We’ve all seen it happen before. There are still people who call Retalliatta E-1. There are still people who call JJRV or Rowe Village, SSV. There are a lot of people who still call Galvin Tower the IIT tower. And I don’t actually know anyone who calls the Commons its new name, the Social House. Not to mention that IIT’s attempt to rebrand as Illinois Tech has been less than smooth.
But when they decided to rename Stuart Hall to Stetz Hall in a shocking moment of ego for Dean of Students Katherine Stetz, the school thought this one might actually go better. After all, Stetz is widely beloved by students on campus, who have no issues whatsoever with her or any of her many fully non-controversial decisions on anything from mental health to Palestine. Of course, people would be happy to celebrate her! Why wouldn’t they?
School officials were then shocked to discover that all students on campus still call Stetz Hall, Stuart Hall. In fact, despite this change being made a year and a day ago (as of publication), more than 80% of students who have classes in Stetz Hall were entirely unaware that its name had been changed. An additional 15% of students said that they refused to use the new name on principle because it was named after Stetz (which was particularly surprising, because as stated above, Stetz is beloved and has made no controversial decisions that were widely hated ever). And all remaining students’ surveys indicated their willingness to call it Stetz Hall, but said that they didn’t because no one else used that name, and it would just be confusing.
“I just can’t believe they’re doing this…” said an anonymous IIT official in a comment. “I mean, it’s like deadnaming a person. You wouldn’t deadname a person, would you, Anabelle?” (Anabelle is my deadname. This person has only ever known me as Avery. I don’t even know how they knew my deadname was Anabelle, unless someone else told it to them.)
“It’s just… It’s so rude, right? It’s about respect. I feel like people don’t respect me when they do this – oh shit, this was supposed to be anonymous!” said an anonymous member of school administration about the student’s refusal to use Stetz Hall.
It’s not entirely clear why the school thought this would go well, given the known failures of similar renaming attempts across campus before. No word yet on if they intend to roll back this change, though an anonymous official said they are considering changing the name of Crown Hall to Echambadi Hall, and they are hopeful that transition will go much more smoothly.