From a student Carillonneur

Jun 12, 2020, 4:11 PM

As a former Clemson student carillonneur, the name “Tillman” is special to me for the word’s melodic qualities. The word begins with a strike of the “T”, rings with the “L”a and mellows at the ending with “m” and “n”. The word ironically has the sound of a bell.

It wasn’t until AFTER I graduated that I learned who Ben Tillman was. Looking at the history of the building and the reason for its renaming, it doesn’t make too much sense why Ben got the honors for our campus’ central icon. No sense at all. We can at least count ourselves lucky that all we got was Tillman Hall and not Ben Tillman Hall.

My original opinion about the renaming effort was shaped by my affinity for the word’s melodic qualities and a notion that Ben Tillman had become irrelevant. The building itself owned the name “Tillman,” and this Ben guy had become conveniently forgotten.

It’s gotten harder to hold onto that opinion over the last several years. I’ve learned that I cannot truly and genuinely understand what it’s like to be black in this country and how history continues to shape current prejudices, especially the ones we aren’t even aware of. It’s becoming harder to defend my affinity for a word because, while I can personally disassociate it from its origins (since I had no idea what those origins were), I can’t say the same for others; or for the university, which has no distinct memory but has plenty of history and never forgets.

I can’t possibly ask a black student to look at Tillman Hall and see it the way I once saw it. To do so would be naive on my part. I cannot experience the world through his eyes - but I can listen. If I would stop thinking so much about my own opinions and experiences and just listen for a moment, I might be able to get a glimpse of how much it hurts.

I loved the name Tillman for the word. But the history and origin is unavoidable and I will not defend that. Clemson University is built with many bricks, and some of those bricks are pretty ugly. Maybe it’s not so bad to replace an ugly brick. We will point and say “we thought it was charming, then we thought it was tradition, but when we realized it was crumbling and threatened the whole building, we had to take it out”

Welcome back Old Main

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From a student Carillonneur

^ Excellent & Astute Reasoning!

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