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Rename mark understanding

60 years ago queen's university in kingston decided to honor canada's first prime minister by putting his name on its law school it made perfect sense since sir johnny mcdonald got his start as a lawyer in kingston but 60 years later mcdonald's legacy is shall we say more complicated and that's now led the university to the decision to remove mcdonald's name from the law school it raises a host of questions to explore with our guests whom we'll introduce as is our custom here on the agenda from furthest away to closest to our studio starting in the nation's capital with jeffrey simpson the senior fellow at the university of ottawa's graduate school of public and international affairs in kingston ontario mark walters the dean of the law school at queen's university and in our provincial capital melanie newton associate professor of caribbean and atlantic world history at the university of toronto and i'm pleased to welcome all three of you to the agenda i think two of you for the first time jeffrey simpson good to see you again dean walters just get us started here with some background what prompted the university to consider taking sir johnny mcdonald's name off the law school building in the first place sure i mean the issue of mcdonald's name has been one that on on the agenda sorry um for a few years now um that the triggering factor probably was a petition submitted to the board of trustees in june uh asking for the name to be removed and uh a consultation process followed uh various recommendations made uh and these were all put to the board of trustees um on uh october 19th and it made the decision to uh to remove the name um so a consultation process leading to recommendations and a decision let me follow up on that consultation process because in your report you do point out that you did an online survey and i'm going to ask our director sheldon osman to bring up those numbers right now because you asked the question do you believe that the law school building should continue to be named sir john a macdonald hall you surveyed nearly 3 000 people and yes keep the name as is came back with 47 support no dropped the name was it just a touch over 50 support then you surveyed law school alumni who answered the survey yes keep the name 44 percent no drop the name 38 percent but of the current law school students yes keep the name only 21 percent no drop the name 58 percent so the question is how useful mark was all of that information to the university making its ultimate decision right so uh you know i think we all appreciated going into this that there this was a question that would divide people um and it came out as dividing people almost down the middle um though as you just...