(Manuel Lopez | Staff Illustrator)

For the past few years, WashU students have advocated for the repatriation of the Robert J. Terry Anatomical Skeletal Collection and the renouncement of its primary collector, former head of WashU’s Anatomy Department and self-proclaimed eugenicist, Robert J. Terry. 

Last Tuesday, the Student Union Senate advocated for the same measures in a resolution addressed to the WashU administration. The resolution was authored by senators and leaders of the WashU Native American Student Alliance (WUNASA) and the Association of Black Students (ABS).

Founded in 1898, the Terry Collection consists of over 1,700 human skeletons. It is one of the most studied collections of human remains in the nation and includes skeletal remains of Indigenous peoples and African Americans. 

WashU students criticize the collection as being unethical because the remains were obtained from individuals who did not consent to donate their bodies to research. Part of the nearly 800 African American remains in the collection were taken from the dead in St. Louis public institutions who were not claimed by family members within 36 hours of their death. 

The issues surrounding the Terry Collection are especially important since the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) “governs the return of Native American remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony to lineal descendants, culturally-affiliated Indian Tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations.”

As WashU receives federal funding, Terry’s critics believe that the remains should be returned to Indigenous groups. Senior Taryn Dixon, president of WUNASA, said that institutions can often find loopholes to avoid returning these remains, but it is unclear whether WashU has been affected by NAGPRA or not. 

The collection continued after Terry left WashU through his successor, former anatomy professor Mildred Trotter. 

In 1967, most of the Terry Collection was moved to the Smithsonian Institute. However, a portion of the collection remains at WashU, some of which has been used for classroom instruction for classes in the Department of Anthropology up until 2022. 

Julie Flory, Vice Chancellor for Marketing and Communications at WashU, confirmed in an email to Student Life that the Terry Collection is no longer used for teaching, research, or any other purpose at WashU. 

SU Senate passed the resolution 17-1, specifically calling for the removal of the collection and its namesake’s legacy from the University. This includes the annual Terry Lecture Series and the Terry Endowed Chair of Neuroscience at WashU School of Medicine. The resolution was approved by SU President Hussein Amuri March 26.

While the resolution was co-authored by some senators, senator and sophomore Saara Engineer explained that the majority of it was written by WUNASA and ABS. 

Dixon said she hopes this resolution is the beginning of WUNASA and Native students’ further involvement in political conversations around campus such as the Terry Collection.

“I hope that this resolution indicates to the WashU student body that Native American students on their campus are invested in receiving a presence in political conversations across campus,” Dixon said.

Since some of the remains are housed at the School of Medicine, some senators said the section of the resolution about the Terry Endowed Chair of Neuroscience at the School of Medicine may be out of their purview. In accordance with SU’s constitution, SU Senate can only legislate on issues that are “affecting constituents and their welfare under this constitution.” 

“I do think that if we are to make the logic that anything impact[ing] undergraduate students falls under our jurisdiction … [then] the powers that we have are made virtually unlimited by the constitution for what we can pass legislation on,” sophomore and senator Jace Slone said.  

However, other senators said that they believed that SU could advocate because the constitution states that their purview involved internal and external matters relating to Washington University.

Senior and Vice President of ABS Paul Scott has been advocating against the continued celebration of Terry since his second year on campus. Scott has interacted with the collection both through his research as a WashU Slavery Project Scholar and through his “Introduction to Human Evolution” class in 2022. 

He said the first step he would like to see from the administration is an acknowledgement of the ethically questionable history of the Terry collection.

“We had an article in [Student Life] three years ago, and that’s the only documentation,” Scott said. “There’s no reference [in the article] of how many skeletons are on this campus, nor the decades and decades where students were forced to interact with these unethically sourced bones.”

WashU students have advocated for the repatriation of the collection and Terry’s name from the University since a Student Life article about the collection and Terry’s legacy was published in December of 2022. 

Over the 2023-24 winter break, the Association of Black Students (ABS) published a series of Instagram posts entitled “Enough is Enough,” condemning the University’s relationship with its students of color and citing the Terry Collection as an example of the University’s transgressions against marginalized groups. 

Last month, the Coalition of Liberated Students outlined nine core missions in their “Telling You Again Campaign,” the first of which is getting the University to return the Terry remains and ending the named lecture series. 

In Chancellor Andrew Martin’s recent State of the University Address, Martin expressed pride in students’ calls for change and said that the activism has been influential on the Naming Review Board. 

“I’m really grateful for the advocacy of a number of student leaders around the Terry collection,” Martin said. “Once that intellectual work is done, this will be an example of students tee[ing] up the most important conversations.”

While the Naming Review Board is currently considering renaming lecture series in other departments, Flory said the University has created a separate University committee that will create a report regarding the Terry Collection and the legacy of its namesake. 

“This is an important and complex situation that will require a carefully considered resolution,” Flory wrote in an email to Student Life. 

To Scott, for the University to remedy the situation, it needs to explicitly acknowledge it first. 

“The first step is an acknowledgement. We can’t talk about an issue that doesn’t exist,” Scott said. “The second step is repatriation.”

Editor’s Note: This article was updated at 10:37 a.m. on Apr. 3rd to better reflect the exact wording of the SU Constitution.