Stanford establishes contingency for renaming Arrillaga buildings, runs out of names

May 3, 2020, 10:53 p.m.

The administration, after coming under immense pressure to rename Jordan Hall in light of its namesake’s historic support of the eugenics movement, has begun to put in place contingency measures in case any other buildings need to be renamed.

One such measure is the formation of a committee tasked with maintaining a list of possible replacement names for various buildings on campus.

“Our role, really, is to be a backstop,” said committee chairwoman Reyna Baltramonaitis. “When it comes to picking a new name after another donor does something unspeakable, the buck stops here.”


“For instance, we’ve secured Philz Coffee as a potential replacement for Phil Knight,” Baltramonaitis explained. “That way we only have to scrape six letters off all the signs in the GSB, saving money and maximizing efficiency.”

Trouble began brewing, however, when the committee turned its attention to perhaps the most prolific of all Stanford donors: John C. Arrillaga.

“It’s a nightmare,” Baltramonaitis said, throwing her hands in the air. “There are just too many buildings named after him. We can’t keep up! We’ve already used up the name of every dog owned by a faculty member, and every word we could think of that rhymes with Arrillaga.”

“What about Chihuahua,” we asked. Baltramonaitis made a note.

In order to mitigate the problem, the committee assigned Arrillaga a round-the-clock protective detail. Its job is to make sure he doesn’t do anything too bad, thereby forcing the University to chisel his name off a number of buildings so vast even the administration has lost count.

“Hiring enough people to remove his name from every doorway, placard and sticky note alone would prove financially ruinous,” Baltramonaitis explained. “We had a close call last week when he left the toilet seat up, but we feel that this is the only solution.”

Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.

Contact Benjamin Midler at bmidler ‘at’ stanford.edu and Nicholas Midler at midler ‘at’ stanford.edu.

A chronic anachronism, Ben enjoys well-punctuated texts and oatmeal cookies. He's also majoring in psychology, so he knows how many fingers you're thinking of holding up. Spam him at bmidler 'at' stanforddaily.com.

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