From Staff Reports

Confederate Governor and Colonel Zebulon Vance’s name is on the campus police station at UNC Asheville and students say it’s time for that to change.

A group filed an online petition this week as leaders across the South debated removing the Confederate flag from license plates and state capitols. 

The debate comes in the wake of the shooting deaths at a black church in Charleston, S.C.

On June 23, someone spray painted “Black Lives Matter” on the Vance Monument in downtown Asheville. 

Vance owned slaves.

Amina Kone, incoming president of the Black Student Association at UNCA, said it’s time for university leaders to change the name of Vance Hall.

“After learning about the history of it, it does bother me,” she said. “It does kind of get under my skin a little bit.”

Vance Hall is in Governors Village at UNCA, which has five dorms named for North Carolina governors. 

Students first asked to have the name of the building changed last spring.

UNCA Chancellor Mary Grant says the issue is still being discussed.

“Last spring, student leaders and the UNC Asheville board of trustees came together to discuss the issue of building naming,” she said in a written statement. “The names of specific buildings, including Vance Hall, were considered in the context of what those names might mean to today’s students.

“It was a candid and thoughtful discussion and will continue to be an important conversation for the campus community in the future. UNC Asheville is committed to being an inclusive community and I’m glad our students, faculty and alumni engage these issues with passion,” Grant noted.