Coverage of UC Hastings name change meeting didn’t capture the theatrics and betrayal

The July 27 Daily Journal article 'UC Hastings votes to change name' about the dramatic vote by UC Hastings College of the Law's Board of Directors to rename the College "UC College of the Law, San Francisco" did not capture the theatrics, orchestration and choreography of that event. Nor did it adequately capture the betrayal, frustration and rage apparently felt by many attending, who had been led to believe that there was a real possibility of having the College renamed using the language of the Yuki Tribe.

Politicians spoke, Directors expressed sympathy with and for Native Americans and particularly the Yuki, College leadership told us of their work, needs and wants, and Native people and their supporters were allowed to state their case. Others like me also commented on various aspects of the name-change controversy, but the lengthy resolution that was ultimately read by the Chair and unanimously voted for by the Board at the end of the meeting made it clear that it was a done deal before we got started.

Being opposed as I am to removing the Hastings name from the College, in the one minute we members of the "public" were each allotted, I mentioned the series of articles of mine that had been published in the Daily Journal since the start of the year, commenting about how the Assembly bill that would change the name unfairly punishes Serranus Hastings and his heirs, and that the contract that Serranus Hastings entered into with the State in 1878 provides: "The law College founded and established by S.C. Hastings shall forever be known and designated as the Hastings College of the Law." The proposed name-change legislation also removes the Hastings family seat on the College's Board of Directors that is also provided for in the contract.

Under our state and federal constitutions, the California Legislature is not allowed to "impair" contracts, or punish named individuals, or easily identified groups, without a judicial trial. No such trial has occurred, nor is one provided for in the proposed legislation.

The familiar but erroneous narrative that Serranus Hastings masterminded Indian hunting expeditions in the late 1850s was repeated at the Board meeting, but a Board committee report was also referred to which publicly acknowledges that in 1860 the Legislature formally investigated the Indian killings, that Serranus Hastings testified under oath in that investigation that he had no knowledge of those killings until after they had happened, and that Hastings was not implicated in the killings by the reports generated by that investigation. That report also agrees that Hastings did not kill any Native Americans, and "that there is no incontrovertible proof that Judge Hastings knew more than he acknowledged." It also articulates the question the Board is answering: "whether Judge Hastings acted in a manner that was wrong, from a moral point of view . . . ."

The Board of Directors is finally beginning to distance itself from the historians' erroneous narrative that Hastings committed the atrocities that they and the Legislature charge him with.