Vice President John C. Calhoun's legacy is one of racism and blood. He is best known for expanding slavery to new states and for his Senate speech, "Slavery a Positive Good." There was perhaps no bigger defender of slavery in the 1840s.
So why does Yale University, one of America's most visible institutions, continue to honor a vicious racist like Calhoun?
Yale's undergraduate students live in "colleges" that are a lot like Harry Potter's Hogwarts houses. One of them is Calhoun College. While America must not forget its past, remembering the past doesn't have to mean honoring politicians best known for causing the Civil War - it's time to rename Calhoun College for a Yale almunus of color.
As the Yale Daily News editors said, Yale "will be judged not merely by the longevity of our traditions. We must answer for their moral content. For this reason, we must change the name of Calhoun College... To do so is not to obliterate history but to inscribe different values into Yale's present and to aspire to a better, more racially just future."
This petition is open to the public, and stands in solidarity with every Yale student of color who has been turned away from a frat party because they weren't white, faced white students in blackface, or walks the institution's halls and sees almost nothing but white men on the wall.
Tell the Yale Corporation: Stop honoring slavery! Rename Calhoun College!
