Professor, Department of World Languages and Cultures

• Joseph Cheatle, Director, Writing and Media Center, Dean of Students Office

• Simon Cordery, Chair, Department of History

• Paula Deangelo, Deputy Counsel, Office of University Counsel

• Kurt Earnest, Associate Director of Residence Life, Student Engagement and Academic Excellence, Department of Residence

• Simon Estes, Adjunct Professor, Department of Music and Theatre

• Eleanor Field, President, Graduate and Professional Student Senate

• Morgan Fritz, President, Student Government

• Monica Gordillo, Associate Teaching Professor, Department of Management

• Daniel Hartwig, Head, Special Collections and University Archives, University Library

• Gloria Jones-Johnson, University Professor, Department of Sociology

• Maggie LaWare, Associate Professor, Department of English

• Sheryl Rippke, Policy Administrator, University Counsel

• Samarth Vachhrajani, Senior in Architecture, College of Design

• Amy Ward, Past President, Professional & Scientific Council, and Learning Technologies Coordinator, Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching

• Ross Wilburn, Associate Program Director and Extension and Outreach Diversity Consultant, ISU Extension and Outreach Community and Economic Development

• Brian Meyer, Associate Director for Strategic Communications, Strategic Relations and Communications (ex-officio)

A website for the Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming was created as a source for information and updates to the university community.

“I want to emphasize that the committee’s charge is to develop the policy. It is not to consider or review any specific renaming issue,” Wintersteen said. “Once the new policy is adopted, issues on naming can be put forward under an agreed upon, consistent process in which all factual evidence can come forward for consideration and careful analysis. It will be applied to render a decision about the Hornaday plaque and an honorary degree he received from Iowa State in 1903. Also, once the new policy is in place, the issue of the naming of Catt Hall can be brought forward.”