An Anti-Naming Opportunity

Alumni of the University of Alberta have given $20.5-million to avoid making their business school a corporate naming opportunity.

Good for them.

I am all for naming opportunities. People like to be recognized for their gifts. We can bemoan this as some kind of moral failing, but you can't build buildings or offer scholarships with moral pique.

Perhaps one day people will all become selfless and stop caring whether they will be thanked and honored for their generosity. Meanwhile there are students to educate, diseases to cure, stars to discover. So I expect we'll keep naming scholarships, laboratories, and and dorms after people and corporations.

It's a small step from there to realizing it's just as legitimate for 170 donors to come forward to meet an eight-figure goal to prevent the naming of a school after anything but the university.

Naming opportunities make a lot of things possible, and build important connections. Anti-naming opportunities do too.