In the summer of 1971, with the initiation of a draft and the demand for manpower overseas, a war in Vietnam raged. The voting age in the country was lowered from 21 to 18. And on the University of Alaska campus a new student union building rose next to historical Constitution Hall.

After students left campus in the summer of 1971, letters appeared on the side of the building that read "William Ransom Wood Campus Center." An entire generation of students has called it the Wood Center.

But if the name had been bestowed in the spirit of service to the student body then the letters on the building would read "Phil Holland Campus Center."

Service was a family tradition for Holland. His father, Denny Holland, was a civil rights leader in Omaha. Phil Holland came to Alaska from Nebraska to work at Camp Denali in McKinley Park in 1963.

At UAF, Holland had a major role in the planning and pre-construction phases of the Student Union Building. He majored in philosophy, and served as the ASUA president in 1964. When he graduated in 1969, he joined the Peace Corps as an agricultural advisor in the village of Rajastan, India.

"I'm overwhelmed by the presumption of a U of A philosophy graduate in assuming he can show Indian farmers how to improve their farms," wrote Holland in a letter in 1970.

Holland planned to return to the United States in the fall 1971 to attend law school. But on February 26, 1971, Holland died of meningitis in New Delhi. He was 25.

Though he had graduated two years before, Holland's death hit campus hard.

"I've heard others call him the most effective student body president the university has seen," Normand Dupre, a friend of Holland's, wrote in a letter to the Polar Star. "I remember him for his maturity, warmth and intelligence…The world owed it to itself to keep Phil Holland alive. Perhaps it just didn't deserve it."

UA Regent Chair Mary Hughes, who knew Holland as a student, remembered him as "a person who had great commitment to the university."

"He was very likable and knew your name," she said.

After his death, the Alumni Association started a scholarship fund in his memory. When the Wood Center was finished, the Memorial Conference Room was dedicated in the memory of all the university students who had died young.

But some thought Holland should have more than just a room dedicated to him, suggesting the whole center don his name.

As the student newspaper, the Polar Star, reported, "Securing funding for the new student union building was one of his major achievements." Building a student union had been a goal of the UA student body for several years.

The student government had lobbied the Legislature for a $4 million low-interest loan to build a student union that would be paid back over 25 years, according to Terrence Cole's history of the University of Alaska, "The Cornerstone on College Hill."

During the 1970 school year, the Student Union Building Board, the committee heading the effort, took a trip to Juneau to lobby for the funding.

Hughes was the chair of the committee. Reflecting on those days, she sees nothing unusual in the naming the new student union for Wood.

"Many of the Board of Regents worked with Wood over the course of the funding campaign," she said, adding that they all had "great respect for each other and for Dr. Wood."

Under Wood, according to UAF's Web site, "the Fairbanks campus gained a new residence hall complex, gymnasium, classroom buildings, a heating and power plant, a library-fine arts complex, and a campus activity center. In 1964, an area was selected on the campus' West Ridge for further expansion, primarily of research facilities." He retired in 1973.

But other students didn't share Hughes' feelings. From his home in Ketchikan, Dupre recalled that there was "a considerable amount of student displeasure with the name." Contributing it as a sign of the times and many anti-establishment feelings, he said.

"Wood was the establishment," Dupre said.

On May 15, 1970, Gov. Keith Miller signed House Bill 838, which established a loan that would fund the center that now bears Wood's name.

Just two weeks earlier, Dean of Students Robert Hillard had submitted a petition to the Board of Regents to name the building after Wood. The petition, dated April 28, carried the signatures of only four administrators, two faculty members and five students.

It was only 11 signatures. Nevertheless, the Board of Regents passed a resolution officially naming the new campus activity facility as the "William Ransom Wood Center."

"It may be breaking precedent to name a building after a man still alive in the University, but this one student revolution with which we agree wholeheartedly," the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner said in an editorial at the time.

The regents participated in the groundbreaking for the center on the afternoon of May 16, 1970.

The naming of buildings on campus is nothing new, but naming a campus building after a person still alive was quite the radical step.

For example, students had a hand in the naming of the Skarland Hall dorms after Ivar Skarland, who died of a heart attack on New Year's Day, 1965. Shortly after students petitioned the administration and Board of Regents to name the new dorm after the anthropologist.

Early namings for buildings were for people important to the discovery and development of Alaska. Buildings all over the current University of Alaska Fairbanks campus are named after politicians, regents, UA presidents, chancellors, and UA scientists. But none had been named for a living person until May 1970.

The Student Union Building Board took a vote to propose to name the building after Wood.

"We knew we were breaking regent policy," Hughes said.

For some, the "Wood Center" was a better name than other drab possibilities. Polar Star managing editor Howard Ringley wrote an open letter in October 1970 that the students wished to see a building named after Wood and the name would be, "better than condemning it to a lifetime of painfully sterile titles such as SUB or Commons."

He did, however, question whether students could have more say in the naming of their own building.

Even two years on, some students weren't happy with the name. In 1972 a protester hung a sign over the entrance of Wood Center that read "Student Union Building," because he felt "the building should have the word student in it."

After delays in the opening of the building and design changes, the building opened in the spring of 1972. It was originally supposed to have three levels, but the third was scrapped during construction even though the staircase had already been built. It thus became a staircase to nowhere.

Today, the Wood Center now features a ballroom and adjoining conference rooms, an eight-lane bowling alley, six pool tables, a darkroom, a multilevel lounge, a pub, a coffee and espresso café, a pizza place, and a large grill and food court.

It also houses Student Activities, Outdoor Adventures, ASUAF and the Sun Star.

While the building never carried his name, Holland might be pleased to know that students didn't get stuck with the tab. In 1980 Rep. Brian Rogers of Fairbanks succeeded in passing a legislature appropriation to take over the remainder of the debt payments for the Wood Center.

At over 25 years old the building is showing its age. In May 2006 a referendum went before the students to upgrade the Wood Center and surrounding structures. If approved, the cost placed on students would have raised tuition and fees by at least $100 a year.

The student body overwhelmingly voted against the measure mainly because it was more of an administration push.

The measure failed due to lack of student involvement, which is the story of the building itself.

In the meanwhile, the Wood Center sits with a name in place, and another that could have been. Dupre might have put Holland's legacy best.

"The world owed it to itself to keep Phil Holland alive," Dupre wrote. "Perhaps it just didn't deserve it."