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UW-Madison Black Student Union Calls For Boulder Removal

Chamberlin Rock Was Commonly Referred To As A Racial Slur

By
Bascom Hall, UW-Madison
Tom Fassbender (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Black students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison want the school to remove a 70-ton boulder from campus because its nickname is a racial slur.

The Wisconsin State Journal reports the rock has sat on campus since 1925. It’s officially known as Chamberlin Rock after Thomas Crowder Chamberlain, a 19th-century geologist and university president.

But at the time of its discovery some referred to the boulder colloquially as a racial slur that was commonly used at the time to describe any large dark rock.

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Black students at UW-Madison also have called for the removal of the campus’ Abraham Lincoln statue.

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