In a surprise announcement Monday, St. Bonaventure University officials said they were caving to a recent rash of misspellings and renaming two university buildings and one of its eateries.
Under the immediately effective changes, Plassman Hall (formerly “Plassmann”), Devereaux Hall (“Devereux”) and the Rathskellar (“Rathskeller”) all received new monikers, though the pronunciations remained the same.
“We realize these places have been misspelled in newspapers, term papers and blogs for years upon years,” said university spokesman Colton Crosswire in a noon news conference, “but our faculty and the trustees have reported a violent spike recently and we felt we needed to move quickly to address the situation before it reached a critical level.”
Several professors cried foul at the new spellings.
“These places were named decades ago, and two are named after university elders,” said Willard Cronmeier, associate professor of journalism. “Are we going to go back in the historical record and change Thomas Plassmann and Nicholas and Mary Devereux’s names as well?
“It’s sad to see you can change things by doing them wrong for an extended period of time.”
Cronmeier said noted would refuse to acknowledge the new names in his classes and encourage editors of student newspaper The Bona Venture to do the same.
University officials hope to replace university signage and and brochures to reflect the new spellings by March, Crosswire said. The carved stone arch on Devereaux Hall, however, will simply receive a “carrot-’a'” (^a) treatment.
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