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Senate House to keep its original name after £20,000 campaign to change it

We are all sad to see that ‘Building McBuilding Face’ didn’t make the cut


You may remember a campaign at the start of the year to rename the Senate House building. The campaign dominated campus with signposts, leafleting and workshops, but it has since been voted that the building will keep its original name.

Despite having over 200 names suggested and 5 shortlisted, the original name won the vote in a landslide victory of 22%. This means that, yes, sadly 'Uni McUniface', 'House of Memes' and 'Taka Taka House' did not make the cut.

If this is not heart breaking enough, a recent FOI request to the university from The Mail Online has revealed that £20000 was spent on the campaign. This has since been to described by the TaxPayers' Alliance as a 'ridiculous waste of money'.

The University spent £1174 on promotional material for the campaign and a further £9656.50 was paid to a 'strategic management' firm to deliver a street survey of more than 1000 students.

The other half of the fees were spent on an external communications agency for specialist support in designing and delivering the research.

The Campaign manager Chloe Westley told the Mail Online: 'this £20,000 could have gone towards teaching equipment or the maintenance of the building.'

This was the first opportunity in the University's history that the students were given the chance to be involved in the renaming of a building. However, despite the costly campaign, the 'renaming workshops' and online surveys, the Senate House will retain its original name.