COLORADO SPRINGS – Colorado College’s board of trustees has agreed to strip a dormitory that opened in 1954 of its namesake, disgraced school president William F. Slocum, who more than a century ago was accused of perpetrating sexual improprieties on female students and staff as well as professors’ wives.

Slocum Hall, at Nevada Avenue and Cache la Poudre Street, is now known as South Hall, and its commons area is South Commons.

“The board finds there is overwhelming and uncontroverted evidence that Slocum engaged in instances of sexual misconduct and egregious sexual assault while he was president of the college,” reads a statement from the board. “Sexual assault and sexual harassment are unacceptable today and were unacceptable in Slocum’s time” and are “in direct conflict with the mission and values of Colorado College.”

In a unanimous recent vote, 26 trustees decided to remove his name from the dorm and rescind the honorary degree that the school bestowed on Slocum in 1917.

Signs in front of the freshmen dorm have a gaping hole where “Slocum Hall” used to be.

“We obviously believe they should change the dorm name,” CC sophomore Ben Schwaeber said Monday, while entering the dorm to lunch with friends. “This sends the message that the school doesn’t stand for that kind of behavior, even if it happened a long time ago.”

The board will initiate a naming process and solicit input from the campus for a new name for the building, after “one or two years,” according to the statement.

“We are waiting a year or two before renaming the residence hall and commons, to put some time and space between the names and allow for a thoughtful consideration of a new name,” said CC spokeswoman Leslie Weddell.

Slocum, an ordained Congregational Church minister, was hired as the college’s third president in 1888. He stepped down in 1917 for reasons that were suspected to be tied to documented accounts of his groping, “bestial looks,” rubbing his body against women, unwanted kissing and lascivious words.

“The Slocum Affair,” as it was referred to in hushed tones, became somewhat of a mystery over the decades. But a 16-year investigation led CC archivist Jessy Randall to uncover the accounts of women who went on the record more than 100 years ago to speak of Slocum’s sexual advances. Last year’s Harvey Weinstein scandal in Hollywood and the ensuing #metoo movement pushed Slocum’s indiscretions into the public eye.

Petitions began circulating last fall, calling for his name to be stripped from the dorm. About 50 students and alumni, and 110 faculty and staff signed petitions.

Randall’s proof led the CC board at its November meeting to propose a committee to “recommend a process for the consideration of the removal of honorary designations,” such as named buildings and honorary degrees.

The process recently was enacted, Weddell said.

“Because the board of trustees bestows honorary degrees and authorizes building names, they have to be the ones to rescind the degree and remove the building name,” she said.

The board also has the authority to confer honors on individuals by naming buildings and spaces, and by conferring honorary degrees.

Local historian Steve Ruskin, who also has researched Slocum, called him a “sexual predator” and “lecherous pig” in a presentation he gave last June at the Pikes Peak Library District’s East Library.

The biggest impact of the scandal was not simply a black mark on CC’s early history, Ruskin said.

“It completely altered the direction of CC, and as a result, Colorado Springs,” he said.

CC had ranked among the top U.S. colleges in the early 1900s and was on track to become a major scientific research institution, Ruskin said.

“The plan was to make it bigger and different, like Stanford University,” he said. “CC had the desire, the endowment, the equipment, and most of all, the faculty.”

But the plan was derailed. The dean who led the investigation into Slocum’s behavior, Edward Parsons, was forced to leave his job for overstepping his boundaries, which in turn led to 22 faculty and staff leaving in protest.

“The college’s world-class scientists fled for less hostile pastures, and with them CC’s dream of being the American West’s main scientific research school,” Ruskin said. “Being a leader in science and technology was the entire early goal of CC directors like (Colorado Springs founder Gen. William Jackson) Palmer and Slocum himself.”

In his 29 years of leading the college, Slocum became a powerful man whom few wished to cross, Ruskin said.

He expanded the student body, increased the faculty members, raised $150,000 – then a huge sum – and accumulated enough money to erect 10 buildings on campus.

“There’s no doubt Slocum did a lot for CC, growing it and making it such a great school,” Ruskin said. “He was such a charismatic person, but his strengths were also his weaknesses; he felt he could do no wrong, and anyone who stood in his way became victims.”

After years of rumors, Slocum’s sexual misconduct came to light in 1915, when several women provided affidavits attesting to what’s known today as sexual harassment and sexual assault.

Because Slocum was one of the private, liberal arts college’s greatest presidents for accomplishing “important and necessary achievements during his tenure,” CC’s board asked CC President Jill Tiefenthaler to form a committee of students, faculty, staff and board members “to recommend ways to represent his full legacy on campus,” according to the board’s statement.

Among the tasks: “considering the appropriate placement of his portrait that currently hangs in Palmer Hall.”

“Consistent with our mission and values, the college should neither ignore his accomplishments nor his disturbing flaws,” the statement says.

Says Ruskin: “While I never like to see history with all its warts be tossed aside, the college seems like it’s trying to balance the good and the bad.”