And I'm glad I'm not the only one to see through this thinly veiled cosmetic attempt at "fixing racism" by doing nothing but making it harder on the current residents of Plantation street (by the way are majority POC and who will be forced to bare the brunt of time/fees to change their address).

Thankfully seems like someone on the council board sees through this too: from the Boston globe

>The Worcester City Council is expected to hear the petition at its weekly meeting Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. From there, it will be referred to the Public Works Committee, which oversees local infrastructure related to streets and public buildings.

>George Russell, chair of the Public Works Committee, called UMass’s petition “not well thought out” and “inconsiderate” to the home and business owners along Plantation Street, which stretches more than 4 miles. Changing the name, Russell said, would require hundreds of people to update their drivers’ licenses, passports, mortgages, and more.

>“It’s one thing if it was a small street, and the people who owned property or rented properties all came together,” Russell said. “It’s almost like asking each one of them to move.”

>Russell said he previously spoke to Anderson and suggested creating an honorary name for the section of the road that runs along campus.

>He said he understands the university’s concerns, but noted that there are likely other parts of Worcester’s history that may be offensive to some and said the city has more pressing issues to address.

>“If you look up the word plantation in the dictionary, there’s no reference to slavery,” Russell said. “I don’t know any history of a plantation or plantations [in Worcester].”

>Plantation Street was the first road built on the Quinsigamond Plantation, a village established by European settlers in the 1600s, according to an account of local history by the City of Worcester. The site was destroyed in King Phillip’s War, a bloody conflict between settlers and native tribes including the Nipmuc, and rebuilt as Worcester, according to the Worcester Memorial Auditorium.

>Russell’s district includes the bottom portion of Plantation Street and all of Plantation Terrace.

So this is someone who actually represents the regular people who live on plantation-named roads. Good! Thankfully they are thinking about their constituents and not a corporate entity telling the city what to do at the expense of "the little people".

It honestly makes me sick that there are people who are wanting to do this without regard for how it will affect the lives of those who live on plantation-named roads. Just so a six-figure paid diversity consultant umass hired can add to their resume that "they helped fight racism" by doing the most minimal effort possible. People throw around the term virtue-signalling way too mich nowadays (like the boy who cried wolf)...but THIS...this is an example of exactly what virtue-signalling is and how it does nothing to actually help real societal issues. Again...who are going to be the ones paying fees for name changes?? Notice UMass isn't coming out to say they'll be forking over all that money to the worcester residents affected!! Who...again are majority POC who live on plantation-named roads. Yeah...."let's put a monetary burden on some POC people on the Worcester community so we can feel smug when we drive home to Northborough". Litterally the opposite of how you help a community fight against racism.

I actually do what I preach...I have POC high school students come to my lab at umass to mentor them in 1) what a STEM career can look like, 2) help them see how a STEM career is something they can do, and 3) help them get into more colleges with a lab internship on their CV. Basically give them opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t be afforded to them, unless they cane from rich families with connections. But by and large, I'm the one who does the heavy lifting trying to do outreach into area schools. The diversity initiative at umass is a joke in most ways that can have practical applications to ACTUALLY help out the local community. Basically all they have to offer is red tape and "oh that sounds like a good idea" but don't follow through. They COULD invest all the time and money from this street-naming campaign into expanding the diversity outreach people like me, and a few other labs, are already doing on our own time. Like I'd LOVE to have an admin assistant dedicated to communicating with area guidance counselors and interested research labs to match each other up with interested HS students. But I guess the street nane thing is FAR too important than expanding the "silly" notion of getting HS students in a school-to-STEM pipeline.

I also cannot explain enough how much this street thing is a big PR bandaid on a much larger UMass issue has with POC employees. I feel like it's a big distraction IMO....a big fat red herring. UMMS has an issue with department heads not promoting or hiring women/POC people when their CVs are top notch. Looking at top level leadership positions in departments, there is a lack of both women and POC....and that is definitely not due to a lack of excellence women and POC have on the job. There also is a great deal of ablism through UMMS leadership, that those who aren't neurotypical are not given promotions even though their work output clearly should be recognized. I can tell you in absolute terms that people in the UMMS community are not complaining about the street name. The biggest issues in the community right now are the anti-labor activities and institutionalized rascism internal to the medical center. I feel those issues are trying to be rug swept with this new street name PR campaign.

It's actually coming from the chancellor of the school, Michael Collins...and he's pushing a consultant (umass hired at 6 figures to do a campus analysis on diversity) to push the plantation-slavery narrative to get the street change. This is not something altruistic from Collins because he's concerned about the word "Plantation" at all... It's a PR red herring to do 2 things: distract from the racial inequalities in things such as promotions within UMMS and to help UMMS's brand.

I was asking around at work today what the inside take was regarding UMass's insistence all of a sudden to push Worcester to rename Plantation street. The reality is no one cares about the street name b/c there are far more pertinent things going on within Umass like anti-labor and discriminatory practices within departments.

What I heard was that UMMS is looking to rename the other streets around campus, such a North road and South road that are w/in campus to be more "branded", i.e. like how other research campuses name roads to be "science-y" like "Einstein circuit" or "Curie Way". They want to rename Plantation street to be more branded because the new big building being built will have a Plantation street address. UMMS leadership has been wanting the addresses to their main research buildings to be made more research-centric, like "Discovery Street" or something like that.

It's just corporate BS, like it usually is. The real push is coming from the chancellor that a new street name would help the UMMS brand and get more big donors. They are weaponizing virtue signaling as the excuse to make it about racial connotations, or else the city of worcester would just laugh at their request to change the name of a 4 mile long street. They aren't putting in a request to change the names of north and south roads until the Plantation street situation is figured out, because if they did it now...it would be obvious that UMass’s real MO was selfishly to get a better branding opportunity.