The president of Florida State University is asking the school to conduct an internal review amid growing support to change the name of its football stadium.
“I’ve been following with great interest the petitions circulating on social media that Doak S. Campbell, FSU’s president in 1947 during its transition from the Florida State College for Women, resisted integration and asking that his name be removed from the stadium that bears his name,” FSU president John Thrasher said in a statement on Twitter.
“I have asked Athletics Director David Coburn to immediately review this issue and make recommendations to me. I look forward to receiving his report soon.”
Kendrick Scott, who was an FSU linebacker from 1991-94, wants Campbell’s name removed from the Seminoles’ football stadium. Scott contends Doak’s segregationist views are divisive.
“Therefore his name should be removed from a stadium that has been home to many Black football players helping to build the school and the tradition to what it has become today: a national treasure,” Scott expressed on change.org petition.
Scott’s call for change is one of many being voiced during a nationwide movement against racial injustice following the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed when a white Minnesota police officer kept his knee pinned to Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes while he complained he could not breathe.
By Monday afternoon, more than 2,100 people signed Scott’s petition on change.org, with the goal of reaching 2,500 signatures a likelihood by the evening.
In an addendum to the petition, Scott said removing Doak Campbell’s name from the stadium is the end goal and he provided a possible alternative.
“I believe an even more appropriate and all-inclusive alternative would be: The Players Field at Bobby Bowden Stadium,” he wrote.
Bowden coached the Seminoles for four decades, winning two national championships and amassing a record of 304–97–4 on his way to a Hall of Fame career.
FSU isn’t the only school being pressured to make a change.
University of Florida graduate student Anthony Rojas is calling for the school to rename eight venues on the Gainesville campus, including the basketball arena named after Stephen C. O’Connell, a former Florida Supreme Court justice and UF president.
