University Of Oregon Strips Klan-Linked Name From Dormitory

The University of Oregon’s board of trustees has voted to strip the name of a 1920s Ku Klux Klan leader from a dormitory, a newspaper reported on Friday.

The board voted unanimously on Thursday to remove the name of classics professor Frederic Dunn from the building, Eugene’s Register-Guard newspaper said.

Dunn was the white supremacist group’s “exalted cyclops,” or leader, in Eugene in the 1920s, university President Michael Schill said in a statement. Schill had supported the removal of the name.

A spokesman for the university could not be reached for comment.

The building will be temporarily named Cedar Hall. The university’s Black Students Task Force had sought the name’s removal in November 2015 following protests about the legacy of racism at the University of Missouri and other schools.

The black student group is also seeking the removal of the name of Matthew Deady, one of the university’s founders, from another building. The group contends he had racist views.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Bernadette Baum)