George Washington University (GWU), a private university located in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C., announced in May that it officially changed its moniker from ‘Colonials’ to ‘Revolutionaries.’
In an official email, GWU’s associate vice president of alumni relations and annual giving, Patti Carocci, wrote that GWU was “thrilled to announce our new moniker.”
The email said that the decision came “after a thoughtful and deliberate process” which involved “approximately 47,000 points of feedback” from “students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends.”
The email signed off with the phrase “Raise High Revolutionaries,” a type of slogan for the university that included the new moniker
The university caved to demands from left-wing students to make the moniker change and the final list of potential changes were: Ambassadors, Blue Fog, Catalysts, Fireworks, Independents, Monumentals, Revolutionaries, Sentinels, Squad, and Truth.
Much of the outcry was focused on how ‘Colonials’ reminded some people of colonialism and slavery and the same people deemed the moniker as highly offensive to a diverse student body.
This renaming process is an example of postcolonialism at its worst, where academics criticize colonial empires and emphasize racism instead of the overall context of expanding power, influence, and seizing resources. Postcolonialism often focuses on the repression of Africans through slavery by white colonists (i.e. British Empire) without acknowledging how African empires also enslaved their defeated enemies.
