The University of Wyoming has decided to name a new center for international students after former Vice President Dick Cheney, prompting a backlash from students, teachers, and local residents.
The center is partially funded by $3.2 million the Cheneys gave to the university while he was in office. A dedication ceremony is planned for 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, with Dick Cheney and wife Lynne slated to attend. Protesters are organizing a demonstration in the campus quad during the ceremony (they “don’t plan to disrupt the ceremony but will be visible,” according to the AP).
Laramie, Wyoming resident Nancy Sindelar, who is with the group Veterans for Peace, said that “Mr. Cheney is not the best example of demonstrating how nations should get along with each other…putting his name on an international center is counterintuitive.” That statement is a touch milder than what she told The Wyoming Underground: “I feel sorry for the University of Wyoming and the state of Wyoming when they have to change the name after he’s indicted.”
The controversy has been brewing for at least a year, ever since news of the possible decision became apparent. Suzanne Pelican, who teaches at the university’s College of Agriculture, began circulating a petition one year ago to campaign against the name. “We feel that by naming it the Cheney International Center, that the programs and UW can’t avoid being identified with that ideology and that approach to global politics that the Bush-Cheney administration championed,” she said.
University President Tom Buchanan has defended the decision with editorials in local newspapers, also posted on the school website:
Tolerance and diversity cut many ways…Whether you are Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, Catholic or Protestant, gay or straight, white or black, you are welcome at the University of Wyoming. Should we subject potential donors and the purpose of their gift to public referendum? I think not.
If we do, we lose sight of the fact that our role is to teach, not to indoctrinate. Good universities cannot distance themselves from all that is controversial. To do so would require rejecting mortgage brokers, bankers, pharmaceutical firms, sports figures, fast food chains, political leaders, historical figures, energy companies, uncommon religious groups, and Middle Eastern countries to name just a few.
Students are also actively organizing against the school’s decision: graduate student Daniel DePeyer created the Facebook group “UW Students Against the Cheney International Center,” which is planning to be at tomorrow’s protest. In a Facebook forum, an outraged Sherry Howell wrote, “I think that even though Cheney is an alum and often alum that are big donors get buildings with their names on it, we can’t be giving building names to war criminals that still subscribe to the ‘torture is ok’ ideology. We don’t have Hitler Hall anywhere now do we?”
Laramie resident Donal O’Toole adopted similar language in the Casper Star-Tribune, writing that the university take on “other initiatives from hitherto untapped sources,” including, “[T]he Beelzebub’s College of Theology, Enron’s Institute of Business Ethics, the Tom Ridge Observation Center, the Michael Vick Dog Shelter, and the Kim Jong Il School of Hairstyling.”
University spokeswoman Jessica Lowell insists that the center is a place of fun: “This is a place where international students can come and watch soccer if they want to. There’s a lounge for them.”
