What’s in a Name? Part 4 - Is there another way? (#565)

By now, we’ve walked around the issue from three sides.

In Part 1, we talked about identity - how names quietly shape who we believe we are.

In Part 2, we followed the money - the real financial pressures pushing schools toward large gifts.

In Part 3, we looked at memory - who gets remembered when a single name rises above thousands of quieter contributions.

All this leads to the obvious next question:

If naming rights feel uneasy…

If they compress collective history into one surname…

If they risk turning public institutions into branded assets…

Is there another way?

Or is this simply the unavoidable price of survival?

Because let’s be honest. Veterinary education isn’t debating this from a position of comfort. We genuinely need the money.

The reality we cannot ignore

The arithmetic is unforgiving.

Veterinary colleges are among the most expensive academic units on any campus.

We run:

Hospitals that never close.

ICUs and surgical suites.

Diagnostic imaging centers.

Research laboratories.

Biosecurity facilities.

We teach in small groups. We rely on specialized equipment. We maintain faculty-intensive clinical services. And at the same time, we’re expanding.

The U.S. now has 33 accredited veterinary colleges, with many additional programs proposed or developing through the AVMA accreditation pipeline.

Each new school represents tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in startup costs.

No state legislature is writing those checks alone anymore.

So, philanthropy isn’t optional. It’s essential.

The question is not whether we partner with donors. It’s how.

The false choice we’ve accepted

Somehow, we’ve slipped into a binary mindset:

Either,

Accept a large gift and rename the school,

Or,

Go without funding.

But that’s a false choice.

Human medicine may have normalized institutional naming as the default exchange.

Veterinary medicine doesn’t have to copy that template exactly.

We can design our own.

After all, we are still a small enough profession to be intentional.

We haven’t yet locked ourselves into a century-old tradition of transactional naming.

This is precisely the moment when culture can still be shaped.

Models that already exist (but we overlook)

Ironically, veterinary education has always had alternatives.

We just rarely talk about them because they don’t make headlines.

Consider what has worked quietly for decades:

1. Naming the care spaces, not the college.

Hospitals.

Teaching wings.

Clinical centers.

These are meaningful, visible, and appropriate places to recognize philanthropy.

They connect donors directly to impact:

“This gift built the ICU.”

“This center treats 20,000 animals a year.”

The gratitude is tangible.

But the college’s identity remains shared.

2. Endowed chairs and professorships.

Few things honor a donor more enduringly than attaching their name to a faculty position.

A named professorship supports:

Teaching.

Mentorship.

Research.

Generations of students.

It links the donor to intellectual legacy, not branding.

And it strengthens the academic core.

3. Scholarships and student support.

If our mission is education, nothing expresses that more clearly than helping students.

A scholarship carries a name forward year after year. Not on a facade, but in a person’s life.

There’s something beautifully aligned about that.

It feels like stewardship, not ownership.

4. Institutes and programs.

Centers for:

One Health.

Rural practice.

Shelter medicine.

Food animal health.

Public policy.

These allow donors to shape areas they care about without redefining the institution itself.

Mission-first recognition. Not identity-first recognition.

A philosophical difference

All of these alternatives share a common feature:

They honor contribution without transferring ownership.

That distinction matters more than we admit.

Because when you name a building or program, the message is:

This was made possible by…

When you rename an entire college, the message subtly becomes:

This belongs to…

Even if no one intends that implication. Language carries weight. And institutions live for centuries. Small semantic choices echo for generations.

The long view

Here’s something I often think about.

Names outlive reputations. History is unpredictable. Human medicine has already faced this uncomfortable reality:

Donors later scrutinized.

Legacies reinterpreted.

Buildings quietly renamed decades later.

What feels celebratory today can feel complicated tomorrow.

A discipline-based name - College of Veterinary Medicine - ages gracefully.

A personal name carries all the messiness of biography.

If we’re building institutions meant to last 100 or 150 years, humility might be the safest design principle.

Plain names endure. They don’t require revision.

What would a veterinary-specific model look like?

If we were to design a model that reflected veterinary culture - not simply borrowed from human medicine’s - it might look something like this:

The college retains a public/professional name,

Major gifts recognized through hospitals, centers, and chairs,

Donor stories told prominently and generously,

Collective contributors (faculty, alumni, staff) visibly honored, and

Identity remains shared, not privatized.

This isn’t anti-donor. It’s pro-profession.

It says:

We are grateful.

Deeply grateful.

But the school belongs to everyone.

A personal bias (and I’ll admit it)

Perhaps this is just my generation talking.

I trained in places that were modest and unadorned.

Nobody expected naming rights.

The reward was the work - the students, the animals, the communities served.

There was something comforting about the simplicity of it.

When you walked onto campus, you didn’t feel like you were entering someone’s legacy.

You felt like you were entering a common space.

A workshop.

A barn.

A hospital.

A place where people simply got on with the job.

I’m not sure I want to lose that feeling.

The question going forward

None of us can stop the financial realities reshaping higher education.

But we can choose how we respond.

Before the next naming decision, perhaps the most important question isn’t

How much is the gift worth?

But,

What is our identity worth?

Because once a name changes, it rarely changes back.

And once a culture shifts toward transactional identity, it tends to stay there.

Veterinary medicine still has time to chart its own path.

The door is open. It won’t stay open forever.

Closing this series

Across the four parts of this series so far, we’ve circled one quiet theme:

Veterinary education has always been a collective endeavor.

Built by many hands.

Sustained by many hearts.

Perhaps naming rights - or the absence of them - should continue to reflect that simple truth.

Not because donors don’t matter.

But because everyone matters.

Background

On January 28, 2026, the University of California at Davis (UC Davis) announced a record-breaking $120 million donation from Joan and Sanford I. Weill to its School of Veterinary Medicine.

In recognition, the institution was renamed the UC Davis Joan and Sanford I. Weill School of Veterinary Medicine.

#bunyipsbooksbeyond