UofL's Dr. Neeli Bendapudi has renamed the football stadium to "Cardinal Stadium".

 

Here’s the announcement:

 

In moments of crisis, the best communities find a way to come together. Over the last 24 hours our community has been fractured by the comments made by former UofL trustee John Schnatter. These comments were hurtful and unacceptable, and they do not reflect the values of our university. I have decided, with the support of our Board of Trustees, to rename our football stadium “Cardinal Stadium” and to remove John Schnatter’s name from the Center for Free Enterprise at our College of Business effective immediately.

 

I have stated since my first day on this job that my commitment to the University of Louisville is to make it a great place to learn, a great place to work, and a great place in which to invest. We can only accomplish this if we truly celebrate diversity, foster equity, and aim to achieve inclusion.

 

I appreciate your support as we have reviewed this difficult situation. By taking this action, we renew our community’s commitment to speaking up when it matters, doing what is right, and coming together as one team – our Cardinal family – to heal and move forward. The brightest days for this university are still ahead.

Hooray for UofL’s new President Dr. Bendapudi.... “speaking up when it matters”!!

 

Here’s the announcement:

 

In moments of crisis, the best communities find a way to come together. Over the last 24 hours our community has been fractured by the comments made by former UofL trustee John Schnatter. These comments were hurtful and unacceptable, and they do not reflect the values of our university. I have decided, with the support of our Board of Trustees, to rename our football stadium “Cardinal Stadium” and to remove John Schnatter’s name from the Center for Free Enterprise at our College of Business effective immediately.

 

I have stated since my first day on this job that my commitment to the University of Louisville is to make it a great place to learn, a great place to work, and a great place in which to invest. We can only accomplish this if we truly celebrate diversity, foster equity, and aim to achieve inclusion.

 

I appreciate your support as we have reviewed this difficult situation. By taking this action, we renew our community’s commitment to speaking up when it matters, doing what is right, and coming together as one team – our Cardinal family – to heal and move forward. The brightest days for this university are still ahead.

One thing I think white people have difficulty putting into complete perspective when they're involved in discussions like this is the fact that, even with racial slurs existing for white people, there is no slur out there (in North American culture, anyway) that is as demeaning and derogatory as the n-word is to black people. We - white people - really aren't as capable of wrapping our minds around it because, to put it simply, we are not members of a race that was historically imprisoned and enslaved for no other reason than our skin color. We don't get what it's like to have a word slung at you that was created by a different race to be used to demean our own race as slaves. We don't get that, and as much as some white people may say "No, I do understand what it means to black people", they don't. They simply don't because they, as white people, aren't a member of the black race and they just can't understand quite how that feels for a black person to have that word used.

 

It's not unlike the way that you wouldn't tell a cancer patient "I understand how you feel" if you had never had cancer. Or you wouldn't go to a funeral of a murdered child and tell their parents "I understand how you feel" if you, yourself, had never been a parent.

 

I think, additionally, some white people struggle to understand how there is a word out there that is extremely derogatory for them to use towards black people - to the point of it being completely inappropriate for white people to use at all in any circumstance. Yet at the same time, those same black people are able to use that word among themselves. They struggle with that because, again, for we white people don't have an equivalent word like that.

 

There are certain things that people can struggle to fully understand if they can't experience it themselves. The n-word, for some white people, is most definitely one of those things.

 

This is a big one IMO. Its also hard to understand how one culture can say and use this word to make billions of dollars every year, and that is perfectly acceptable, but yet, its a word that shouldnt be said.

UofL's Dr. Neeli Bendapudi has renamed the football stadium to "Cardinal Stadium".

 

Here’s the announcement:

 

In moments of crisis, the best communities find a way to come together. Over the last 24 hours our community has been fractured by the comments made by former UofL trustee John Schnatter. These comments were hurtful and unacceptable, and they do not reflect the values of our university. I have decided, with the support of our Board of Trustees, to rename our football stadium “Cardinal Stadium” and to remove John Schnatter’s name from the Center for Free Enterprise at our College of Business effective immediately.

 

I have stated since my first day on this job that my commitment to the University of Louisville is to make it a great place to learn, a great place to work, and a great place in which to invest. We can only accomplish this if we truly celebrate diversity, foster equity, and aim to achieve inclusion.

 

I appreciate your support as we have reviewed this difficult situation. By taking this action, we renew our community’s commitment to speaking up when it matters, doing what is right, and coming together as one team – our Cardinal family – to heal and move forward. The brightest days for this university are still ahead.

 

Dr. Bendapudi has been awesome so far in her time at UofL. I'm glad we have her.

I was commenting to Jumper and agreeing that calling people a Nazi 10-20 years ago used to be a very harsh claim. Now it means nothing because it’s thrown around so much.

 

You can’t walk around with the card in your hand.

 

As long as people are walking around making racist comments, I'll have my card handy.

As long as people are walking around making racist comments, I'll have my card handy.

 

It sucks that you have to be in that position. I don’t wish that on anyone.

According to the press conference, it was a unilateral decision by the new university president. She called Schnatter to tell him and apparently he was supportive and contrite about what he’d said and the position he put the university in. Time will tell if that holds true but it indicates a positive decisiveness in Dr. Bendapudi that I appreciate.

 

Against my better judgment, I like this new president.

Did I hear right that Schnatter has the naming rights through 2040 or something crazy like that? It's hard to believe he just walks away from that quietly.

Did I hear right that Schnatter has the naming rights through 2040 or something crazy like that? It's hard to believe he just walks away from that quietly.

 

Wouldn't it seem to make sense that there is a clause of some sort in the contract indicating the deal can be voided in certain situations (ones such as this)? I'm just thinking out loud and one of our legal minds might know how that works better than I.

It sucks that you have to be in that position. I don’t wish that on anyone.

 

I don't go looking for it by any means. I'm also not one of those that thinks everyone/everything is racist. But when I see it, I'll call it. I have to. That's my responsibility.

This is a big one IMO. Its also hard to understand how one culture can say and use this word to make billions of dollars every year, and that is perfectly acceptable, but yet, its a word that shouldn't be said.

 

I remember having a discussion with my grandpa when he was in his late 70s or 80s. For a man of his age, I was very pleased that he genuinely didn't have a racist or prejudiced bone in his body...largely from his having grown up dirt poor in the 1920s in the part of town where folks any and all races lived.

 

Anyway, he was a Navy man. And his issue was that, "When I was on the boat, everyone called everyone else by their respective racial slurs, but it never mattered to any of us. Why is it such a terrible word now?"

 

My first question to him was whether or not he liked, or was friends with most of the guys he talked to on his Navy destroyer. After he told me that yes, almost everyone got along great with everyone else on the ship, I told him that that was the defining factor - some sort of familiarity and camaraderie. In high school when I played center on the football team,

, all of the offensive linemen referred to one another as 'fat kid'. "Hey fat kid, toss me that water bottle when you're done." We all used it as a companionship kind of thing, and it was a kind of communal term of endearment because we were all big dudes and we took the term and made it our own. At the same time, if I had a stranger walk up to me on the street and call me fat kid, I'd feel like jacking their jaw...well...because it's really insulting.

 

That's the difference...when black people use the word, they're making it their own.

Edited July 14, 20188 yr by Colonels_Wear_Blue

UofL's Dr. Neeli Bendapudi has renamed the football stadium to "Cardinal Stadium".

 

Here’s the announcement:

 

In moments of crisis, the best communities find a way to come together. Over the last 24 hours our community has been fractured by the comments made by former UofL trustee John Schnatter. These comments were hurtful and unacceptable, and they do not reflect the values of our university. I have decided, with the support of our Board of Trustees, to rename our football stadium “Cardinal Stadium” and to remove John Schnatter’s name from the Center for Free Enterprise at our College of Business effective immediately.

 

I have stated since my first day on this job that my commitment to the University of Louisville is to make it a great place to learn, a great place to work, and a great place in which to invest. We can only accomplish this if we truly celebrate diversity, foster equity, and aim to achieve inclusion.

 

I appreciate your support as we have reviewed this difficult situation. By taking this action, we renew our community’s commitment to speaking up when it matters, doing what is right, and coming together as one team – our Cardinal family – to heal and move forward. The brightest days for this university are still ahead.

 

This is incredibly sensible! Cardinal Stadium.

 

I have always hated it when stadiums are called by the name of a corporation. I much prefer when they are called by the team name.

Papa John agreed to allow this happen rather than fight it

I would that he got a pretty good chunk of change to let this happen...

I would that he got a pretty good chunk of change to let this happen...

 

I doubt it.

Did I hear right that Schnatter has the naming rights through 2040 or something crazy like that? It's hard to believe he just walks away from that quietly.

 

Yes. Another of the insane contracts of the Jim Ramsey era. Give me some money and I’ll give you the world.