Employees working out of Charles V. Park Library room 428 are now answering their phones a little differently.

The office, formerly known as the Affirmative Action Office, changed its name Thursday to the Office of Civil Rights and Institutional Equity.

The name was changed to better illustrate the services employees provide, said Matthew J. Olovson, assistant affirmative action officer.

“(We changed it) to be more acceptable, to be better understood as the office to handle discrimination and harassment complaints,” he said.

China sophomore Yanyan Fu thinks the name change met its stated goals.

“I think it’s great. Affirmative action is an older-fashioned name,” Fu said. “It’s more clear. People can tell the function of this office.”

The change had nothing to do with law passed in 2006 involving affirmative action in the state of Michigan, Olovson said. The initiative stated programs that receive state funding could not use that funding for affirmative action programs.

Olovson said there are still federal laws in favor of affirmative action, and the office can still provide affirmative action services with those funds.

“We receive federal funding. We still have affirmative action programs,” he said.

A longer process

While the name change came suddenly to Central Michigan University students, discussions of a modification have been ongoing among university officials for about 10 months.

A proposal to change the name was submitted to the senior officers, and has just now been approved. The office wanted to make clear it provides help to any victim of discrimination of any nature.

Comparable universities have changed their names or have had different names to illustrate similar points.

Western Michigan University’s office is the Office of Institutional Equity, while Wayne State University’s is the Office of Equal Opportunity.

“It’s a trend,” Olovson said. “I think a lot of other institutions that had affirmative action offices have already changed.”

Despite the change, employees will provide the same services to students.

Trenton freshman Adrian Dahlquist thinks the name will not make a difference to most students.

“It doesn’t really matter to me,” she said. “It’s the name of a building.”

E-mail the author: Ryan Czachorski