The Principles of Naming Stuff… Such as Libraries
When it comes to naming things, the name of the thing should lend itself to, in a positive way, the nature of the thing.
That is why you would not name a synagogue after a Joseph Goebbels, you don’t name a daycare centre after Jeffrey Dahmer, you don’t name a women’s shelter after Robert Picton, and you don’t name a hospital after the goddamned bubonic plague.
Guess what else you don’t do? You don’t name a library after Ontario’s most famous enemy of education, Mike Harris. If you do, you call your integrity into question.
Since Nipissing University has named its new library after our former Premier, whose record on educational issues was unquestionably dismal, so much so, that one might reasonably suppose that he had an abiding hatred of education, on a conceptual level, that informed all of his policy decisions; it is fair to call the integrity of those responsible into question.
Why did Nipissing do such a thing? If it was for money, it was for the wrong reason, and hence the University has not only tarnished its image, but diminished its integrity. Well there may be multiple other reasons, and one of them might be that they thought “The Harris Learning Library” is a suitable name, but we’ll never know, because there was over a million wrong reasons involved. The University, in their press release, did not go so far as to say that it was appropriate to name the library after Mr. Harris, they merely pointed out how important it was to the project to have that 1.5 million dollars, the amount the naming privilege cost Mr. Harris’ benefactor, billionaire investor Seymour Schulich.
This elderly billionaire, Seymour Schulich has made most of his money through speculative investing. When you make your money this way, what you are doing is attaching your money, like a wealth sucking parasite to a pre-existing business entity. The business enterprise is a legal structure that organizes the wealth generating ideas, and labour of working people. The speculator has added nothing to the enterprise (remember that speculation is far different than funding a start up) that he is betting on. His success is attributable to intelligent gambling. In gambling there are winners and losers in a zero sum gain. A speculative investor, is not a net contributor to society, he has not generated his wealth using admirable techniques such as working or developing ideas, he has won his money from someone else.
When a man makes his money in this way, and he gives some of it back to worthy causes, such as libraries and educational institutions, is it fair to admire him less than a person who does the same thing with money that he has earned? When a man commits an act of generosity, it is more respectable when he does so anonymously, or when he insists on recognition?
Seymour Schulich gives a lot of money away to schools… very often (if not always) on the condition that the school is then named after him. For example, there is the Schulich School of Business at York Univeristy, there is the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Western Ontario, there is the Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary, there is the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie, and last but not least, there is the Schulich School of Education at Nipissing University. Each of these honours was bought and paid for.
In Canada, universities, including the Schulich Schools are funded by tax dollars, and while not everyone is glad to pay their taxes, it is some consolation that our tax money goes to a good cause. We tax payers find it easier to identify good causes when they look like good causes, smell like good causes, act like good causes, and are named like good causes. I would not immediately assume that something named after Mike Harris or Seymour Schulich would be a good cause.
I do not disagree on a conceptual level, with selling naming rights to things like hospitals, schools, and libraries. It is a good way to suck money out of people with a lot of money, and an ego to match the size of their pile of cash. However, there should be limitations. The honour should not be open to those who, in character and actions do not properly represent the nature and spirit of what is being named.
I can see why someone like Seymour Schulich might want to do Harris a favour, and pony up some cash to buy him an honour, after all Harris, who is famous for tax cutting, mostly cut taxes for giant corporate interests, and the extremely wealthy (such as Schulich), but to name this library, he should have had to pay for the whole thing, and provide an endowment good enough to fund its operation forever. That way, taxpayers wouldn’t have to pay to help immortalize him and his buddy.
Naming a library after Mike Harris, after how he took the funding axe to education, disrespected teachers, cut a whole year off of high school education, forced the public to fund religious schools (a dramatic waste of public money for the selfish purpose of getting him the Catholic vote) is not all that different than naming a blood bank after a vampire. I would not donate my blood to the Dracula Blood Bank, and I don’t want my tax dollars going to the Harris Learning Library.
- Tony Loeffen
