In 2008, more than a century after it was first celebrated, the University officially recognized Memorial Day as a holiday by canceling classes.

With similar delay, it is finally honoring alumni who died decades ago while serving in the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

This is a disappointing trend.

Last Friday, at a ceremony attended by U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki, Grad ’76, President Richard Brodhead rededicated the University’s war memorial, located between the Chapel and the Westbrook building of the Divinity School.

Originally dedicated in 1993, the memorial included the names of alumni killed through the end of World War II. Fallen soldiers from the Korean, Vietnam and both Gulf Wars were not added to the memorial’s plaques until last week.

As a university whose mission is to educate students committed to integrity and service to society, it is about time that alumni killed in the line of duty were finally given the recognition they deserve.

It takes an incredible amount of courage and dedication to serve one’s country in the armed forces, and political debates about the merits of these wars aside, the lives of fallen alumni like James Regan, Trinity ’02, or Charles Mason, Trinity ’64, serve as tangible reminders of the price of freedom.

A memorial not only provides evidence of their sacrifice and inscribes each alumni’s name in the annals of history, it also provides a space for all members of the University community—past and present—to pause, reflect, remember and honor.

When alumni were killed fighting in the Middle East in 2004 and 2007, alumni pressure led the University to make rededicating the memorial a priority. But according to President Brodhead, the process of updating the memorial took five years because the University had to locate all of the names of fallen alumni since World War II.

That it took so long for the memorial to be updated to include these names reveals a huge administrative oversight and systemic failure.

University officials should have had a set mechanism in place to record the names of alumni who died in the line of duty, and they should have periodically updated the memorial accordingly. In the future, such a process must be implemented to prevent further decades without recognition of fallen alumni.

Last week’s rededication ceremony, despite its extended delay, was well executed. It provided an appropriate venue for family, friends and students to pay their respects to the deceased, and the presence of Shinseki added to the significance of the occasion.

Events like this show the power and importance of recognizing those who were called to serve. Now that the memorial has been updated, we hope that the need for continued celebrations of the bravery, sacrifice and honor of alumni soldiers does not fall off the administrative radar.

Two weeks from now when the nation pauses to celebrate Veteran’s Day, the University community will at last be able to adequately honor its alumni who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. That’s a welcome change decades in the waiting.