The 75-year clock on honorary building names may be coming off. A Board of Regents committee reviewed proposed amendments to the board's policy on namings and renamings. The changes would remove the automatic review of honorary names once they reach 75 years. They would also require that the All-University Honors Committee be consulted.
The committee walks through the proposed amendments, including dropping the automatic 75-year review and adding a non-voting consultation with the Honors Committee.10/09
The rule is fairly new. The regents adopted it in February 2022, after the 2019 fight over 4 buildings whose namesakes students and faculty said had supported segregation. The board voted against renaming them at the time, but the debate led to a formal policy. That policy set a 75-year limit on honorary names and left names tied to donors out of the sunset entirely. When the rule took effect, more than 30 buildings built before 1946 across the system's 5 campuses were immediately eligible for renaming.
Here's how the current policy works. Honorary names, meaning names that aren't tied to a gift or sponsorship, "shall remain for a duration of 75 years" unless they're kept. Once a name reaches 75 years it becomes eligible for indefinite retention. The Honors Committee then decides whether the naming is "so extraordinary that it should be sustained indefinitely beyond its 75th year." Names that aren't retained go back to the Honors Committee, which proposes a replacement. Gift and sponsorship names last for the useful life of the building. The board last amended the policy on October 9, 2025.
Cunningham supported dropping the 75-year review. She called it well-intentioned but impractical, saying the university has too many buildings and each one brings too much controversy for any of them to move forward. She also argued for the change on fundraising grounds: the university needs more philanthropic namings, she said.
Cunningham explains why she thinks the 75-year review can't work in practice and ties the change to bringing in more donor-funded namings.10/09
That's the tradeoff. Under the current rule, honorary names expire and can be reconsidered, while donor names last as long as the building does.
The committee's year-ahead work plan shows the namings change alongside planned revisions to the gift-acceptance and honors policies.10/09
The namings policy also isn't the only one on the committee's list. Its 2026-27 work plan expects revisions to the policies on awards, honors and recognitions and on charitable gift acceptance. It also schedules updates on the Minnesota Data Practices Act and on professional services agreements. The source material doesn't say when the full board will vote.
