Administrators voted to change the name of Talley Student Center to reflect the new building’s importance as a collaborative meeting place last November. 

After months of deliberation during the fall 2012 semester, the University Students Center Board of Directors voted 13-8 in favor of renaming the building to the Talley Student Union.

According to The College Union Idea, a book by Porter Butts, college unions were started by debating societies in England and are still closely tied to social and intellectual pursuits today. 

The book also says these unions are a place where “individuals come together through activities and work, forming a community.” 

“The change from center to union may seem minor, but [the University Students Center Board of Directors] believes that this renaming is strategic and of high importance as Phase one of the New Talley opens in the fall 2013,” said Sarah Price, president of Student Centers at N.C. State and member of the USC board, in a February 2013 letter.

Price addressed problems with the previous name. She said the word “center” mainly relates to a location, whereas the word “union” emphasizes the community and its programs.

Associate Director of the University Students Center Board of Directors, TJ Willis, said the Talley construction project presented a chance to rebrand the building with a new name, and the name symbolizes students and faculty from various departments coming together.

Willis also said Talley’s new name is reflected by the building’s design.

The new Talley will unify dining, campus groups, office suites and study space in a single, shared building with an open design. Some of the furniture can be easily moved to start a study group, creating a one-stop-shop for students. Office suites will include glass walls and windows to promote visibility and cooperation among departments. 

According to Wesley Lo, president of the University Students Center Board of Directors, the new Talley will also include lounge spaces and “collaboration stations” where students can connect their laptops and phones together for study groups.

Willis said these attributes will help solve some problems with the old Talley Student Center.

“You could be sitting in an office [at the old Talley] and you couldn’t see into other offices and it was short on lounge space,” Willis said. “Due to a lack of visibility, if you went to the arts offices, you might go there and not even know we had a GLBT center. If you asked the average student in the old Talley they only went there for food and only a few went there to study.”

Willis added that the old Talley did not have quality places for students to study, eat and attend events and group meetings, denying students a “successful work place.”

Though most of the the University Students Center Board of Directors members liked the name change, some of them opposed it, Lo said.

“The main reason that people didn’t want to change the name was because they don’t like change and wanted to keep the status quo,” Lo said. “Another one was just the word union itself. It sometimes gives a negative connotation because you think about labor unions.”