WSD trustee pushes for school’s renaming

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This article was published 16/06/2020 (2083 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg School Division board is expected to vote on whether to consider renaming Cecil Rhodes School in the fall, almost three decades after concerns were first raised about the school’s namesake during the height of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.

In recent weeks, tensions have heightened around global campaigns to change or tear down landmarks whose namesakes held racist beliefs during their lifetimes — some of which memorialize Rhodes, who is widely known for having founded the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship.

In the U.K., Oxford University has resisted calls by the Rhodes Must Fall protest movement to remove a memorial on its English campus. Closer to home, one Winnipegger started a petition to call for the province’s largest school division to rename a community school in the city’s Weston neighbourhood. Less than one week after it was created, the Change.org petition has collected more than 1,500 signatures.

One of the supporters is school trustee Jennifer Chen, who presented a notice of motion Monday night to inform her board colleagues about a motion to consider renaming the school. (Chen will be able to present the motion, which will then be up for debate, at the next scheduled board meeting in September.)

In Chen’s notice of motion, she called Rhodes a white supremacist whose philosophy led to the “subjugation and oppression of countless Africans.”

Rhodes’ beliefs and policy-making as a former prime minister of the Cape Colony, which would become part of South Africa, laid the groundwork for apartheid — a system of policies that favoured white South Africans over their Black and “coloured” neighbours; racialized groups were segregated in all areas of life.

“He thought people of colour are lesser humans; in this case, I would be a lesser human,” said Chen, in a Tuesday interview. “We shouldn’t send this wrong message to our students, especially because we have a diverse student population in Cecil Rhodes School.”

Division spokeswoman Radean Carter said Tuesday it’s unclear how much it would cost to change the school’s name, although it would be “very expensive” because of the costs of replacing signage, decals, murals and sports equipment, among other things. She said several years ago, the board undertook a review of the division’s school names and informed school communities of how to file a complaint about them.

If Chen’s motion passes as-is, division administration will be asked to engage students, parents and community members about the current name and present results to the board no later than March 15, 2021.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca