Anheuser Busch InBev

Why "Anheuser-Busch" Hall?

The Current is happy to join with the whole University community in celebrating the Anheuser-Busch Foundation's recent gift of $2.5 million, to underwrite, in part, construction of a new building for the College of Business Administration. While we hope that we may avoid a charge of biting the hand that feeds us, we are nonetheless perturbed to learn that the new building will be christened Anheuser-Busch Hall.
We are constrained to wonder why the new facility will not be called "Anheuser-Busch InBev Hall." That, after all, is the new name of the corporate entity that has contributed, for over 150 years, to the worldwide reputation of St. Louis as the home of what is, arguably, the world's best (certainly the best-selling) beer.
Is the soft-pedaling of the InBev takeover a tacit admission of the bad taste that the beer wars have left in the mouths of St. Louisans? We cannot help but wonder why A-B InBev, and its corporate dependent, the A-B Foundation, have been so studious in ignoring the InBev connection in terms of the Foundation's corporate largesse.
All of this is beside the point. What has caught us off-guard is the fact that the building is to be named for the sponsoring corporation at all. There is subtext to this decision, and we are not pleased thereby.

We understand that the University of Missouri - St. Louis, being a public institution, lacks, to a great degree, the cachet that private institutions of higher education, with their private endowments, enjoy. We appreciate that UM-St. Louis is, in many ways, the red-headed stepchild of public education in Missouri.
We get the fact that, without the charity of a private enterprise, the College of Business Administration's construction effort would be just that much further from realizing its financing goal. We do not feel that the point had to be rammed home quite so bluntly, or so blatantly, by naming the new facility Anheuser-Busch Hall.
If A-B and the College of Business Administration wanted to draw the connection between business education and the business of beer, we submit that a better name might have been "August Anheuser Hall," or "Adolphus Busch Hall," or even "August Anheuser/Adolphus Busch Hall." Any of those choices would have paid tribute to the business leaders who built the brewery that built St. Louis' reputation. Naming the facility "Augustus A. Busch, III Hall," would have at least afforded the opportunity to nickname the building, "The Gussie," the same way the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center is affectionately known as "The Blanche."
We note that the North Campus quadrangle is bounded, on the south, by Thomas Jefferson Library, and on the east by Clark Hall, named for William Clark; on the northeast stands Lucas Hall, named for St. Louis pioneer Jean-Baptiste-Marie Lucas.
We submit, that if A-B and the College of Business Administration wanted to honor the business heritage of St. Louis, they would have done better to name the new building "Chouteau Hall," which would honor the greatest of St. Louis' entrepreneurial pioneers. That, at least, would have maintained the historical integrity of the system by which UM-St. Louis named its academic buildings.
As it stands, we have to wonder whether A-B's gift actually constitutes a charitable contribution, or an advertising expense.



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