University wants names kept secret in flap over 'Confederate' dorm
By The Associated Press
01.10.03
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Vanderbilt University says administrators involved in a decision to drop "Confederate" from the name of a residence hall have been targeted with threats, and it wants a judge to keep their names sealed.
A Confederate heritage group is suing Vanderbilt over the decision to change the name of Confederate Memorial Hall.
Certain members of the university's administration, faculty and Board of Trust "have been subjected to a deluge of mail, electronic mail, and telephone messages, including some threats," since the name change decision in September, university lawyers wrote in a motion filed last week in Davidson County Chancery Court.
Vanderbilt spokesman Michael Schoenfeld wouldn't specifically discuss the threats or who made them, other to say that people and events were targeted.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy's Tennessee Division filed their lawsuit last October, claiming the dormitory name change represents a breach of contract. The group contributed more than $50,000 in 1930s to help construct the building.
Schoenfeld said while the university now refers to the dormitory as Memorial Hall, the Confederate name remains on the building pending resolution of the lawsuit.
A hearing is set Jan. 17 to hear motions in the case. Along with protecting the names of administrators, the university also seeks to keep correspondence related to the name change sealed from the public, and to keep the information private if it's introduced as evidence at trial.
Vanderbilt, a private, predominantly white university, has been at the center of a few racially sensitive incidents in the past year.
Among them was an opinion column on slavery and racism written by math professor Jonathan Farley, published in November by The Tennessean, a Nashville newspaper.
In the column Farley, who had no connection with the residence hall name change, called Confederates "cowards masquerading as civilized men" and said that all Confederate soldiers and leaders should have been executed after the Civil War for torturing and murdering slaves.
The university said Farley's views were his own, but it supported his free-speech rights.
Farley said he received threats after the column was published, but he wouldn't give details.
As part of another motion, university lawyers say they want to prevent opposing lawyers from deposing Farley, saying it would only "introduce into record extreme views of one member of the faculty who does not purport to speak for the university and whose position has been publicly disavowed by Vanderbilt."
Doug Jones and Bob Notestine, attorneys for the confederacy group, both declined to comment on the motions yesterday, saying they planned to file responses by today.