Pretty soon Hayward will be getting some new signs downtown as part of efforts to revitalize the city center.

These signs are intended to point drivers to “Key Hayward Destinations,” such as the post office, the Hayward Plunge, Farmers Market, Museum, and BART.

Also on the list of key destinations is CSU East Bay, only the signs won’t refer to it that way. Instead, the plan is for the signs to say “Cal State University.”

At first glance, this would not seem to be a problem. After all, CSU East Bay is indeed a California State University, and naming it as such is correct. This, I’ll concede.

But here’s the issue: the choice to refer to CSU East Bay by its former name instead of its current one was a deliberate choice that was born of an eight-year-old grudge against the university for changing its name to California State University, East Bay.

The Hayward destination sign plan was presented at the Jan. 29 meeting of the Hayward City Council. The presentation at this meeting, titled “Hayward Downtown Marketing Efforts & Pathfinder Sign Program” never once refers to the university by its current name. Instead, city council refers to it as “CSU Hayward,” “Cal State Hayward,” and “Cal State University.”

In fact, the only instance in which CSU East Bay was referred to by its current name was in a staff report regarding the plan. Yet, during the meeting Jan. 29, Assistant City Manager Kelly McAdoo publicly recanted this as a mistake.

“I will apologize,” said McAdoo. “In the staff report I said the CSU East Bay Pioneer, but of course we all know it’s the CSU Hayward Pioneer.”

Council member Francisco Zermeno was first to speak after the presentation.

“The Cal State sign will not say East Bay on it, correct?” Zermeno asked. When the presenter said it would not, Zermeno responded, “Good, thank you.”

It has been eight years since the decision was made to change CSU Hayward to CSU East Bay yet the city’s leaders, as well as many citizens, refuse to accept the name has change.

Refusing to accept the name change will not undo it, and by continuing the denial, the city’s leaders are only prolonging a persistently negative relationship between the city and the university.

The reality is, CSU East Bay is a better name because it actually reflects the demographics of the students here.

CSU East Bay is a commuter school, period. While the population of students on campus has grown in recent years, many students come from places outside of Hayward; many come from as far as Brentwood, Martinez, Richmond, and all other cities within the East Bay.

The name change reflects the fact that CSU East Bay serves more than just the city in which its main campus is located. The Hayward hills campus is not the only one; the CSU East Bay nursing program is in Concord, and Oakland has the Professional Development and Conference Center.

As each year passes, the name CSU East Bay continues to be solidified by the students who now attend it; this university is populated with many students who only know it as CSU East Bay, and the community is filled with graduates of CSU East Bay.

Some have argued that by taking a regional name, CSU East Bay has broken a standard practice of being named after the city in which it is located, but this is simply not true. Sonoma State is located in Rohnert Park, and Humboldt State is located in Arcata; these two schools are named after the counties in which they are located. By this reasoning, CSU East Bay could be CSU Alameda.

Why is the city of Hayward the only one complaining? Why isn’t Alameda County complaining as well? Has the name change actually impacted Hayward in a negative way?

Perhaps the city council believes there is a chance of the name reverting to CSU Hayward some time in the near future, and by implementing a generic “Cal State University” sign, they will save money when this happens. I believe it is more likely, however, that they are just being spiteful.

It is time for the leaders in Hayward to accept that the name has changed and to move on. Their time would be better spent attacking the real issues facing Hayward instead of focusing on the past.