Northern California's Stanford University has announced it will drop the name of a controversial 18th century Spanish priest from two dormitories and its mailing address.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported Sunday that Serra led the California Missions system that helped destroy native culture throughout California. Serra founded the first nine of 21 missions built by Spanish colonists from 1769 to 1823.
Native people were kept as slave labor and punished if they tried to escape.
The university's mailing address is Serra Mall. Two dorms named for Serra will get new names.
An advisory committee charged with making recommendations acknowledged the "sense of loss" that alumni and others might feel at changing the university's main street.
But the committee also said that the Serra name is a source of "genuine pain."
