Last call to name those colleges

Henry Roe Cloud College, commemorating Yale’s first known Native American graduate? Fenno Heath College, named for the longtime Glee Club director? 

These are the newest (to us, at least) suggestions for naming the two residential colleges that Yale plans to build on Prospect Street. We’ve gathered your nominations previously, and they’re part of a “substantial roster” of suggestions, President Peter Salovey ’86PhD said today in a message to the Yale community.

But evidently not substantial enough.

“With funding now complete for the two new residential colleges, the Yale Corporation is seeking additional suggestions for their names,” Salovey wrote. There’s a submission form on the president’s website. And we’re soliciting ideas on our Facebook page as well as on this page.

First proposed in 2006 for a 2013 opening date, the new colleges were delayed by the recession and slower-than-expected fund-raising. When they’re completed—currently expected to be in 2017—they will house about 900 undergraduates, expanding Yale College’s enrollment by 15 percent. They’ll be the first new residential colleges since Ezra Stiles and Morse opened in 1962.

But what will they be called?

Our Facebook readers posted a flurry of names, several of which have surfaced previously—from Edward Bouchet to William Howard Taft, Grace Hopper to Bart Giamatti.

This is the first time, though, that we’ve heard a proposal for Fenno Heath ’50 ’52MusM, who directed the Glee Club for nearly 40 years. Likewise for Henry Roe Cloud, class of 1910, who later founded the first prep school for Indian boys.

An advantage for that last name is that it would be both historic and quintessentially modern, allowing students to say proudly: “I go to school in the Cloud.”

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The Yale Alumni Magazine is published by Yale Alumni Publications Inc., an alumni-based nonprofit that is not run by Yale University. Its content does not necessarily reflect the views of the university administration.