To President Katherine Rowe, the Board of Visitors, Chancellor Gates, Provost Agouris, and the William & Mary community:

The College of William & Mary, founded in 1693, was built upon the subjugation of Indigenous and enslaved Black peoples. Continually benefitting from their forced labor, displacement, and genocide, the College has committed to a historical tradition of violent dispossession and hypocrisy of action. The renaming and expansion of Brown Hall at the site of The Bray School – a place of colonial expansion and the indoctrination of enslaved children – to commemorate Robert Gates, a man involved in adjacent harmful processes, is a further stain on William & Mary’s long and shameful history. This renaming is a blatant contradiction of the administration's alleged efforts towards true and honest racial reconciliation. As a committee, CCL&I calls for an immediate cease of William & Mary’s violent veneration of reprehensible person(s) both in its association and within our campus landscape.

The Committee for Contextualization of Campus Landmarks & Iconography was formed under Student Assembly’s "The Plan," in response to the murder of George Floyd to address William & Mary’s participation in constructing and propagating white supremacy. We were proposed to be part of a larger dialogue towards enacting tangible change on an institutional level towards racial injustice. In 2023, CCL&I investigated the current state of William & Mary’s campus landscape including its buildings, statues, and iconography. After tireless research we determined that William & Mary’s campus landscape is overwhelmingly celebratory of white supremacy. Our findings revealed that 25-percent of campus buildings are named after known enslavers, 32-percent are named after ostensible white supremacists, and 95-percent of campus buildings are named to honor white individuals. In addition, we provided recommendations of actionable steps for administration to implement in response to our findings, yet have received no consideration. This statistical makeup and subsequent inaction from the administration illustrates an oppressive and exclusionary precedent at the College, one that the administration, despite this knowledge, has chosen to further enforce with the naming of Gates Hall. This is another display of the administration’s long disregard of restorative justice and honest attempts at inclusion in the campus landscape. 

We find the College’s renaming of Brown Hall to Gates Hall to be a blatant degradation of historical spaces associated with enslavement. The Bray School was a school for enslaved and free Black children that operated from 1760 to 1774. The School indoctrinated Black children under the guise of ‘Christian teachings' for the aim of enforcing American racial stratification and a maintenance of the Virginia colonies’ enslaved labor force. Brown Hall was constructed in 1930 over the original site of the Bray School which was moved to another location. In 1939, Brown Hall was purchased by the William & Mary Foundation and was used as a dormitory for the College which William & Mary has had in its possession since. The College, in renaming and expanding Brown Hall further on the grounds of the Bray School, is implementing another process of erasure that has marked this site for over a century. If William & Mary is truly reconciling with its history, this ground deserves to be honored and preserved for future research, which would not happen with the establishment of a hostile institution atop it.

In the Administration’s decision to name an academic building after a figure such as Robert Gates, the College is perpetuating another degradation of this site’s history and another violation of claimed campus values.Gates as acting Secretary of Defense from 2006-2011 oversaw and instructed the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan which included the bombing of civilians, the kidnapping and torture of civilian populations among a list of abhorrent violations to international law. Gates is an arbiter of imperial violence. In naming a building to commemorate Robert Gates, William & Mary is openly celebrating actions in direct violation of its own code of standards. Furthermore, the inclusion of parties such as the Global Research Institute and the Whole of Government Center of Excellence do not serve or honor the history of the land upon which it stands, as these institutions further the goals of the United States’ four hundred year colonial expansion.

The Committee has curated a list of demands for the College to adequately put forth effort towards reconciling its history and perpetuation. The demands are as follows:

-Transparency from the College regarding the decision making process behind the naming and renaming of buildings a part of the ‘10-year Plan’. Clear in the resistance from students across campus, this decision was both unforeseen and lacked any consultation from the campus community.
-Disaffiliation from the active vestiges of American imperialism and nationalistic institutions. Furthermore, the College must pivot and separate itself from its branding towards nationalistic ideologies that alienate its BIPOC students. 
-The enactment of tangible policy initiatives in alignment with the College’s pledges toward racial reconciliation. Furthermore, the College should give physical spaces to the pre-existing initiatives on campus that seek to increase racial justice on campus (such as the Lemon Project, etc) especially on grounds that deserve to be honored in true reconciliation efforts. Through placing hostile departments on these grounds, the College is actively dishonoring historical spaces.
-The establishment of policy initiatives that both honor and center the perspectives of the populations and communities who have been affected by the College’s past reprehensible actions. 
-Cease any and all association with institutions, organizations, or person(s) whose actions do not align with William & Mary’s Core Values.

President Katherine Rowe, the Board of Visitors, and Provost Agouris, we demand you to reassess the pervasive hypocrisy that plagues this institution which informed the closed decision to rename and defile a space meant for historical reconciliation. We are asking you to heed the demands of our committee and our supporting signers – the majority of which are students who make up the body of this academic institution. We hope you take appropriate action that aligns with your supposed values. We are awaiting further comment.

-The Committee for Contextualization of Campus Landmarks & Iconography

CORRECTION MADE ON 4/7/2024: Due to an inaccuracy, we have made a slight edit regarding our comment on the construction of Brown Hall: "sweeping away the archeological remains of its [The Bray School's] foundation and with it, proof of the Bray School’s presence in that space."

We have revised the petition to exclude this inaccuracy.