SALT LAKE CITY — After about 20 minutes of debate, the Utah Senate passed legislation Wednesday that will launch a process to recommend a new name for Dixie State University.
The Senate voted 26-3 in support of HB278, sending it back to the House to address changes made to the original bill the House already passed.
No one spoke against the bill, but some, like Sen. John Johnson, R-North Ogden, expressed frustration that the push to change the university’s name was tantamount to cancel culture.
“Mr. Potato Head is now Potato Head. OK, Dr. Seuss is on his deathbed. OK. Where does this stop?” he said.
But others, like Sen. Derek Kitchen, D-Salt Lake City, said HB278 is “the right thing to do. Ultimately, what we’re doing here is we are being responsive to the young people, the students of Dixie State University.”
He noted revisions in the bill that “speak to the value of this (legislative) process.”
“We’re not trying to cancel anything,” Kitchen said. “In fact, we’re putting it back to the community to engage in a process and empower them to move forward with the direction that makes the most sense for the university and the community.”
Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, noted that Yale University was founded by a slave trader.
“Why do we have to change the name of Dixie State, and Yale, named after a slave trader, gets a pass? I would really like someone to ... explain that to me,” Weiler said. However, he voted for the bill.
The revised bill requires no particular name and does not preclude the name Dixie. The original bill, passed by the House of Representatives on a vote of 51-20 on Feb. 10, said the new name could not include Dixie.
The new language says if university trustees and the state higher education board forward a name to lawmakers that does not include the term Dixie, the trustees “shall all establish a heritage committee to identify and implement strategies to preserve the heritage, culture and history of the region on the campus of the institution, including the regional significance of the term ‘Dixie.’”
The revised bill includes a one-time $500,000 appropriations request to assist the preservation efforts of the heritage committee.
Sen. Don Ipson, R-St. George, Senate floor sponsor of the legislation, spoke about the community’s deep attachment and support of Dixie College, which later became a university.
“Several times, at least twice during its lifetime, the people of St. George came together, mortgaged their homes, to keep that institution alive,” Ipson said.
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Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News
While the debate over the name change has at times been contentious, Ipson said, “I’m just glad that we will have this opportunity that the people in the university, the people in the community, the alumni will have a chance to come together and share their Dixie spirit and come to a conclusion. And I can tell you as the wild man from Dixie, I’m committed to make this happen,” he said.
Supporters of the change say the name “Dixie” is harming students as they seek graduate school admission and employment.
The university commissioned a study by the Cicero Group to consider the impacts of the name. It found the university’s name has become “increasingly problematic for our students and alumni” and has hindered the university’s ability to recruit students, faculty, staff and has limited its ability to build partnerships and obtain grants and funding.
Discussions about the name have been going on for decades but intensified following protests across the country over George Floyd’s death last summer while in police custody. Locally, Intermountain Healthcare changed the name of its hospital from Dixie Regional Medical Center to Intermountain St. George Regional Hospital, effective in January.
Tim Anderson, a St. George attorney who opposes the name change, said Latter-day Saint pioneers came to the area to grow cotton, which is the origin of the name.
“They battled a very, very difficult, harsh inhospitable environment to create what’s turned out to be a pretty good place thanks to air conditioning. ... The story sort of dislodges the change-the-name argument,” Anderson said in a previous interview.
In recent years, the university has done away with its Rebels mascot, switching to the Trailblazers, and removing Confederate imagery from the campus, including a statue titled The Rebels, which depicted a horse and Confederate soldiers, one of whom carried a Confederate battle flag.
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