Champinefu Lodge, originally known as Avery Lodge, was first constructed in 1966 as a housing cooperative and named after Joseph C. Avery. Avery was part of the board of commissioners for Oregon State College following the designation of Corvallis college as an agricultural college, and his namesake was reflected in the original naming of Avery Lodge. The name was later changed to Champinefu Lodge in 2016 to better reflect the Calapooia tribe and a less violent version of Oregon State University’s history. 

OSU Building Names Evaluation Process

In 2016, Oregon State University engaged in a campus and community-wide building names evaluation process to address concerns citing potential racist and exclusionary views held by the namesakes of four buildings on the OSU Corvallis campus – Arnold Dining Center, Avery Lodge, Benton Hall (and by extension, Benton Annex), and Gill Coliseum. Avery Lodge was renamed to Champinefu Lodge. In the dialect of the Calapooia tribe, which inhabited this region, the word Champinefu is translated to mean “At the place of the blue elderberry.” Blue elderberries are specific to the Willamette Valley and the areas around our campus are where Calapooia tribal members historically would travel to harvest blue elderberries. Phonetically, this name is pronounced: CHOM-pin-A-foo. For more information about the evaluation process see the Building and Place Names website along with the article "When Building Namesakes Have Ties to White Supremacy: A Case Study of Oregon State University’s Building Names Evaluation Process"

Namesake Controversy and Resolution: A team of OSU faculty including researchers, professors, and archivists came together in 2016 to deliberate over several building names that students had called into question due to controversial namesakes. These building names were researched in depth by the Building Names Committee, and resolutions were found for each one. In the case of Avery Lodge, its name was changed to Champinefu Lodge.

Oregon Digital: The name "Avery Lodge" was retained in the descriptions of photographs as well as textual documents.

SCARC: The Special Collections and Archives Research Center holds various collections related to the history of Avery Lodge. A search of "Avery Lodge" produces matches with the Avery Lodge Records, Campus Club Alumni Collection, and the University Housing and Dining Services Records.