Students returning to The College of New Jersey this month found a new name emblazoned on a familiar building.
Paul Loser Hall, the stately brick building named after a virulent segregationist who worked to bar Trenton's black children from a neighborhood school, has been redubbed Trenton Hall.
That may be the most obvious sign of how successful a student-initiated protest has been at chipping away at instances of inequality and prejudice on the public, coeducational campus, but it's only one of several laudable moves administrators have made.
College President R. Barbara Gitenstein recently accepted five important recommendations from an advisory commission on social justice that has been working since late last year.
In addition to changing the name of the school's admissions building, they are:
- Increasing the number of students from Trenton and Ewing applying and graduating from the school;
- Increasing student awareness and engagement with Trenton and Ewing, their host cities;
- Promoting a more inclusive community, curriculum and culture among faculty, administrators and staff;
- And creating an office to oversee and implement the recommended changes.
Students Tim Osborne, Chris Loos and Kevin Montayo cited court testimony indicating that Paul Loser, superintendent of Trenton public schools from 1932 to 1955, obstructed the mothers of two black students in the 1940s who sued the school district for access to educational opportunities denied to their children.
Even when the justices in the case ruled in favor of the mothers, Loser responded that the school in question "had not been built for negroes," and then took out his anger by punishing the children's all-black school.
The TCNJ students expressed their horror at Loser's legacy during a small, peaceful demonstration that got Gitenstein's ear.
Their activism led to the formation of an 18-member advisory commission on social justice assigned to look into the name change and other related issues.
The students' one-day sit-had another, more immediate, victory: It rescued the college's counseling clinic, slated for closure but now saved to offer low-cost counseling not only to the campus, but also to the community at large.
The coming of the new semester finds New Jersey and the rest of the nation struggling with the ugly heritage of racial division.
President Trump's tacit nod to the adherents of white supremacy - "some fine people" among them, he said following the lethal confrontation in Charlottesville - didn't start the fire, but it certainly added fuel.
What better place for healing to begin than on a college campus, with its commitment to opening minds and its promise of diversity?
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