MU faculty council committee supports residence hall named after Lucile Bluford

The University of Missouri is looking to name its newest residence hall.

The 279-bed hall opened at the beginning of the fall semester. The Missouri Residence Hall Association has proposed it be named after Lucile Bluford.

“I think there’s enough residence halls to go around to have one named after Lucile Bluford,” said Berkley Hudson, an MU journalism professor and chairman of the faculty council’s diversity enhancement committee.

Bluford, an African-American woman, was denied admission to the journalism school graduate program in the late 1930s. She later received a Missouri Honor Medal from the journalism school and the Board of Curators awarded her an honorary doctorate.

Members of the diversity enhancement committee expressed their support at the faculty council meeting Thursday for the residence hall to be named after Bluford.

“We just feel like it’s our responsibility as the diversity enhancement committee of the faculty council to support efforts such as this, which suggests that the Mizzou campus is a campus that knows its history and owns its history and that’s cognizant to the fact that we need to take concrete steps to show that we’re an inclusive university,” Hudson said.

The Board of Curators has formed a university working group to collect name suggestions for the new residence hall and make a final recommendation to board members.

“If you’re going to have a building named after someone that’s quite an honor, so to get a group of people together and say ‘Who does it make sense for us to honor?’ and to get a broad spectrum of views is sensible,” said Ben Trachtenberg, faculty council member and member on the working group formed by the curators.

Trachtenberg said the group, which is made up of curators, faculty, staff and alumni, plans to meet next month. It hopes to have a final name recommendation to the curators by early 2018.