Richland High School (Washington) - Name Change

Name Change

The school was named Columbia High School, or, as the students called it, Col Hi (pronounced 'cole high'), until the early 1980s. The official name was then changed to Richland High School starting with the 1982-1983 school year. Popular sentiment at the time was to preserve the association between the name of the city and the high school basketball and football teams due to other schools in Washington State having the same or very similar names to Columbia High School. Prior to planning and construction of Hanford School, the initials "RHS" were strongly identified with Columbia High School. Cheers chanted at athletic competitions referred to "RHS", and the letters "RHS" were prominently displayed above the entrance to the school's gymnasium. Some say that the name was changed so that the smaller high-school component of the Hanford K-12 complex then under construction would not claim to be "Richland High School". Regardless, there was very strong feeling about the Col-Hi basketball team which fueled some of the popular opposition to the bond issue which paid for construction of Hanford School through the proceeds of Col cat house. This opposition was most intense in the North end of town whose students would be enrolled in the new school and not at Col Hi. Some of the students who at the time voted against the change claim that the name was changed to avoid confusion with the nearby, and much smaller, Columbia High School in Burbank, Washington. Given the fact that Col Hi had been known as Columbia High School for a long time and played in a different division than the Burbank school, they believed that there was little reason to believe this argument and thus voted against the change. Many alumni from the era still refer to the school as Col Hi.