As some may be aware, Congress has recently been looking into an idea to rename the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington after the late senator, John McCain. However, while Congressional Republicans may have all but rejected the idea to rename a building that currently honors the man that co-authored a refusal to adhere to Brown v. Board of Education, UGA does not have to!

That's right, our very own Russell Hall - which like the senate office building is also named after Richard Russell Jr., former Georgia Governor, late United States senator, and long-dead and long-proud editor of the 1956 Southern Manifesto - could become McCain Hall.

I know what you're thinking: "I don't care," but also, "that's crazy." And you may be right. John McCain may not have successfully blocked two anti-lynching bills, but he did receive recent national attention for blocking another sort of bill, so hear me out.

Russell Hall is one of UGA's largest dorms, providing first-year students with double-occupancy coed rooms and spacious community bathrooms. The dorm hall recently finished a year-long renovation, reopening this semester to welcome the new UGA Class of 2022. As students are becoming acquainted with this new space, they may be questioning whether the building honors its namesake, a man who once proudly said, "I am willing to go as far and make as great a sacrifice to preserve and insure white supremacy in the social, economic, and political life of our state as any man who lives within her borders." While I cannot answer that for a 35% non-white freshman class, let me instead tell you a little bit about how your dorm experiences align with those of John McCain!

John McCain, too, resided in a coed dorm in his formative years. During his time in the "Hanoi Hilton," McCain had his fair share of roommates - sometimes dozens of them at a time - until he was later upgraded to his own private suite. McCain also enjoyed community bathrooms, but as we college students know all too well, it wasn't always easy to get in there between so many other occupants or the occasional water outage; he would sometimes go weeks or even months between baths! We've all had to experience that smelly roommate before, am I right? And while McCain's dysentery rate at the Hilton may be slightly higher than the UGA average, he probably got it the same way most UGA students do. That's right; from the Snelling Dining Hall.

Of course, any traveler on the UGA campus knows that there other ramifications to renaming the Hall that honors one leader of a record-setting 60-day filibuster and 27 votes against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. One popular bus line on campus also takes its name from the building; after the change, these would instead flash "MCCAIN" banners! These buses may have seating arrangements that would have been frowned upon by Russell, who said, "We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our [Southern] states," but not McCain! After all, McCain was known to have given up his seat dozens of times to less fortunate passengers.

Lastly, if you're worried that John McCain's connection or appreciation for Georgia may be too tenuous to name one of our state university's finest buildings after him, I provide this quote that is entirely accurate according to the Purdue OWL, which strangely has been linked to me by every professor I have had for the last four years: "Georgia... [is] the greatest power in the world".

Don't let Congressional inaction become UGA inaction, bulldogs. Sign now!