Just over four months after President Val Smith announced the removal of Spencer Trotter’s name from the campus academic building known as Trotter Hall, the work of its renaming task force is entering its final stretch. The committee held an informational town hall on Tuesday, April 15, in the Scheuer Room. Task Force Chair and Associate Professor of Psychology Cat Norris summarized the group’s progress over months of surveying, archival research, and community engagement, all of which will culminate in a formal recommendation to Smith by May 1.
“We’re trying to move forward in good faith to provide the residents of this building with a new name,” Norris said in her opening remarks. The event was the second in a series of four community gatherings designed to solicit feedback and contextualize the renaming process.
The task force was formed following Smith’s December 2025 announcement about the building’s renaming, a decision motivated by rising concerns over the former biology professor’s documented history of Indigenous grave excavation and eugenicist scholarship. In 1899, Trotter excavated a Lenape burial site in Chester County, removing human remains and displaying them on campus. The building has been temporarily renamed to Old Science Hall, and all mentions of Trotter Hall on the school’s website have been replaced with the interim name.
But removing a name is only half the work. According to Norris, the task force’s more fundamental — and considerably more challenging — responsibility is to recommend a new name that reflects the mission and the priorities of the college community.
Community Survey Results: Diversity, Departmental Ties, and Direct Association
The task force sent out a campus-wide survey between January and February, drawing 505 responses from students, faculty and staff. Respondents were asked to rank eight potential priorities for the new name. Three emerged as college-wide priorities: (1) honoring the departments currently housed in Old Science Hall, (2) expanding the diversity of representation on campus, and (3) selecting the name of an individual with a direct association to the college.
Those priorities have guided the task force’s culling process. From hundreds of initial suggestions, the committee has narrowed the field to roughly twenty names. College Archivist David Obermeyer and communications staff have been conducting archival research on each possible name, writing biographies and flagging potential concerns.
“It turns out individuals are really complicated,” Norris said in an interview with The Phoenix. “Their histories have been really complicated.”
The Question of the Lenape Legacy
One category of suggestions received significant attention. Multiple survey respondents proposed Lenape-related names for the building, including Lenape Hall, Lenapehoking, and Walìniu Kèxiku Hall (meaning “truth” in Lenape).
After conversations with Smith and Jeremy Johnson, cultural education director of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, the task force decided against pursuing any Lenape names for the building.
“We all decided, all three of us, that it was not appropriate in this situation,” Norris said.
Danika Grieser ‘26, student task force member and Swarthmore Indigenous Student Association (SISA) leader, offered her own explanation in email correspondence with The Phoenix.
“I believe such a gesture could feel performative if not paired with substantive action,” Grieser said. “At the same time, we recognize the importance of ensuring that the campus community remains aware that we are on Indigenous land. This is a nuanced conversation.”
Norris noted, however, that honoring the Lenape elsewhere on campus, potentially through an exhibition in the building’s lobby documenting the renaming process, remains under consideration.
Task Force Processes, Building Consensus
The task force has avoided putting names to a vote. Instead, Norris said, the twelve members are working toward a general consensus. The group includes faculty representatives from each academic division, two student members, four staff from the president’s office and communications, the college archivist and an external expert.
“We have not come to consensus yet,” Norris said. “We’re very close, or we need to be very close. We have two weeks left.”
After the submission of the final recommendation on May 1, Smith will make her own decision on whether to accept the name before sending a proposal to the Board of Managers for approval, likely in the fall. Norris said that while the task force will recommend a name by May 1, the work of documenting the renaming process for the college archives will continue for another year. The task force hopes to host a campus event once that documentation is complete.
Task force member Bob Weinberg, the Isaac H. Clothier professor of history and international relations, acknowledged the weight of the decision in an interview with The Phoenix. He emphasized the importance of selecting a name that will not bring about future reconsideration.
“I think we want someone or an idea that is closely associated with the college and embodies a lot of the values that we think Swarthmore reflects.” Weinberg continued, “My feeling was, I’d love to find someone that might have been associated with this building, whose office was housed here. I think there was a desire to find someone who’s not alive so we could acknowledge that person’s life in its entirety.”
Weinberg, who plans to retire after the spring semester of 2026, clarified that this preference would potentially lower the risk of future revelations that might complicate a living person’s legacy.
The Question of Revisionism
Throughout the town hall, a single question resurfaced in various forms: Is renaming Trotter Hall and removing all mentions of the name online and on campus revisionist history?
Weinberg pushed back against such a characterization of the process.
“I have a problem with [the accusations of] revisionism. I teach history, but I do think it’s important to acknowledge why the name change has occurred … Revisionism is a part of the historical process,” he said. “New information comes to light and you want to act on it or integrate it into our current-day understanding of the world. You don’t want to erase the past, but you want to acknowledge it as well and explain why it’s important that we are changing this.”
Grieser expressed a similar view: “I hope for the end of Trotter’s ideological legacy, but not the erasure of history … Remembering does not require honoring. That distinction has been central to the task force’s considerations.”
The task force has created two subcommittees to address this concern. One focuses on archives and documentation, ensuring that the history of Trotter’s actions and the renaming process itself are preserved for future generations. The second focuses on educational events, including the four community gatherings this month.
At the April 15 town hall, in response to a question from The Phoenix regarding allegations of revisionist history made by alumni and community members, Norris shared her perspective in her capacity as an academic and researcher:
“We have gotten messages from people who say, ‘Why judge actions of someone 125 years ago by our current standards today?’ And that is a [fair] argument” Norris continued, “I’m very sensitive to that perspective … I think that contextualizing the removal of the name is going to be really critical for allowing future generations, as well as those who come after us, to know why we made this decision at this point in time. What was the reasoning behind it? Just being as transparent as possible about our process and about the decision to de-name the building.”
The Work that Remains
In response to a question from The Phoenix on whether the committee is considering adopting the Quaker practice of naming buildings after their function rather than after any individual, Norris said that the committee had discussed the idea, but still had strongly favored a personal name.
Grieser noted that there has been disagreement within the task force about the individual-versus-concept question: “Each option carries both strengths and drawbacks,” she said. “When naming a building after an individual, we want to avoid a situation where new information later necessitates another renaming. In contrast, naming it after a concept or place may reduce that risk, though it does not eliminate it entirely.”
The task force has two remaining community events. On April 29, Johnson will deliver a talk titled “Lenape Resilience, Return, and Renewal.” He will meet with students, faculty and the Committee on College Relations with Indigenous Communities throughout the day.
Whether the community will embrace the final choice remains to be seen. But for the task force, the measure of success is not universal approval.
For Grieser, the true benchmark is whether the building is actually referred to by its new name: “Names become embedded in our language and memory,” she said. “While we should remember the building’s history, we also have a responsibility to uphold the values Swarthmore claims to represent.”
Brooke Vick, vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion and chair of the Committee on College Relations with Indigenous Communities (CCRIC)—of which two other members of the renaming task force, Danika Grieser ’26 & Alisa Giardinelli, assistant VP of communications are also members — stated in an email to The Phoenix that, “The task force’s work will be a success when Old Science Hall is officially renamed to honor someone who exemplifies Swarthmore’s mission and represents the diversity of our community, and we have documented and acknowledged the history in a way that will educate current and future members of the Swarthmore community.”
