It’s 10 a.m. and you can’t find your room key. After 10 minutes of searching, you find it buried under last week’s laundry. You run out of your dorm and make it to class just in time to catch the last 15 minutes of lecture. Having skipped breakfast, you head to Mary Markley Residence Hall to grab an early lunch before you meet friends for a study group at the library. After hours of studying, you make your way over to Hill Auditorium for a concert.

In a typical day, students rush in and out of the buildings that define the character of campus — buildings that stand there because of the University’s major donors and decision makers of yesteryear.

In fact, your residence hall was named after Alice Lloyd, who was the University’s dean of women for 20 years. Stephen M. Ross paid for part of the business school building where you arrived late to class. Mary Markley Residence Hall, where you ate lunch, was built in honor of Mary Butler Markley, who worked closely with alumni. Your study group met in Hatcher Graduate Library, named in honor of past University President Harlan H. Hatcher. You ended your day with a concert at Hill Auditorium, which was built with money bequeathed by former University Regent Arthur Hill.

However, it isn’t by chance that every building you visited today was named after an individual. In fact, almost every building across campus has been named in honor of a prominent University leader or a generous donor.

Naming rights

The staff at the Office of Development determines building and program names following a very specific set of procedures that dictate who can name facilities and the individuals for whom they can be named.

The process of determining who names buildings and facilities in honor of individuals is not simple. Depending on the size, location and use of the facility in question, naming rights could simply be determined by the head of a department or could require a vote by the University’s Board of Regents.

In the case of new buildings, naming rights are often given to the donor who provides substantial financial support, at least 50 percent of a building’s fundraising goal or at least 33 percent of its estimated construction cost. The donor can then request to have the building named after him or her, or suggest a name for the building. For example, donors who gave gifts for the construction of the Michigan League asked that the structure be called the Michigan League. This same situation occurred for the Michigan Union and Alumni Memorial Hall.

The Facilities Naming Steering Committee — chaired by the vice president of development and comprised of the University’s provost, executive vice president for academic affairs, executive vice president, chief financial officer and executive vice president for medical affairs — sends naming recommendations to the University Board of Regents for buildings that exceed $75 million in cost. The regents then must approve the recommendation before the building can be named.

In contrast, the regents are not required to approve names for small additions or expansions to buildings, but the Facilities Naming Steering Committee still must approve the name.

Similarly, regents do not need to approve the naming of small interior or exterior spaces — including benches, bricks and plaques. Instead, the head of the department where these items are located can name them.

According to the Guidelines for Naming Facilities, Spaces and Streets, regents do not need to endorse the names of individual rooms or large interior spaces unless the name is “unusually prominent, sensitive or subject to heightened public interest.”

For large exterior spaces accessible to the public — like plazas, fields and malls — the regents must approve honorific names.