Residence Life, the department that runs the residence halls at WMU, has just been voted as the second-worst department at WMU (trailing right behind Parking Services, which is just 3% worse than Res Life). Nearly 200 departments are represented by this vote, and being rated second-to-worst raises a question of why the department performed so poorly in the eyes of students.

One of the reasons attributed to the low department ranking is the recent renaming of the Western Heights residence halls. A recent donor contributed $3 million with the purpose of putting their name on a building, resulting in the disgusting "Hall-Archer-Pickard Hall East" and "Hall-Archer-Pickard Hall West" naming convention.

Students heard about this change in Fall 2017 and adapted quickly. Some continued to call the residence halls by their original name: "Western Heights East" or "Western Heights West". Some abbreviated the "Hall-Archer-Pickard" name to "HAP East" and "HAP West". When Residence Assistants or Desk Workers tried either of these two alternatives, they were informed that there may be punishments or fines for not calling the building by its new name.

Renaming a building is no easy task, and required insane hours of administrative work changing the name of the building on multiple websites and databases. Thousands of pages of paper needed to be re-printed using the new name. Old Residence Life t-shirts were discarded as new t-shirts needed to be printed with the new building names. New letters needed to be put in place on the building entrances, and all signs throughout the buildings needed to be re-printed and changed. Room and board price increases are now brought into perspective.

We are petitioning WMU, and specifically the Residence Life department, to change the name of the Western Heights buildings back to their original name. We are also petitioning Residence Life to spend some time considering the name of a building before it's built, so that once a building is erected, they don't need to spend time renaming it and issuing fines and fees to students who don't comply with the new name. On the topic of planning ahead, let's also not announce the renovation of Valley 3 in a newspaper, hold a public forum, and then later decide to throw out the idea.

We are also petitioning WMU students to continue calling Western Heights by its original name: "Western Heights East" and "Western Heights West". If we work as a team, we can preserve the glory of the first quality residence hall.