Following nearly a year of review and consultations, a revised Naming Policy is now posted on the University Secretariat and Legal Counsel website, and Queen’s community members are invited to provide feedback on the draft by Jan. 30, 2022.

Principal and Vice-Chancellor Patrick Deane struck a working group in February 2021 that was tasked with developing a principles-based naming policy to address various forms of naming at Queen’s University, including philanthropic, service, commemorative, and Indigenous namings. The revised policy provides an overarching framework and identify the core principles to which related policies and/or procedures must adhere, as well as address concepts of naming, renaming, and de-naming.

Chaired by Vice-Principal (Advancement) Karen Bertrand, and consisting of representatives from various Queen’s stakeholder groups, the Naming Policy Working Group delivered a draft policy that was presented to the community for consultation in June 2021.

The most notable changes to the existing policy are:

• Terms in the Naming Policy have been defined for clarity.
• The policy officially celebrates and embraces Indigenous namings of the land on which Queen’s University is situated from the Indigenous community.
• Expanding the scope of the policy beyond namings to recognize individual service or philanthropic donations supporting Queen’s to include additional types of naming – including commemorative naming.
• The addition of a section on principles, many of which already existed throughout the earlier Naming Policy.
• Highlighting the university’s values related to equity, diversity, inclusion and Indigeneity.
• New sections on de-naming and renaming.
• Several procedural elements have been removed from the policy. These elements will be considered in the revisions/development of procedures and/or guidelines related to this policy which began during the summer of 2021.
• Term-limits have been placed on corporate namings.
• Recommendations on philanthropic namings from benchmarking and consultations completed in 2019 – including new delegated authorities for philanthropic naming – and reviewed by the External Relations and Development Committee of the Board of Trustees in September 2019 and February 2020 have been incorporated.

Following this final phase of public consultations, the working group hopes to deliver a revised Naming Policy to the Board of Trustees for approval in May 2022.