Students coming back from winter break who had classes scheduled in Grayson Hall got a bit of a surprise last week: The building doesn’t exist anymore.
On Dec. 7, the University Foundation announced it would turn over $850,000 to court-appointed receiver Thomas Lennon that Portland businessman Jeffrey Grayson donated to the University since 1997.
The same day, the University Office of Communications announced that Grayson Hall would become “McKenzie Hall.” The names of Grayson and his wife Susan, both University alumni, were taken off the building within days of the announcement. The building, however, is still referred to as “Grayson Hall” in winter term schedules, the student directory and on the business cards and stationery of faculty and staff members who work in the building.
Deputy Director of Communications Pauline Austin said the decision to change the name of the building was made too late for catalogues and directories, which were printed at the end of last term. And according to Registrar Herb Chereck, the name “Grayson Hall” was left on Duck Web to avoid confusion.
“Basically, we made that decision because all our publications refer to the building as Grayson,” Chereck said.
The building, which previously housed the University’s law school, was renamed Grayson Hall in 1997, after Grayson pledged a total $1.5 million to the school. In September, the U.S. Department of Labor Securities and Exchange Commission seized Grayson’s consulting firm, Capital Consultants, alleging that the company had bilked investors out of $355 million. In June, Lennon requested the University return the money Grayson had donated, saying that the money was not Grayson’s to give.
While the sign designating the new name, which is similar to the small green signs posted in front of other buildings on campus, went up without much difficulty, the jury is still out on whether the name change has caused problems for students and faculty.
“I don’t think anyone has noticed (the name change),” junior Rebecca Horvat said.
Horvat, a Spanish major who works three days a week in the McKenzie Computing Lab, said she was surprised that the name change had happened so quickly.
“I thought once they chiseled a name into a building there was no going back.”
Junior Maria Marcks said that she noticed the change; mostly because so many people ask her what the building is called.
“I’ve had a few people — because I have a lot of classes in this building — and they’ll ask me if this is Grayson,” Marcks, a sociology major, said.
Martina Armstrong, the office manager for the history department , said the change has gone fairly smoothly. The University has successfully spread the word, she said. She added that the costs associated with the name change, such as reordering business cards and stationery were “nominal.”
But across the hall in the Ethnic Studies Program’s office, Donella-Elizabeth Alston told a different story. Alston, the program’s office coordinator, said there had been “tons” of confusion and that a lot of students have come in asking if Grayson had moved.
“A lot of the student population is just not familiar with the building,” she said. She also seemed to think the costs of changing business cards and stationery, which she estimated at about $650, were far from nominal. But she added that she thinks the name change is a good idea.
“It’s good, though, calling (the building) after a river,” she said “At least it’s something they won’t have to change in a couple years for reason of embezzlement.”