CLIFTON FORGE — Could Dabney S. Lancaster Community College be undergoing a name change?
The Clifton Forge-based college is one of two community colleges that are being asked by the Virginia Community College Board to consider a name change.
The board recently updated its naming policy, and agreed that college names “should reflect the values of inclusive and accessible education articulated in the Virginia Community College mission statement, with special emphasis on diversity, equity, and opportunity, and be relevant to the students it seeks to serve and to the geography of its service region.”
The board unanimously approved the recommendations of the local college boards of John Tyler, Lord Fairfax, and Thomas Nelson Community Colleges to remove their existing names.
Those colleges are being asked to submit recommendations on what their new names should be.
The board also unanimously voted to direct Patrick Henry Community College and Dabney S. Lancaster Community College leaders and local boards to reconsider their previous decisions to retain their college’s name following the state policy change.
In the board’s view, the names of Dabney S. Lancaster Community College and Patrick Henry Community College honor individuals who advocated for segregation or owned slaves.
The board said its decisions represent the latest step in a process that began nearly a year ago when it directed local college advisory boards to review the appropriateness of the names of its college, campuses, and facilities.
The board, by policy, carries the sole authority to decide the names of Virginia’s community colleges.
Dabney S. Lancaster is named after an educator who served as Virginia’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, and as president of Longwood College before retiring to Bath County. Bath is one of the areas served by DSLCC.
The state board wants to consider renaming the college because of Lancaster’s role in a period following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown vs. Board of Education.
Lancaster was a segregationist. He was once quoted as saying, “We’ll fight it from the housetops, from the street corners, in every possible way. We are going to maintain our way of life.”
DSLCC serves the counties of Alleghany, Bath, Northern Botetourt, and Rockbridge; and the cities of Buena Vista, Covington, and Lexington.
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