Committee on Chavez Hall

Our priority is to foster a campus community grounded in our core values of respect, and every individual should feel a genuine sense of belonging. In alignment with Stony Brook’s established process, we are moving quickly to convene a renaming committee to provide a recommendation to President Goldsmith about whether Stony Brook should rename Chavez Hall. 

President Goldsmith initiated the renaming process with her message to the community on March 19.  This first part of this process is the reformation of a renaming committee who will review all of the relevant information, deliberate, and then present a recommendation to President Goldsmith on whether or not Chavez Hall should be renamed. 

The committee will include representation from faculty, staff and students from East, West and Southampton campuses, and it will be administered by Vice President, Judi Brown Clarke. All updates about this process will be on this webpage.

• Process and Committee Timeline
  1. President Goldsmith initiated the review process on March 19.
  2. Committee formation begins the week of March 23.
  3. The committee will meet 2-3 times during the month of April to review information and deliberate
  4. The committee will present a formal recommendation to President Goldsmith to either rename or maintain the name of Chavez Hall.
  5. President Goldsmith will review the recommendation and determine if the hall should be renamed and present her decision to Stony Brook Council in May.

  If the final decision is not to rename the building, no further action will be taken. If the final decision is to rename Chavez Hall, then the process for soliciting new names will begin in the Fall semester. 

  1. The proposed name will then be presented to the Stony Brook Council for approval. 
  2. If approved, it will be forwarded to the SUNY Board of Trustees for final approval of the building’s new name.
• Recommendation Process

  Members of the committee will meet 2 to 3 times to make a purposeful and deliberative review of all relevant information, and make a recommendation using the following criteria: 

  1. The centrality of the person’s offensive behavior to his or her life as a whole
  2. Connection to the university
  3. Any harmful impact of the person’s behavior
  4. Community identification with the feature
  5. Strength and clarity of the historical evidence
  6. The university’s prior consideration of the issues
  7. Possibilities for mitigation
• Committee Formation

  The committee will include representatives from faculty, staff and students from East, West and Southampton campuses. Judi Brown Clarke will administer the committee, but the recommendation will come from the committee itself. 

  The committee includes representatives selected by GSO, USG, Faculty Senate, ERM and the Libraries. Additionally, there will be 5 nominated seats. You can nominate yourself or one of your colleagues by filling out this Qualtrics form. The deadline to submit a nomination is April 1.

  • HSC/SBM Representative – Self-nominated
  • Southampton Representative – Self-nominated
  • GSO Representative
  • USG Representative
  • Faculty Senate Representative
  • ERM Representative
  • Libraries Representative
  • 3 Additional Self-Nominated Representatives

For More Information

If you need more information, send an email to the Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives at ocdo@stonybrook.edu.