On Wednesday, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) convened with the new Director of the College Library, Peter Bae, to discuss its new initiative, the “Library of Things,” and two other proposals. Nyla Danzy ’27 introduced a petition to change the name of the Russwurm African American Center to the Russwurm Pan-African Center. The BSG Executive Team also discussed the creation of a new monthly publication and voted on last week’s proposed changes to the Student Activities Funding Committee’s (SAFC) guidelines.

BSG met with Bae to discuss improvements to the library and how it could help. One improvement included the “Library of Things,” a system in which students would be able to check out various non-literary items from the circulation desk at Hawthorne-Longfellow Library. BSG sent out a survey in January for item ideas and received 138 suggestions. The items will be reviewed at next week’s meeting.

In introducing the petition to change the name of the Russwurm African American Center to the Russwurm Pan-African Center, Danzy explained how John Brown Russwurm, the namesake of the African American center, was not in fact African American but was born in Jamaica and only came to the U.S. for his education.

“There’s a lot of problems with Russwurm house, but this is the beginning of correcting his misrepresentation and accurately honoring him,” Danzy said.

In addition to meeting with Bae and receiving Danzy’s petition, BSG also passed the new SAFC guidelines it proposed last week with no alterations made to the proposal.