Several students staged a protest on and in front of Porteus Hall in November demanding its name be changed because its namesake was racist. There were chants and speeches, as well as a symbolic hanging of dummies labeled as the races Porteus criticized in his research.

The Board of Regents may decide as soon as January whether to change the name of Porteus Hall.

A number of forums and demonstrations last month revived efforts to change the name of Porteus Hall. Both the Graduate Student Organization and the Associated Students of the University of Hawai`i have passed resolutions demanding the name change, echoing the cries of campus activists over a decade ago.

Both then and now, critics claim late UH psychologist Stanley David Porteus, the building's namesake, was a racist.

"Many students are just now learning about this history," said ASUH President C. Mamo Kim. She said the protests have been successful in raising the consciousness of the campus community.

"We are continuing to push for discussion, and until the name has been removed from the building, we will continue to push for Board of Regents action," she said.

Mamo said one Board of Regents member said the issue could be before the board within its next two meetings.

"If you count this extra meeting in December, that places it on the January agenda," she said.

"It's conceivable," said Cheryl Ernst, university communications director. "But my guess is that it's not for the January meeting."

Ernst said the administration will probably collect input through the end of the semester. Meanwhile, she said, the state attorney general will be consulted on how the matter should be handled according to university policies and procedures.

University president Kenneth Mortimer said UH "should follow through on the ASUH proposal as expeditiously as possible."

Mortimer chose the Porteus issue as the topic for his latest address in Ku Lama, the UH system newsletter.

"What ASUH objects to is the theory he developed of race differences based on genetic inheritance, from which he drew social implications supporting the dominant beliefs of his day concerning race and gender," Mortimer wrote.

He asked for input from deans and department directors as well as students and faculty.

In the meantime, ASUH is also collecting suggestions for the building's new name. The undergraduate senate's resolution, which passed unanimously on Oct. 20, urged that Porteus Hall be given a Hawaiian name "in order to advance the university's stated focus of preserving the native Hawaiian heritage."

Porteus, who died in 1972, is perhaps best known for the Porteus Maze Test, a familiar standard in the field of psychology used to measure intelligence.

However, Porteus was also responsible for several controversial studies, including Temperament and Race, published in 1926.

The assertion that Porteus was simply mirroring the beliefs of his time was rebuffed in 1975 by then political science professor Robert Cahill. In testimony presented to the Board of Regents, Cahill said Porteus' fellow psychologists were disproving his genetic theories as early as 1916.

"Porteus' assumptions and conclusions in Temperament and Race very clearly did not represent the mainstream of American social science at the time he was writing," Cahill wrote.

Cahill also cited a review of the book in the American Review of Psychology, in which Joseph Peterson concluded, "the book may do much harm to the development of psychology."

In it, Porteus ranked the intellectual capacity of various races. Americans scored the best. The Japanese also scored high because of their "planning ability, prudence, and self-control." So high, in fact, that Porteus said "the Nordic strongholds in America and Australia must be developed and maintained."

"To throw them open to the dangers of Japanese penetration, peaceful or otherwise, would be to pursue a policy of race suicide," he wrote.

Other races, meanwhile, were impeded by their distinctive traits, Porteus said. In his studies, Filipinos in particular deviated widely from the norm -- a race he said was still in the adolescent stage of development.

"They are a long way from the stage of development at which they could be safely entrusted with self-government," he wrote. "A single glance at their list of racial defects would be sufficient to demonstrate the wisdom of this conclusion."

These views were cited by those who opposed naming the building after Porteus when it was completed in 1974. Nevertheless, the regents voted to name the 300-room social sciences building Porteus Hall.

The following year, the Coalition to Rename Porteus Hall unsuccessfully lobbied the board to rescind its decision.

More information, including the full text of Cahill's testimony as well as other related documents, can be found on the University aVenue website.

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