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Officials ask WCU to restore ‘Camp’ to former school’s name
By Lynn Hotaling
If county elected officials have their way, Western Carolina University leaders will put the “Camp” back into the name of a former campus building.
Commissioners voted unanimously Aug. 17 to send a resolution to the WCU Board of Trustees asking that the former Camp Laboratory School, which is now officially known as the University Outreach Center, once again bear the name of Cordelia Camp.
The building in question opened in the fall of 1964 and was dedicated and named for Camp, who was director of student teaching at Western for 23 years, the following spring. The university built the structure that came to be known as Camp Lab to educate Cullowhee’s public school students in grades 1 through 12. That school was constructed to free up the McKee building in the center of the WCU campus, which was built as a school for local children, for college classes.
Commissioner Conrad Burrell, who attended school at Camp Lab, said the idea had crystallized during an early-August reunion of all those who had attended the school.
“We knew that building as ‘Camp’ – ‘Camp Lab,’” Burrell told his fellow commissioners. “That was its name since 1965.”
Burrell said the consensus of those at the reunion was that the building should still be known as the Cordelia Camp Building.
“She was a fine lady and contributed a lot to that school,” he said.
According to Burrell, WCU typically does not change a building’s name when it is renovated.
“This one is the only one that has had its name changed,” he said.
The resolution passed by county commissioners points to Camp as the “dominant figure shaping what took place in classrooms throughout Western North Carolina” and says that the old Camp Lab School “comprises a significant part of the rich heritage of Jackson County.”
The resolution also asks that the portrait of Camp that graced the former school’s lobby be once again displayed there.
Jackson County commissioners’ request to restore Camp’s name to the building is on the agenda for WCU trustees’ Friday, Sept. 1, board meeting, according to university news director Bill Studenc.
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