That didn’t take long. The first weekday after Penn announced it was changing the name of its law school to Carey Law, there is a petition with over 500 signatures from students and alumni asking Penn to change the name back to Penn Law. These individuals are worried the name won’t carry the same panache as Penn Law and are concerned about how it will be differentiated from the Carey Law at the University of Maryland. In the school’s defense, they did say it will take a bit of time to get used to the new name. Furthermore, we believe the law firms and courts will immediately understand “University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School” is a T14 institution.
We also believe the petition signers are upset Penn made this decision behind closed doors and didn’t bother to solicit their input. Finally, we believe these students and alumni know Penn is not about to return the $125 million donation and the name change is permanent.
