Perhaps you’ve seen it — someone in the courtyard of the Shima building muttering under their breath as they look around glaring at room numbers — if you’re a particularly good Samaritan, you might have even walked up and struck up a conversation. Turns out they’re looking for room 161 which… does not exist.
After you briefly consider that you’ve spontaneously swapped universes, you ask to see their schedule, they hand over their phone and you find the source of the confusion, what they read as Shima was actually SCMA.
The SCMA, or Science and Math Building, is the odd building out on campus. Of the buildings at the Stockton campus that are currently standing, it’s the one of the few not dedicated to someone. Its name, a purely utilitarian one that describes its purpose, is a source of confusion for some students especially around the start of the semester.
“It’s constant during the first few weeks back from break, we’ll have students who are looking for a class in SCMA come in asking us where it is,” said Sarah Maimone, who works in the Career Technical Education and Workforce Development Division Office which is located at Shima 217.
Questions from students looking for the SCMA building were so common in fact that signs had been placed by members of the CTE staff in the courtyard of Shima that attempted to point students in the right direction.
“It’s super frequent, especially when we were doing mustang week,” said Maimone, who tabled in the courtyard during mustang week “It was one of the most commonly asked questions besides ‘where’s the food pantry?’”
All this confusion begs the question, How do you fix it?
The most direct way to address it would be to rename one of the buildings, which is allowed by board policy.
According to board policy AP6620, “Any current employee or student of the San Joaquin Delta College community may request to name or remove the current name of a campus facility, planting, or tree, or install or remove a memorial plaque or other monument.”
The application to name a facility on campus is also present in board policy AP6620.01.
Any application that is put through is reviewed by the Heritage Committee, a committee that meets as needed to address the issue of naming buildings on campus.
Even with these rules being present, buildings being renamed on campus are extremely rare, especially buildings already dedicated to someone.
“I will say that it’s pretty rare to have buildings renamed, the original buildings all have their original names, with the exception of a couple,” said Sarah Seekatz, a history professor at Delta College, who did a sabbatical report on building names and their history in 2024.
The Goleman library, Budd building, Cunningham building, Shima building, Holt building and the Locke buildings were all named in 1971 before the buildings were even constructed. Of these buildings, none have been renamed in the intervening years, though the Cunningham building was demolished.
However, a few buildings from this era have been renamed.
“Those that are renamed are the same type that we have with SCMA,” said Seekatz. “The buildings were originally named after what they do instead of for a person.”
Seekatz cited the forums, which were initially named after cardinal directions but were renamed in 2023, as an example of a building that started with non-dedicated names that were later changed.
“It’s a little bit easier, I think, to rename something that doesn’t have a name already but it still is a pretty rare process,” said Seekatz
While the SCMA building fits the mold of having a more utilitarian name, costs remain a limiting factor.
“The campus is slow to make changes in building names because it is costly, it does take a lot of time and energy to fix the maps and fix the signage,” said Seekatz.
When the forums were renamed in 2023, the total cost to change the signage for all of the forms was over $6,000.
Another factor that Seekatz believes is working against renaming SCMA is the fact that across the college systems a lot of buildings are named after donors. So as long as SCMA remains unnamed it leaves the door open for it to be claimed by a donor.
“There is a hope that we are able to have community members to donate to support our campus,” said Seekatz “I think for a long time since SCMA was the newest building that was the hope”
Seekatz, who spearheaded the process to name the Dolores Huerta Plaza alongside professor Lynn Hawley, argued that while the work would be difficult it was also possible and that anyone could start it.
Despite the issues that stand in the way, the path to change is just a single form away. Those tired of the confusion are free to throw their two cents in.
