Students and staff gathered last Thursday afternoon to celebrate the renaming of the lodges on campus.
The lodges, formerly named North, South and East Lodge, are now Martin, Smith and Wright Lodge respectively. With the naming of the lodges, nearly every student residence on campus is named after a former president or donor.
“I think we’re going to try to definitely implement the name change because we also want to honor the families that are being honored through receiving the namesakes,” Savanah Grieve, a resident assistant in Martin Lodge, said. Grieve said she’s talked to the resident director of the lodges to try and figure out a way to get people to buy into the name change.
Gidget Hamner, director of University Advancement Communications, Events and Projects, said each representative for the namesakes of the lodges received a sketch of their lodge.
Both Wright Lodge and Smith Lodge honor former presidents of the university, David Wright and Henry Smith. Martin Lodge honors Glen Martin, a former professor of history and political science at Indiana Wesleyan.
“I believe the timing is primarily because they had secured three namesakes for the three lodges,” Shelby Louve, the Director of Residence Life, said. “I think it has more to do with the fact that we have three namesakes to now honor the lodges than the timing of April 2026.”
Louve said that the university is working on finding a final namesake for the last unnamed residence on campus, South Hall. She said the namesakes of the residences aren’t necessarily about who donated the most money.
“It’s not always because they gave money to build a building, but rather, we’re trying to honor somehow their history and connection to our own,” Louve said.
