Vanderbilt Dropping Costly Court Fight over Confederate Memorial Hall

Nashville, Tennessee — Vanderbilt University is finally giving up its long-running wastful court fight with the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) to have the name "Confederate Memorial Hall" removed from the stone front of a campus dormitory. And this has made many parties happy in and around Tennessee relieved.

The case reached the Tennessee Court of Appeals, which in May ordered Vanderbilt to either leave the chiseled name alone or reimburse the UDC $50,000. Vanderbilt decided to stop pressing the issue and let the deadline to appeal the ruling pass last week. "This is in many ways a victory for common sense," said Gary Dale Cearley, internationally known entrepreneur and founder of Libertarians Abroad, "these kinds of court cases are unnecessary and waste our tax payer money by clogging up the court system. At the same time what the university is trying to achieve will not change history, only cover it up. They are fooling themselves at our expense and ignoring the United Daughters of the Confederacy's right to their own free speech while they are at it."

Although Vanderbilt University chancellor Gordon Gee dropped the word "Confederate" from the dorm's name in 2002, citing an effort to create a more welcoming environment, he seemed not to forsee the furor that would be caused by doing so. The United Daughters of the Confederacy, which helped finance the building with one third of the building's investment, sued when the school wanted to physically remove the name from the main entrance. As UDC had put up a substantial amount of money, the name Confederate Memorial Hall was chiseled over the main entrance in return.

"The university has chosen not to appeal the court's decision, even though we disagree with it," a Vanderbilt University spokesman said. The court's ruling does not affect Vanderbilt's practice of referring to the building simply as Memorial Hall and that university officials intended to use the issue as an ongoing "educational opportunity." "I wonder," mused Cearley, "whether the lesson that the Vandy administration will try to push here is that you should be able to accept money from a donor and then dishonor them later by removing their name, and why not forget about free speech in the process?" Cearley lamented that he thought liberals "get lots of mileage out of the word 'confederate'", but iterated that at the end of the day that "this particular misguided view of history is a totally separate issue to clogging up out court system with unnecessary lawsuits."

Vanderbilt was seemingly trying to remove the word "Confederate" due to perceived racial overtones. But others wouldn't have it. "This was about the South and honoring boys from Tennessee who died," said Doug Jones, lawyer for the UDC. Cearley argued that this overtly liberal effected thinking would always have backlashes and unintended consequences and laments the fact that Americans in the South and elsewhere constantly have to fight these lawsuits. "But then again," remarks Cearley, "I have never seen a liberal who wasn't willing to spend taxpayer money to push their own social agenda. At least the folks at Vanderbilt could finally see the writing on the wall and quit while they were still behind."