Earlier this semester on October 30, Meg Miller ’21 wrote and distributed an open letter across campus to express concern over the name of 2nd North in Carter, otherwise known as Ghetto. It was distributed across every resident hall on campus and called on students to sign a grievance form to petition for the name to be changed.
Students such as Will Payne ’20 responded immediately to the letter. Payne took to Instagram by posting a picture of the letter to his story, voiced his opinion of agreeance with Miller, and took a screenshot of a confirmed submission of a grievance report.
However, for people like Caleb McNaughton ’20, word of the letter came through other people.
“I was a little bit surprised when I first heard about the letter, because of everything else that had gone on with Ghetto at the beginning of the semester with the hazing incident and all the probation stuff. It just seemed like something else put on top. Which then caused me to be frustrated for the hall,” said McNaughton.
McNaughton lived on the hall his junior year, but lives off-campus this year.
RA of Ghetto, Alex Stayte ’21, was also taken aback by the letter. In an interview with the Bagpipe, Stayte said he was not informed about the release of the letter and was caught by surprise when a friend of his texted him about it. Stayte and other members of the hall expressed dissatisfaction that they were not directly contacted by Miller before she went public.
Karl Ferda ’22 also wrote a letter to Ghetto, but took a more direct approach. He did not want his letter to become public and delivered copies of it directly to the hall about a week after Miller’s initial letter.
“I had originally thought about writing a letter similar to Meg Miller’s and was happy to see that someone had written about it,” said Ferda.
Ferda is a first-generation American and comes from a Jewish family. He discussed his family’s history with ghettos in Nazi Germany and expressed how off-putting the name has proven itself to be. Ferda said that he never liked the name because of the stories he grew up hearing from family members.
In the Senate meeting on November 5, Senators discussed what steps should be taken going forward. When asked what they were hearing from students, Jonathan George ’21 said he was hearing that most people were frustrated with Miller’s call-to-action. Other senators, like Cameron Cortman ’22, echoed this, saying that he had heard similar sentiments from students. Senate looked at potential steps that they could take to address the issue of the hall name as a campus community; however, the issue was dropped and went undiscussed in subsequent meetings.
In an effort to address the varying opinions between Miller and Ghetto residents, Miller, McNaughton, Stayte, and Ghetto resident Roy Makkar ’21 set up a meeting on November 6 to discuss the situation. They met for an hour and asked a round of questions for clarity between both sides.
Because Ghetto residents were in the process of discussing among themselves what they were going to write in their counter-letter, they did not have an answer to what they were planning on doing in response to Miller’s letter. There was no conclusion by the end of the meeting, but both sides were able to defend their position in person rather than through another medium.
Following the letters, in a series of interviews with the Bagpipe, multiple members of the hall and those connected to it cited the origin of the hall name as a rationale for keeping the name. Stayte said that the name came from a nickname given to members of the hall in the past who were passionate about missions in the poorer predominantly African-American communities. Because of their constant work, as the story goes, the members of the community nicknamed them “the ghetto boys” and provided them with bricks, which are still above the doors on the hall to this day, to serve as a reminder of their connection with the community.
However, this story has not been confirmed other than through word of mouth from members and former members of the hall.
In a 2015 Bagpipe article by Molly Hulsey ’18, then-Associate Dean of Students Jonathan Ingraham was quoted saying, “[The] issue of the name ‘Ghetto’ has been brought up on a number of occasions by different students, college alumni, family of students, and the friends of the college.” Ingraham was Covenant’s Associate Deans of Students from 2012 to 2016.
In an interview with the Bagpipe on November 19th, Ingraham clarified this by saying, “In most of my years here, that was a conversation I was having with people pretty regularly. I would say 3-4 times a semester.” Ingraham also said that while it was for sure talked about, he did not recall any grievances being filed by a student.
Payne said that he does not believe that Student Development would let other racial slurs or harmful content be allowed across campus if it were not the name of a hall.
“I hope the name gets changed,” said Payne. “But more specifically, I think the best outcome would be for current students and alumni of Ghetto to get together and take care of it on their own. The name is something that they’ve done which has a lot of positive history that they’re proud of, which is good. But it’s also harmful in the sense of not causing your brother to stumble, not causing offense, or not causing offense for the Gospel. They can come together and change it on their own, without there having to be hard feelings with Student Development.”