Student hopes naming University of Kentucky site for Breonna Taylor fuels race talks
Like many college campuses, the University of Kentucky is covered in names.
Typically those names are those of past presidents or administrators who left their marks on the university. Other times, affluent alumni pay millions to have their names serve as landmarks for generations. Among UK’s dorms, trailblazers are featured. Lyman T. Johnson Hall is named after for the university’s first black student, and John T. Smith Hall bears the name of the first black student to graduate with a doctorate of philosophy.
But now an online petition, started by a UK student, urges the administration to add another name of a black student to the campus map: Breonna Taylor. The UK senior behind the effort hopes it will start new conversations about race that will make the campus more inclusive.
Taylor, a UK student in 2011 and later an EMT, was shot and killed by police in her sleep while officers were serving a no-knock warrant on her home in Louisville. Her death and that of other unarmed black people at the hands of police have sparked protests across the state and country.
The petition asks UK to consider naming the green space — that will take over the Kirwan-Blanding complex site after the towers and dorms are demolished — after Taylor. After almost a week online, the petition had gotten more than 1,100 signatures as of Thursday afternoon.
“It actually started getting more support than what I thought,” said Khari Gardner, the student who started the petition last week.
Gardner said he hopes the drive to rename the space is only the beginning of a local and campuswide discussion around police violence against people of color and around re-evaluating UK’s on-campus culture for staff and the roughly 30,000 students that attend. Renaming the space after Taylor would show “that UK cares and it shows that we will never forget the beginning of a movement that’s just now coming into shape and into form,” Gardner said.
UK officials said they would consider the request.
“We just received this request, and we will certainly take time to consider it,” said UK spokesperson Jay Blanton. “It also should be noted that demolition of the buildings, preparation of the site, and construction remain years away.”
The Kirwan and Blanding towers, which are more than 50 years old, are slowly coming down after dominating the skyline for decades. University officials said last month that the towers should be down by the end of the summer. The green space to replace the dorm complex should be done by spring 2021. Three dorms can be built on the site, but the university has indefinitely suspended dorm-building plans while it navigates budget challenges caused by the pandemic.
UK President Eli Capilouto has also been vocal about honoring Taylor’s memory. In one email sent to the campus last week, Capilouto wrote that seeing Taylor’s name among a list of those recently killed by police “entails a particularly deep sense of sorrow.” He promised in the email to work to bridge divides.
“Dialogue is not enough,” Capilouto wrote. “We have to do what we can, now, to find these solutions.”
The university has some history of naming on-campus spaces for victims of tragedy.
The first UK building to be named after a black student was in 1979, years after the student’s death. The Greg Page Apartments —which sit near the Arboretum — were named for the 19-year-old football player who died in 1966 from injuries he sustained during practice, according to a 2001 Kernel article. He was one of the first two black players that UK ever signed to play football. He never played in a game.
According to Terry Birdwhistell, the senior oral historian at UK’s Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History,
the university in 1924 named McLean Stadium — the grandstands that surrounded Stoll Field, the former home of the Wildcats’ football team — after Price Innes McLean, a former football player who died during a game the season prior. The stadium has since been torn down. It stood across Avenue of Champions from Memorial Coliseum.
For Gardner, naming a space after Taylor would be more than a memorial. It would be a step forward, he said.
“This is the time, this is the moment that we as young people have to seize and make sure our voices are heard and having her name on campus is a great way to memorialize the past but also move us to the future,” Gardner said.
Gardner said he hopes his petition and potentially renaming the space will begin a larger discussion about race on campus. In his freshman year, he said he considered transferring out of the university after hearing racial slurs yelled at him on multiple occasions. After finding more diverse groups of people, he said, life improved.
“I gained spaces and groups where it was diverse and people wanted to hear my voice and other people’s voices,” he said. “Even though I think UK has done some strides to make sure we have a more inclusive campus, I think there’s a lot more that they can do.”
This story was originally published June 10, 2020 at 2:52 PM.