Désolé pour ceux d'entre vous qui ne parlent pas l'anglais:
Tilda Swinton’s bid to save college’s good name
Actress Tilda Swinton is among those who are enraged about the decision to change the name of her old Cambridge college. From next May, her alma mater, New Hall, founded 53 years ago by Dame Rosemary Murray, will become Murray Edwards College, a move that follows a £30m donation from US millionaires Ros and Steve Edwards.
But not if the former alumnae have anything to with it. With the support of Swinton and 67 other New Hall graduates, Clare Salmon has written the following to Anne Lonsdale, the president of the college: "I am frankly appalled at the cavalier attitude you have taken to New Hall's brand and to the way you have flouted even the most basic principles of governance in relation to one of your key stakeholders, the alumnae. We have, it would seem, been presented with a fait de accompli. This either shows a quite breathtaking disregard for our insights and skills or an equally remarkable level of naivety."
The signatories of the letter are also concerned that the feminist principles behind the college will be lost by the name change. The letter concludes: "I find it both ironic and distasteful that the [Edwards] name is that of the alumna's husband, himself an Oxford graduate. Is this a fitting approach for a college long associated with the emancipation of women? What ridicule have we opened ourselves and Cambridge University up to?”
