Let me bring up this scenario just for conversation sakes since schools like Marquette and North Dakota experienced this when changing team names for cultural sensitivity.
Let's suppose a Valpo big money donor will make a significant, major impact financial donation to upgrade the ARC or even toward a new facility. Let's say the donation is $25M - righteous bucks. The donor will provide this generous contribution given that Valpo changes their name back to Crusaders.
What should Valpo do and what would Valpo do?
CHANGE THE NAME BACK AND START DIGGING! ;D
The North Dakota guy was Ralph Engelstad, you don't want to use him an an example.
Considering that North Dakota is now the Fighting Hawks about 13 years after the 100M donation, I'd say once the building is built, good luck enforcing the name change. (I had to look it all up for context.)
As a tangent, in my research, this was in the letter "NCAA policy requires that student-athletes, band, cheerleading, dance and mascot uniforms and paraphernalia not have hostile or abusive racial/ethnic/national original references". So how come Notre Dame can use the Fighting Irish. Doesn't this rule need to be universal? I hate ND, and I am Irish so I'd prefer them NOT to use my ethnicity. Never understood this.
Quote from: bb33 on November 26, 2021, 11:07:14 AM
Considering that North Dakota is now the Fighting Hawks about 13 years after the 100M donation, I'd say once the building is built, good luck enforcing the name change. (I had to look it all up for context.)
As a tangent, in my research, this was in the letter "NCAA policy requires that student-athletes, band, cheerleading, dance and mascot uniforms and paraphernalia not have hostile or abusive racial/ethnic/national original references". So how come Notre Dame can use the Fighting Irish. Doesn't this rule need to be universal? I hate ND, and I am Irish so I'd prefer them NOT to use my ethnicity. Never understood this.
That policy is Wokeism and sucks.
Let me take the Marquette side of this.
After Marquette changed its names, an alumnus speaking at graduation unexpectedly announced he (and I think a few others) would donate a few million dollars if the university changed its name back to Warriors. The board of trustees and administration politely declined to do so (this happened quite a few years ago). Today (several decades later), there are still a few who feel like they need to protest by wearing shirts, waving flags, etc...but the vast majority have moved on.
What should or would Valpo do in this hypothetical scenario? First, I think it would be incredibly shallow to make a major contribution contingent on changing the name (either from Beacons back to Crusaders or from Crusaders to something else). The university is so much more than the nickname/mascot. My guess is that the university would not back down on its decision, but would likely try to work with a donor to find common ground on what is really important.
In a broader sense, attempts by wealthy people/groups with an agenda to donate money to a university – with the donation contingent on adopting or promoting an ideology – are far more common than people may realize. I have been involved in reviewing terms associated with an attempted contingent donation and have seen several others firsthand. Attempts like this are usually driven by economic ideology (sometimes with a political agenda) from both the left and the right. Universities should be pretty flexible regarding who they accept money from, but should rigidly reject donations that are attempts to swing curriculum towards a specific ideology.