The City of Bloomington will work with Indiana University to rename Jordan Avenue after IU Trustees voted last year to remove the Jordan name from an academic building, parking garage, and the small river that runs through campus.
IU has authority over the street's name north of 17th Street, while the city can decide the street's name south of 17th Street. A news release from the city says the two entities are working together in the renaming process.
The city is seeking input from Bloomington residents, which can be submitted via an online form.
In October 2020, IU's Board of Trustees voted in alignment with President Michael McRobbie's recommendation that David Starr Jordan's name be removed from Jordan Hall, Jordan Parking Garage and Jordan River.
Jordan was IU's seventh president and a professor of zoology. In 2018, students and faculty raised concerns about the prevalence of the Jordan name on the IU Bloomington campus because of Jordan's support for eugenics.
FROM JUNE 2020: IU To Review Names Of Buildings, Structures At All Campuses
Eugenics is the science of controlling human reproduction in a way that produces offspring with characteristics seen as desirable. As a news release from the city notes, the American study of eugenics is widely accepted as having contributed to the racist school of thought that led to the Holocaust.
The increased scrutiny followed t he removal of Ora Wildermuth's name from a recreational building on campus in June 2018. Wildermuth, a Lake County judge who served as an IU Trustee in the mid-1900s, held racist views. The building has since been renamed in honor of the first Black basketball player to play in the Big Ten Athletic Conference, Bill Garrett.
