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outb0undflight t1_is6verd wrote

Reply to comment by alongfield in Plantation Street will remain; Worcester council ends UMass Chan bid for name change by HRJafael

So, I'm not getting in a giant debate over this again, I have stuff to do today, but I did wanna address one thing cause I'm sure it'll get brought up a bunch on this thread:

>Plantation was also a term that was used for a settlement in a new region. That's why it was "Plymouth Plantation".

So, you're right, but people have a tendency to gloss over what that means.

Plantation in English:

>From c. 1600 as "introduction, establishment." From 1580s as "a planting with people or settlers, a colonization;" used historically used for "a colony, an original settlement in a new land" by 1610s (the sense in Rhode Island's Providence Plantations, which were so called by 1640s).

"It's not tied to slavery, it's actually tied to colonization," isn't really a sterling defense of keeping the word Plantation in things.

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alongfield t1_is6zg2r wrote

You're not wrong, but it wasn't used in such an intentional context as you're implying. If North America was entirely uninhabited, the word would've still been used.

It's not a reason to keep using the word for things today, since that's not the common definition people actually know.

Duncan is living in a fantasy world thinking changing a major street name would be cheap and easy. Clearly she didn't even bother to look into the actual details before pushing this...

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outb0undflight t1_is710cr wrote

> You're not wrong, but it wasn't used in such an intentional context as you're implying.

I'm not saying the link between Plantations, Colonialism, and Slavery is intentional, but nonetheless the link exists.

> If North America was entirely uninhabited, the word would've still been used.

"If things had been different, they'd have been different!" Sure, maybe, but it wasn't uninhabited. Hence the issue.

>Duncan is living in a fantasy world thinking changing a major street name would be cheap and easy. Clearly she didn't even bother to look into the actual details before pushing this...

On this we are in agreement.

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alongfield t1_is72zeb wrote

The city has a process to get an honorary name for street and blocks of a street. That's still something that could be pursued, and it avoids forcing everybody to rename things.

UMass Medical doesn't even use Plantation Street anyway, they use N Lake Ave for their address.

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CatumEntanglement t1_is7vc0l wrote

Yes and no... N Lake Avenue is an address for a couple of the campus buildings, but the main research buildings (LRB, ASC, and the new Neuro building being built) have Plantation street addresses.

Which brings me to the behind-the-scenes reasons for UMMS's seemingly out of nowhere insistence on renaming Plantation street....

From work, I asked around of those who are on admin positions, and in-the-know about these kinds of things, what the deal was with this Plantation name change petition. So the push is coming from the chancellor of the school, Michael Collins...and he's using the diversity angle and one of the DIG/DEI officials at umass to push the plantation-slavery connotation narrative to get the street change.

What I heard was that UMMS is looking to rename the other streets around campus, such a North road and South road that are w/in campus to be more "branded", i.e. like how other research campuses in the country name campus roads to be "science-y" like "Einstein circuit" or "Curie Way". They prefer that Plantation street be renamed to be more branded because the new research building being built will have a Plantation street address. UMMS leadership has been wanting the addresses to their main research buildings be made more research-centric, like "Discovery Street" or similar.

They need to make it about racial connotations, or else the city of worcester would just laugh at their request to change the name of a 4 mile long street. They aren't putting in a request to change the names of north and south roads just yet until the Plantation street situation is figured out, because if they did it now...it would be obvious that UMass’s real motive was selfishly to get a better branding opportunity.

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alongfield t1_is7xn0f wrote

That sounds more on point for modern school administrators.

Considering the Biotech Research Park is across the street, support for renaming the road would not be cheap. They would have either convince Worcester to let only the Umass side to be renamed, let it have multiple names (I'm sure USPS and 911 would love that), or they'll have to buy support from those businesses.

That's a lot of businesses with a lot of stationary, webpages, internal systems, etc, that would need to be updated. They would've had an easier time getting support for renaming North Lake Ave.

They should try taking a lesson from that research park... rename all of their on-site roads with cutesy names, get the city to designate their addresses all off of those, and list their Plantation St address as the number for the site.

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CatumEntanglement t1_is84rxv wrote

>They should try taking a lesson from that research park... rename all of their on-site roads with cutesy names, get the city to designate their addresses all off of those, and list their Plantation St address as the number for the site.

Agreed. Umms is essentially boxed in by Plantation street, North Road, South road, and Lake Ave. Within it are 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, abd 5th roads, all within campus. First road abuts the 3 research buildings which have Plantation street as their address. They could petition for an address change for those buildings to be First road instead. And First road could be chanbed to some cutesy name like Discovery Way. Or they can look at Worcester’s own legacy of historical scientists, inventors, and discoveries for inspiration for new names that would pay homage to the city of worcester while having a "science-brand". Names like: Stoddard, Pincus, Enovid, Tolman, Goddard, or Thurber Roads.

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