Nearly two decades before women won the right to vote, Frances Morgan Swain, wife of Joseph Swain IU’s ninth president, was lobbying IU’s trustees for a space devoted to female students on campus. Now, more than 100 years later, the space she helped build will bear her name.

The renaming of the Student Building as the Frances Morgan Swain Student Building took place Friday, September 23, 2016 on the steps of the building, located between Franklin Hall and Maxwell Hall in the heart of campus, adjacent to Dunn’s Woods.

Speakers at the event included four of the most prominent women on the IU Bloomington campus: first lady Laurie Burns McRobbie, who led the effort to rename the building in Swain’s honor; Provost and Executive Vice President Lauren Robel, who was the Maurer School of Law’s first-ever female dean; Vice Provost for Student Affairs Lori Reesor, IU’s first female dean of students; and Sara Zaheer, president of IU’s student body.