MTSU President Accepts Recommendation to Change the Name of Forrest Hall

Published: April 28, 2016

MTSU President Sidney A. McPhee on Thursday accepted the recommendation by the Forrest Hall Task Force to change the name of the building that houses the university's Army Reserve Officers Training Corps program.

McPhee, in a letter to Derek Frisby, chair of the task force and a global studies instructor, said "the values and goals we share in 2016 as a comprehensive university with international reach are not best reflected by retaining a name affixed in 1958 when we were a small local college that rarely extended beyond our region.

"It is clear that there are many wide-ranging and contradicting views about the life and legacy of Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest," McPhee said. "I do not feel it is my role to discern the appropriateness or relevance of his actions prior, during or after the Civil War.

"It is appropriate, however, for me to assess whether the decision made in the middle of the 20th Century to name the building for General Forrest remains in our best interest in the second decade of the 21st Century" ...

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