Student protests at Princeton University have prompted officials to consider renaming buildings dedicated to former President Woodrow Wilson, who supported racial segregation, which was part of public policy at the time, mostly in Southern states, reports Reuters.
The decision came after chief administrators signed a deal late Thursday with student demonstrators to end a 32-hour sit-in outside Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber's office, the report says.
Protesters at the Ivy League university in Princeton, N.J., urged officials to remove "Wilson's name and image from its public spaces and from its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs" over his racist ties, the report says.
Student organizers from the Black Justice League also called on the university to start a cultural-competency and diversity-training program and designate space for "cultural affinity" groups, the report notes..
Wilson, the 28th U.S. president from 1913 to 1921, also served as the university's president from 1902 to 1910. The issue came about amid a wave of demonstrations at colleges across the nation, including at the University of Missouri, over the failure of administrators to seriously respond to complaints of racism on campus.
But some Princeton alums argued against the change.
"Woodrow Wilson obviously … had a very ill-informed and ignorant view of race," Eric Chase, 69, who graduated in the class of 1968 and whose father taught at the Woodrow Wilson School, told the news outlet. "But he is a big piece of Princeton history and he should stay a big piece."
Read more at Reuters.