In announcing the release of a Trustee Subcommittee report and recommendation, the Board of Trustees presented a summation of the background and process leading to its conclusions. The report is scheduled to be presented at the November 14, 2022 meeting of the Board.
Read the Board’s name change background summation below, as published at Boarddocs.com
In July 2020, Cabrillo College received a request to rename the College in response to widespread social unrest in the United States and a critical analysis of the namesake of the College, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo. The request came at an important historical moment, with many in society beginning to question the historical legacy of slavery, colonial exploitation, and the naming of institutions after individuals with historical ties to those immoral practices. Cabrillo College is not alone. Other institutions of higher education like Yale, Princeton, University of California at Berkeley, and George Washington University are and have been struggling with the same issues: how they were named and who they were named after, what names are appropriate for college buildings, and what impact the legacy of a name can have on students who are served by our institutions. A process was developed by the College Governing Board’s Name Exploration Subcommittee to address this moment in time and to assist the College’s Governing Board with its decision of reviewing and potentially rename Cabrillo College.
The Board of Trustees took action to establish a Board Name Exploration Subcommittee on July 20, 2020. The Subcommittee was composed of Trustees Christina Cuevas (Chair) and Adam Spickler, and student Trustee Amidia Frederick (Amidia was succeeded by Krystal Buenrostro as a committee member in the 2021-22 academic year). In September 2020, the Board endorsed a decision of the Subcommittee that it would benefit from the appointment of an Advisory Task Force that could help the group identify community education strategies, identify principles that could guide the College’s discussion of a name change, and help flesh out the costs of a potential name change. The Committee and Task Force conducted its work in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 academic years. The Committee members wrote this report in the summer and early fall of 2022, in advance of the Board of Trustees’ decision in November of 2022.
