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His slave’s name was Betty. She is described in a receipt only by her price: 35 gold coins.

The slave owner, Pierre Deyo, would distinguish himself as a member of one of the six families that founded New Paltz, N.Y., a town about 80 miles north of New York City.

Deyo House, a student dormitory on the campus of the State University of New York at New Paltz, was named in honor of him and his father. The names of the other founders — all of whom were slave owners — have graced five other buildings at the college that was established in 1828.

Until now. After months of debate and discussion, all six buildings will be renamed in time for the start of the fall semester.

The school’s president, Donald P. Christian, said his decision to initiate the conversation that led to a recent vote grew out of the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va. The rally began on the campus of the University of Virginia as part of a protest over a plan to remove a statue of a Confederate general from a city park.

“The fact that these names were on residential buildings was one that we heard a lot from students — what it meant for them to be asked to live and eat and sleep in buildings that carried the names of slave owners,” Dr. Christian said.

The decision by SUNY New Paltz follows a recent wave of colleges grappling with troubling histories. Some schools have started projects specifically to explore their ties to slavery, publishing the findings online. Yale University, less than two years ago, changed the name of a residential college that commemorated a 19th century white supremacist.

The chairman of SUNY’s Board of Trustees, H. Carl McCall, a former state senator and comptroller who was New York’s first black candidate to be elected to statewide office, applauded the decision by SUNY New Paltz to remove the slave owners’ names.

“They did participate in this terrible attack on humanity that is a part of our American heritage, and we have to do everything we can to talk about it and to take steps now to show that we do not accept it,” Mr. McCall said in an interview.

The bucolic SUNY New Paltz campus, where the 7,500-member student body is 6 percent black, is nestled in a town immensely proud to be founded by Huguenots — French protestants who fled Europe to escape persecution.

In 1677, six Huguenot families purchased the land that became New Paltz, according to the town’s website. Their handiwork can still be seen on the stone houses that line historic Huguenot Street. A national landmark, the street and the surrounding area is run by a historical society that hosts tours and events. Many of the founders’ descendants live in the area, and their last names still hold clout: Bevier, Crispell, DuBois, Hasbrouck, LeFevre and, of course, Deyo.

Those same surnames appear often in historic documents that reveal transactions for human life.

“In consideration of the sum of twenty-five pounds to me in hand,” a seller wrote in 1790, according to the bill of sale that is part of the historical society’s collection, “doth bargain and sell to the said Ann Bevier a Negroe girl named Gin about eleven years old.”

Three centuries later, Dr. Christian asked the community’s opinion about the dining hall and five residence halls that were namesakes of slave owners.

The school established a diversity panel made up of students, faculty and staff members to explore the issue. The group held public forums, examined how other institutions have handled similar issues and researched local history, determining that the buildings were indeed named after the town’s founders and not their descendants.

N’della Seque, a 21-year-old senior and the president of the student association, said she was moved by the tearful pleas to change the names during forums run by the diversity panel. “That moment right there was what made me realize, ‘No, this has to change,’” she said. “I didn’t see it as erasing history. It was realizing what this history means to certain individuals.”

The panel ultimately recommended the name change, a decision that deeply offended some descendants of the founders.

“It’s unfair to project the moral standards of today onto those earlier generations,” said Robert W. Hasbrouck, 85, a ninth-generation descendant of an original settler.

He is the president of the Hasbrouck Family Association, a nonprofit with about 400 members intent on preserving the region’s history.

“Should we rename or tear down the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial? Where do we stop?” Mr. Hasbrouck asked. “We feel that it’s unjustified, it’s being done as an overeagerness to be politically correct.”

Jennifer LeFevre, whose surname is being removed from a residence hall, had urged the College Council to retain the original names.

“To bow to pressure to reject the town’s heritage simply because some elements of that history are distasteful to some is a disservice to history,” Ms. LeFevre wrote in a letter to the Council.

The College Council passed the resolution to remove the names in a 4-to-3 vote in late February. The buildings will soon feature Native American names that reflect regional geographic features (Shawangunk Hall, Awosting Hall, Minnewaska Hall, Mohonk Hall, Ashokan Hall and Peregrine Dining Hall).

Ilyasah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X and a SUNY New Paltz graduate, said on Twitter that she was proud of the decision.

“This is what community accountability and cultural intelligence working together looks like in real time application. Proud of #SUNY,” Ms. Shabazz wrote.

The Huguenot names will not disappear altogether. The school is hoping to include them in a contemplative space where their contributions are recognized along with details about their slave ownership.

The town’s Huguenot historical society has made its own attempts to implement programming that honors the region’s authentic history. Although the town’s 14,000 residents are predominantly white, the society recently began hosting a celebration of African culture, music and food in honor of Juneteenth. It has also welcomed a member of the Slave Dwelling Project, a preservation organization that conducts overnight stays at sites associated with slavery.

Some descendants of the six founding families had no objection to the school’s decision.

“Enslaved Africans and Native Americans were marginalized for our success,” said Catherine Harris, a LeFevre descendant, in a letter to the school’s College Council.

“Let the renaming of these buildings be one small step in the restorative justice this nation is seeking.”

Follow Corina Knoll on Twitter: @corinaknoll

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