2004 - Advertiser Official Editorial on across the board UL name usage
From the desk of the executive editor of The Daily Advertiser.
Nothing may be as sacred as one's name. Just ask new parents who have struggled for months to find just the right one for their newborn. Some people who don't even have children, know already what they'll name their first born.
Ask the child who has taken the name of his adopted family how he feels about his name. Ask the bride who has taken the name of her husband; or the woman who keeps her maiden name despite the union.
We are emotionally, if not inextricably, linked to our name.
Businesses are the same way. The name they carry are trademarked or copyrighted.
Names are big business. You can buy books on names and read volumes on the history of names.
So, is it any surprise that the students, faculty, alumni and local supporters of our own university care so much about what it is called?
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette was named such in 1999.
That was for the second time.
The university was named the University of Louisiana for less than a month in 1984, but the state Supreme Court overturned the name change when legislators and others — largely at the behest of LSU and its supporters — moved quickly to block the school's attempt to move from regional status.
The final name change had to wait for 15 years, when attaching "at Lafayette" was a compromise school officials had to make to get the bill through the Legislature.
That new legislation said that at least two schools had to change their names, and that they could do so as long as the new names included the cities in which the universities were based.
McNeese State University (Lake Charles), Louisiana Tech (Ruston), Northwestern State (Natchitoches) and Southeastern (Hammond) elected to retain their regional designations. After some months, the former Northeast Louisiana University decided to become UL Monroe, becoming the other school needed to let UL Lafayette also change its name.
When Ray Authement began promoting the change 20 years or more ago, he had academics, not athletics, in mind. He recounted how a team of consultants reviewing then-USL's computer science program told him, "your program is excellent, but your address is wrong. Your program is going to be limited by the name of your institution."
He said also that although their applications were worthy, university researchers were turned down for major grants because of the regional designation in the name.
Changing the name to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette was the first step in remedying that situation. That is the official name of the school and there is nothing we can do about that.
But we can recognize that, as great as this community is, the "at Lafayette" still is a diminutive of a sort. We're going to get rid of it in our news pages.
The Daily Advertiser is, without question, the local newspaper of record. Let me go on the record, then, and say that I think the University of Louisiana ought to be referred to as just that — the University of Louisiana. We know where it is. You know where it is. We do not need the "official" name when we refer to it in print.
I could not find any logical reason to call it "ULL" Sorry. I know not everyone will agree, but I make decisions every day that someone does not agree with. That's the challenge of putting your daily work in print each day. The local newspaper ought to be responsive and receptive to the ideas of its community. We've listened. We're acting.
The staff has been put on notice that in the news pages of The Daily Advertiser, the university will be referred to as the University of Louisiana. Period. End of story.
The rest of the story (link Broken)
Juli Metzger
jmetzger@smgpo.gannett.com
(Juli Metzger is the executive editor of The Daily Advertiser.)
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