Two of Cornell’s new North Campus dorms will be named in honor of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’54 and Toni Morrison M.A. ’55, President Martha E. Pollack announced Friday morning.
The dorms are part of the massive North Campus Residential Expansion Project, which is scheduled to be fully completed by fall 2022. The project will build five new residence halls on North Campus.
“For both these extraordinary Cornellians, we wanted to create a memorial that would be seen by and have its doors open to any person at Cornell,” Pollack said at Friday’s State of the University address.
Corey Ryan Earle, who chairs the naming committee for the project, also tweeted the news on Friday.
The building named for Morrison will be the first Cornell building named for an individual woman of color, according to Earle, who teaches a course on the history of Cornell.
The Office of the President did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
A petition, titled “Help name one of the new North Campus Dorms after RBG,” currently has over 1,500 signatures. Likewise, in recent weeks, students had called for naming other University components after Ginsburg, including the government department.
In an Oct. 2 email to The Sun, University spokesperson John Carberry, wrote that “The majority of building namings on campus, especially those named in recent decades, are the result of philanthropic gifts from alumni, parents and friends who have supported the construction or renovation of those buildings.”
Carberry also stated that for buildings to be named in honor of an individual — not for a donor — the president and executive committee of the Board of Trustees must approve of the naming.
On West Campus, the newer dormitories are named after renowned Cornell alumni, professors and figures.