Whenever tours ramp up in spring and new students start arriving in summer and fall, they begin to learn some facts (and some fictions) about the university. As the keepers of campus history, sometimes the archives get questions about old campus legends like this one:
I know that many years ago, the university used to be called the University of Santa Clara. However, the rumor is that at some point, we came to an agreement with the University of Southern California to change the name to Santa Clara University. What I heard is that they kept the initials USC in exchange for giving SCU a number of large and expensive palm trees that were planted on campus. Is this true?
Like a lot of campus legends, this story has a nugget of truth…but it’s not the fun part about the palm trees! When the college was founded in 1851, it was called Santa Clara College. In 1912, the name was changed to the University of Santa Clara to reflect that the institution had grown and was offering more college-level courses with an expanded curriculum.
It wasn’t until 1985 that the university changed its name again–this time to Santa Clara University (SCU)! While it is true that the name change to SCU was at least in part to distinguish the university from other institutions that used the same initials (such as the University of Southern California, University of California at Santa Cruz, and the University of South Carolina), there is no evidence whatsoever that the university coordinated with any other institution or was paid in any way for this change. The university also wanted its branding to be more consistent, since its name was written out as the University of Santa Clara, but it was often already referred to as SCU.
In true university fashion, the change was actually done by a committee that requested community input in a survey. The chairman of the committee, Tim Healy, received 47 responses with 32 of them in favor of the change. Then, the university president, Fr. Rewak, S.J., sent a letter to the Board of Trustees encouraging them to adopt the new name and initials. Naturally, there was grumbling from some faculty and alumni who disagreed, but the board went ahead and approved the name change on May 15, 1985.
So, again, what about the palm trees?
Many campus photos document the history of landscaping with palm trees; the iconic tree gives its name to Palm Drive–the pedestrian mall that leads from the campus main entrance to the Mission Church. But as SCU professor emeritus and local historian George Giacomini said when asked about the story several years ago, “We bought the damn things from some nursery!” (Jon McDonald, “The truth about Urban Legends at Santa Clara,” The Santa Clara, October 25, 2007). There were palm trees on campus long before the name change from USC to SCU in 1985–and even when it was still Santa Clara College, as you can see from this search of our digital collections!
References
McDonald, Jon. “The truth about Urban Legends at Santa Clara,” The Santa Clara, October 25, 2007.
Conway, Sheila. “Changing the Name of the University.” A&SC Info Files, 2015. (Unpublished)
I think it was TIM Healy not TOM…
Thank you Elena, you are correct! It was TIM, not Tom. Sorry for the mistake and the post has been edited.
I admire how much Tim Healy has been involved in the story of the University of Santa and SCU, even down to the name change. He was my professor and senior thesis advisor, so it was an honor to be able to walk the halls of the engineering center with him not long ago to get his current perspective on the university. I think I still have a shirt with the USC logo somewhere in the attic.
It’s a good story about changing the name. But I think it was a poor idea. I still cherish those mugs which say “University of Santa Clara–the TRUE USC”. No one asked me or mine about the name change…
We have an oak chair (with kneeler) from the Mission Chapel with U.S.C. stamped on the back. It’s a treasured keepsake!