Major donors get names on OSU campus sites; historians object to changes

By KYLE ODEGARD


Gazette-Times reporter

What’s in a name?

For some buildings on the Oregon State University campus, it’s millions of dollars from donors.

OSU alumni Lee and Connie Kearney gave more than $4 million toward the renovation of Apperson Hall, and the granite and sandstone structure at 15th Street and Monroe Avenue will be renamed after them.

Other recent examples include the Lois Bates Acheson Veterinary Teaching Hospital and Reser Stadium. The latter was formerly Parker Stadium, after a fundraising Portland businessman who helped build it. In 1999, food company owner Al Reser and his wife, Pat, bought the 25-year naming rights to the Beavers’ football home for $12.5 million.

Last week, the Oregon State Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation — in town to consider a historic district for much of campus — chastised OSU for the practice.

“The university can’t keep changing the names of buildings just on a whim. ... There’s a sense of continuity that needs to be established,” said William E. Willingham, the historic preservation committee’s chairman.

Vincent Martorello, OSU director of facilities services, responded that this is a challenging era.

“A lot of the time, to augment state funding issues, the school sells the name of a building,” he said. “We don’t take the changing of names of our buildings lightly. It is something that could and will happen again.”

For now, at least, OSU’s building names are dominated by educators. But private funding played a major role in renovations and new construction, such as the $20 million donation from OSU engineering alumnus Martin Kelley and his wife, Judy, which led to the creation of the Kelley Engineering Center, completed in 2005. The Merrit Truax Indoor Practice Facility is another example.

The soon-to-be built Linus Pauling Science Center might seem an exception to the rule. But the Valley Foundation — the Valley family has three buildings at OSU named for it — and the Resers contributed $30 million to the $62.5 million project. And they wanted it named for the two-time Nobel laureate, an OSU alumnus.

This version of the name game might be new for OSU, but it has long been common at other colleges and universities. In fact, it has been around since the days of the Greeks and Romans, who dedicated buildings and bridges not just to war heroes but to philanthropists, said Jeff Hale, assistant dean of the OSU College of Liberal Arts.

“Since the earliest of public buildings, there have been naming opportunities,” said Hale, who teaches a sociology course on giving and volunteerism, and is writing a manuscript on the same subject.

“Universities have done that, primarily private universities, for years and years,” he added. Trinity University in Durham, N.C., for instance, was renamed Duke University in the 1920s after a tobacconist and noted philanthropist.

The newer trend is for state universities to name buildings after big donors.

While the earliest known instance at OSU is LaSells Stewart Center, created in the late 1970s, the institution has jumped into the name game wholeheartedly only in recent years, and is behind its contemporaries.

OSU was the last school in the Pac-10 to launch a university-wide fundraising campaign, which was announced in October, and seeks to bring in $625 million. Many of the newly named structures are part of the “Campaign for OSU.”

“They are now just really beginning to utilize the named gift opportunity,” Hale said. And despite the state’s “woeful” support of building maintenance, it’s as much about opportunity as need, he added.

The $12 million modernization of Apperson Hall was funded entirely through private donations. While the interior of the structure was gutted, its historic exterior will be restored. A tribute to the original namesake, John T. Apperson, an Oregon Agricultural College regent from 1888 until his death in 1917, will be placed in the lobby, Martorello said.

Luanne Lawrence, vice president of university advancement, said reaction to the name change, approved in 2006, was muted because Apperson the man isn’t well known today.

“It looks like we’ve been honoring him for decades without anyone really understanding what he meant to the institution,” Lawrence said.

“Certainly, if the individual was a person who resonated through our history somehow, there would be a different reaction,” she added.

OSU has an architectural naming committee that applies a university policy when considering naming buildings, including those named after prominent individuals or groups and donors.

The policy was created in 2004, and before that, all buildings were named on a case-by-case basis. One criterion is that the donor must contribute 50 percent of the philanthropic goal or 20 percent of the total project cost. (At the time the Kearneys donation was initially made, their gift covered half the project cost. Construction estimates have since increased.) The committee, Oregon University System and OSU’s president all must agree on the name change, as well.

Renaming after donors carries a certain risk, Hale said. According to his manuscript, Seton Hall University, in South Orange, N.J., is named after the first American-born saint. But it had three buildings named after donors who later were convicted of felonies.

Beaver believers with slimmer wallets also can leave a legacy on campus. At the LaSells Stewart Center, there are donor names seemingly everywhere, from chairs in auditoriums to the auditoriums themselves. Outside the building sits a courtyard, where donors can put their names on bricks for as little as $100.

Price list

For this much, you can name…

$100 — an engraved brick near the LaSells Stewart Center

$5,000 — an office in the Kelley Engineering Center

$25,000 — a room in the soon-to-be built Linus Pauling Science Center

$250,000 — a lab in the Pauling center

$1 million — a floor in the Pauling center

$20 million — the Kelley Engineering Center*

(*already purchased)

Kyle Odegard covers Oregon State University. He can be contacted at kyle.odegard@lee.net or 758-9523.