Thirty-two years ago today, McGill students were voting on one of the most crucial issues of the day: whether or not to re-name the University Centre—more popularly known as the Union Building—after the university’s most awesome graduate, William Shatner.

And if you want to know why I have been Persona Non-Grata at McGill for the last three decades or so: it’s because I was one of the ones who spearheaded this initiative.

The story is actually simple enough. I came home late from the Library one night in late January 1992 to a couple of roommates accosting me with ideas for a joke slate for that year’s student elections (joke slates were not at the time a thing at McGill —nothing like they were at UBC, anyway, with its Radical Beer Faction). I don’t offhand remember all the details: something to do with giving away a lot of free food (good) and turning the student pub into a Hyundai dealership to pay for it. But one of their ideas was absolutely stellar: rename the Union Building (actually the “University Centre” but nobody ever called it that) after McGill alumnus William Shatner.

“Hang on,” I said, “we could actually do that one”.

My reasoning was pretty simple. You couldn’t force the university to rename a building. But you could, via referendum, force the Students’ Society to refer to its own building (which admittedly was only theirs under lease from the university) by whatever name you pleased. And because the Students’ Society was the only organization that really referred to the building in practice, that would be the building’s name, whatever the university thought about the matter.

And so that’s what we did. We went out and got the 500 signatures necessary for a student referendum on whether or not to rename the student union building. We were of course quite solicitous of Mr. Shatner’s feelings, and in one of those great late-analogue/pre-digital experiences, we actually got his permission to run the referendum. I called up Paramount pictures from one of the payphones (remember those?) in the Union Building and asked for the Star Trek people.

“Old or new?” they asked. (this was 1992).

“Old” I said. They put me through to the correct line, where I asked how to get in touch with William Shatner. They were, as one would expect, skeptical about why they should provide contact information. “Well, it’s because we want to name a building after him at McGill University”, I said. The old Star Trek folks agreed that this was a good enough reason to out me in touch with Shatner and gave me the address and fax number (did I mention this was 1992?) of his office on La Cienega Boulevard.

At first, Shatner demurred. In response to our first missive, he suggested he was not worthy, suggested that many people—scientists for instance—were more worthy of the honour than him and offered to endorse some candidates. We wrote back to him, begging him to accept our proposal. By that time, we had over 700 students who had signed a petition asking for a referendum on renaming the Union Building after him. But we had also promised him that we would withdraw the referendum if he did not agree to let his name go forward. I remember walking home up Park Avenue—it must have been the 3^rd or 4^th of March—feeling pretty depressed that we had not from him. But then, as I walked in the door, my roommate and partner in crime Kevin snatched up a piece of fax paper from the living room table and began reading.

“Who am I to deny 700 intelligent McGill students”? Kevin said, quoting The Man Himself. Shatner had agreed to let his name go forward, and we were off to the races. Referendum full steam ahead. It should have been a slam dunk. Shatner was BCom 1952, and he’d gone on to captain the greatest ship in Starfleet within fifteen years. How glorious a career was that? We made up ridiculous posters and flyers and blanketed the campus for a week.

In the end, though, the vote slipped through on the narrowest of margins—51% in favour, 42% against 7% no opinion —on what at the time was a record turnout.

The referendum meant that the student union was bound to official refer to it as ‘the William Shatner University Centre,” though this inevitably got shortened to “the Shatner Building” (the Students’ Society now refers to it on its website as “University Centre – Shatner Building”). McGill, not without reason I guess, was reasonably pissed off about the whole thing—folks in the administration thought that offering a building name gratis lowered the value of naming rights at the university generally (which, you know—maybe? Doesn’t seem like that big a deal to explain to donors what happened). McGill tried to play along—hosting him on campus for an episode of CBC’s Life and Times in the late 1990s, and even giving him an honorary degree in 2011. But in the end, as far as I am aware, he never coughed up much in terms of a donation.

Anyways, there is no real point to this story other than: “never underestimate the power of a group of really bored undergraduates.” Which I think is advice which never goes out of fashion.