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Montana State-Billings begins process of changing McMullen Hall's name – Daily Montanan

['Darrell Ehrlick', 'More From Author', '- March']

Date: 2022-03-03 00:00:00

The building where most of the administration is housed on Montana’s third-largest public university may get a name change after research showed the man for whom it was named stridently supported the now-discredited theory of eugenics and sterilization and praised Adolf Hitler’s programs in Germany.

McMullen Hall, the administrative center of Montana State University-Billings, was named after the first president of what was originally Eastern Montana Normal College. Lynn Banks McMullen, a scientist and educator, gave a 1935 graduation speech at what is now the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley in which he praised eugenics and the Hitler regime for measures it was taking.

McMullen had been invited to give the address because his daughter was graduating.

On Thursday, MSUB Chancellor Stefani Hicswa announced that the university was forming a task force to investigate the name and provide her with recommendations, including a name change. Also on Thursday, the Academic Senate took up the issue, voting to endorse Sen. Sam Boerboom’s resolution for possibly renaming the building.

At the faculty meeting, the professors seemed unified and the entire history department was on hand to answer questions about the initial research.

How the building was named is still being researched, but a 1961 Billings Gazette article simply said that it was named after the university’s first president. Preliminary research also showed that McMullen never recanted or renounced his previous positions.

Any possible name change would have to go before the Montana University System Board of Regents, which controls naming buildings on all public university campuses throughout the state. The building was constructed in 1935, and McMullen was the first employee hired in 1927. He remained there until 1945. Originally, the building was the complete campus with classrooms, a library, offices and a museum. A gymnasium that was originally part of it has been torn down. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Newspapers throughout the West, including wire service The Associated Press, picked up on the speech given Aug. 17, 1935.

The Missoulian headline read, “State Educator is in Favor of Hitler Program.

“I abominate Hitler’s general polices, but if I am correctly informed in regard to his campaign for sterilization of the unfit, I prophesy that Germany will do more for the uplift of her society in the next 50 years through sterilization than we have done in 85 years through public education,” McMullen said in the article. “America has been the melting pot. Undoubtedly, she has received many fine citizens from the old world. But she has also been the sewer for its dregs. The upper classes have always paid some attention to breeding. On the other hand, the procreation of the unfit has been promiscuous and prolific.”

Many faculty at MSUB pointed out that sterilization within the state of Montana targeted Native Americans and the poor.

McMullen wished that country would “control the muddy, eroding, irresponsible flood of the unfit in the same manner.”

The Greeley Daily Tribune gave a fuller account of McMullen’s remarks.

“The unfit continue to bring children into the world when those who should be bettering society by better bred offspring have far too few. There are some students in college whose heredity and environment, due to the stupidity of their parents, are such that no amount of aid will do any good,” he said.

Jennifer Lynn, the chairwoman of the Academic Senate, spoke to any concern about erasing or changing history.

“We believe that by changing a name, we are not changing history, but bringing light to the past,” Lynn said.

Kurt Toenjes, dean of Health Professions and Science, said he wasn’t just concerned with the words of the speech.

“He was a science teacher, and I think about the students he taught and am trying to realize the impact that those ideas had,” Toenjes said.

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