Four new names on campus

Student activists and university administration saw compromise in Saint Tekakwitha

Luke Garrett / News Editor / The USD Vista

Four new names greet the incoming class of 2023 on various buildings across the University of San Diego’s campus: Saint Tekakwitha, Mata’yuum, Saint Teresa of Calcutta, and  Francis Xavier Nguyễn Văn Thuận. Although these names are now written in campus-approved font and virtually indistinguishable from all others, they resulted from two years of student activism led in large part by the American Indian Student Organization (AISO) and its then-president and now-graduate Patrick Murphy.  

The University of San Diego announced the name changes on April 4, 2019 — all are now in effect. Of the four, the changing of Serra Hall to Saints Tekakwitha and Serra Hall was the most symbolic, as AISO had called for the removal of Saint Junípero Serra’s name in November of 2017. Organization members passed out pamphlets on the recently canonized saint, and painted 300 red rocks, each representing 1,000 native deaths due to the California Mission System begun by Serra. Through the following year, AISO also held dialogues and panel discussions with students, faculty, and staff from other California colleges. 

Previously, university officials told The USD Vista that a name change was unlikely. However, in Fall 2018, USD President James T. Harris III, D.Ed. brought together a working group made up of administrators, faculty, and student activists to address the topic of  Serra’s name on the building. In a Spring 2019 interview with The USD Vista, Harris spoke to the conversations had between students and administration within the working group.

“You have these two competing narratives, in some ways, that are taking place on our campus,” Harris said. “I was a proponent for keeping Serra’s name on the building: he is a Catholic saint, this is a Catholic university. But through our conversations, we talked about the possibility of adding something to that building, and so what we came up with is that we would add the only Native American saint in the Catholic Church, and that is a woman by the name of Kateri. It’s a symbol that we were honoring those who were here first, and also those who came later, so that they would be on equal footing.”

At the beginning of Spring 2019, President Harris brought the name changes to the USD Board of Trustees, and by mid-spring the board had unanimously supported the motion. Along with this change, the Mission Crossroads facility was changed to Mata’yuum Crossroads — which means “gathering place” in the Kumeyaay language. The Kumeyaay people are indigenous to present-day Southern California and Northern Baja California and have been in the region for 12,000 years, according to reporting by KPBS. 

The final two name changes were made to Plaza Mayor and Menor. The former will now bear the name of Saint Teresa of Calcutta and the latter of Francis Xavier Nguyễn Văn Thuận, the Vietnamese Cardinal and social justice advocate that Pope Francis named as Venerable in 2017 — the first of three steps toward sanctity in the Catholic Church.

Gabriel Fallis, the current President of AISO, spoke on the new building names.

“I feel ecstatic seeing that USD is living up to its Changemaker mantra, as well as fulfilling its commitment towards making this campus more inclusive and diverse,” Fallis said. “I am confident that USD will continue to progress in order to make this campus more welcoming and accepting, not only for American Indian students, but for all students who are underrepresented.”

To the incoming class, these new names may seem no different from the rest, but a two year history of student activism and administrative compromise lie beneath their curvy script. Many of those students who were a part of that history have since graduated. Now the new class of 2023 is here to make its own history.