Cynthia Weld remains a relatively unknown figure on campus. As Ohio University’s first female teacher back in 1882, and later the Ohio State University’s first female teacher as well, her namesake was Weld House. A former dorm on South Green, Weld House was built in 1969 and served hundreds of both male and female students during its time. Back South, or “Dirty South” as it’s affectionately called by OU students, has been undergoing a lot of demolitions in recent history. Over the past few summers, eight former South Green dorms have been demolished. Brough, Cady, Foster, Fenzel Martzolff, O’Bleness, Smith and finally Weld houses were all demolished throughout the 2010’s with Weld being the most recent demolition in 2019. As of right now, there are no formal plans to rename any current or future buildings for Cynthia Weld. The rest of the buildings demolished all bore the names of former presidents, students who became generals, and philanthropists. While important to the University's history, Cynthia arguably had a heavier impact with her teaching as the first woman to just demolish her namesake like this. Weld lead the path for both female students and faculty alike, and now has no recognition on campus but an empty, unnamed field.
But the university has a bit of a history of not paying much attention to namesakes. Notably, Templeton-Blackburn Memorial Auditorium is the only building on campus that shares two people for its namesake. Martha J. Hudley-Blackburn, the first black female student at OU, and John Templeton, a former slave who became OU’s first ever black student. Both incredibly important figures, but forced to share a memorial building. What for? Martha J. Hudley-Blackburn is remembered by her husband's name, who didn’t even go to the university. Shouldn’t we be honoring her successes with her maiden name? She didn’t marry until after she graduated, so even her diploma, she school’s records, hold her as Martha J. Hudley. Her and John Templeton never even met. In fact, they didn't even go to school at the same time. The sole thing that connects these two people is their race. Why do we highlight their accomplishments as being a joint one, rather than supporting them separately? What does this tell people about how we honor black former students?
Another instance is with Boyd Hall, named after Margaret Boyd--the first woman to graduate from Ohio University. Boyd hall was initially in the middle of campus and an all-girls dorm when it was built in 1907, but was demolished to make space for the large Alden Library project in 1966. Now, Boyd Hall is what was formerly known only as “Building 10” and holds coed dorms, a dining hall, and a new study space. Constantly, women’s namesakes are getting demolished, moved, forgotten, or misrepresented on campus. How do we combat this? How do we do better?
Paying attention to namesakes and their importance to the university’s history–as well as their presence and place in American history–means paying more attention to the people we choose to honor on this campus, the people we choose to uplift. By refusing to, or merely choosing not to, uplift those who were vital to the attendance OU students is disheartening to say the least. By not valuing these people, these important Ohio firsts, you’re not valuing the people now who benefit from their presence.
I think this is a really interesting point about the idea of memorization and erasure. It highlights quite well the silent ways in which our campus history is distorted or altered. This connects quite well to the Anderson article on the creation of Chinatown. Part of the naming of buildings in honor is to state that these groups of people were there. In the Chinatown article, it talks about creating a sense of community where there is hostility. I think this also speaks to the possibility of hostility that students of color feel at predominantly white institutions, like Ohio University. There is also a systemic bias here where the administration made a decision not to preserve some aspect of the name of Weld Hall. They decided that the name was not valuable enough to move.
ReplyDeleteI work as a tour guide on campus and I would also add that Templeton-Blackburn Auditorium is almost never referred to as the full name by the administration. Most times it is referred to as Memorial Auditorium or Memod which seems strange since it is one of the only buildings to honor people of color at Ohio University.