The FSU Board of Trustees passed a resolution in favor of renaming BK Roberts Hall at its meeting on August 13. The Board called on the legislature to move swiftly to rename the building to better reflect FSU’s core values of justice, equality, compassion and respect. The Board of Trustees, the governing body which oversees FSU and sets university policy, joins the faculty senate and student government, both of whom recently passed resolutions in favor of removing BK Roberts name from the building.
While this is a welcome development, since the legislature put Roberts’ name on the building, only the legislature can remove it, so the Board of Trustees action did not change the status quo. The legislature is not scheduled to meet until March 2021.
The full text of the resolution passed by the Board of Trustees is as follows:
FSU Board of Trustees Resolution in Support of Renaming B.K. Roberts Hall
The FSU Board of Trustees supports efforts by the University and the College of Law to remove from the main Law building the name of B.K. Roberts, the Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice who openly defied the U.S. Supreme Court in steadfastly resisting the racial integration of Florida’s public law schools. We share the unanimously avowed hope of the College of Law, the FSU Faculty Senate, and countless students and alumni that the building be renamed to reflect FSU’s core values of justice, equality, compassion, and respect. We call on the Florida legislature to move swiftly in enacting the changes that will enable us to right this wrong.