Oral history interview with M. Elaine Burgess, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: M. Elaine Burgess
INTERVIEWER: William Link
DATE: November 8, 1990
[Begin Side A]
WL: I'd like to start by asking you to remember the first occasion that you came to this campus
and the sort of initial impressions you might have had when you first came here. In doing—
in answering that question, maybe you could provide a little bit of context about your
background and what brought you here—how—what educational or personal or social
forces brought you to this campus and what impact—what impressions you had of Woman's
College of [the University of] North Carolina when you first arrived?
EB: Well, you want to know the absolute first time I saw the campus in passing or my first
contact that was a professional contact?
WL: First—yeah, right—he latter, I guess, the first time.
EB: I guess the first—aside from having driven through Greensboro at some point years before
was—the first time was when I was brought over for a job interview to spend the day with
the faculty, the department. I had been—since I did my doctoral work at [the University of
North Carolina at] Chapel Hill, I had heard things about the college, and what I'd heard had
been quite positive because I had many of my graduate faculty members tell me that
Woman's College was—did perhaps the best job at that time with its undergraduate majors.
It gave them attention, and it had a fine staff, et cetera. Whereas Chapel Hill and some of the
other schools were more interested in graduate students, and at that time they felt that it was
stronger than Wake Forest [University] certainly.
Now my background is from the Pacific Northwest. That's where I was born and
raised and attended as an undergraduate, so I came—I had—between my undergraduate days
and graduate school, I had held positions at the University of Hawaii and the University of
Connecticut, and then I came from Connecticut to the South—to North Carolina for graduate
school, so I'd been here. I was in my fourth year when I came, and I had thought I would
return to the Far West and had been offered a position in a state university out there, but the
president [chancellor] of the Woman's College was a man by the name of Gordon Blackwell
with whom I'd had a graduate course my first year at Chapel Hill. And then he was tapped to
come here and then up here to Florida State [University]. And between Dr. Blackwell and
the Institute for Research and Social Science at Chapel Hill, they put together a package and
offered me so that I would be teaching here, but would be able, at least for the first several
years, to be half time doing—as a research associate there. And I think that attracted me.
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There was a project coming in, and a research grant coming in, and I think maybe that's what
made me decide. But I enjoyed my introduction that day. I remember quite vividly—and I
remember the final part of it, going over to what was then, you know, where the faculty—
what we call the faculty building, whatever it is.
WL: Faculty Center?
EB: That used to be a student coke place.
WL: Soda shop.
EB: Yeah, Soda Shop. They didn't have a—I guess they didn't have a soda shop in Elliott [Hall,
student center] then. And I remember we sat there for some time after the formal part, and it
was a small department. There were just three or four of us that first year, although it was
one of the oldest of the departments in the college. It was founded—I think history and then
sociology and social sciences, but it had always been small.
And the other thing that I remember is that there was a very nice cocktail party at the
home of Dr. Lyda Gordon Shivers, who was the chair at that time. Dr. Shivers was a very
lovely, gracious Mississippian—the first woman from Mississippi to receive her law degree.
In Mississippi her father was a judge someplace, and she also—then she came up to Chapel
Hill and received a PhD in sociology, and she was interested in crime and delinquency.
She had a cocktail party there late afternoon, so that I could meet some of the other
faculty. And they were very gracious and charming people, and I thought, "Well, this is kind
of a nice, you know, community," so I went back and I talked with everybody, and the chair
of the department at Chapel Hill didn't want me to take it. And my advisor wanted—thought
it would be a swell thing to do, so I was being tugged. The department chairman wanted me
to go take the position in the large research-oriented university because, of course, that's
what they wanted. But anyway—and I talked to the senior faculty who'd be working on the
project that they were putting together, and so finally I decided I'd come. And so I just had
this sort of a snapshot sense of the place. I did—you know, because I hadn't spent any time
over here at all, but I felt comfortable with the people.
Oh, and I had met several graduates in the interim in my time in Chapel Hill who—a
lot of the women that I was meeting were professionals or were going on had been UNCG
[The University of North Carolina at Greensboro] grads, and they were quite fine, you know,
so this sort of supported the things that I heard casually the faculty saying about the
Woman's College at that time. So that's it. Nothing dramatic. [laughs]
WL: Tell me more about the department. You say it was a small department, the sociology
department.
EB: It was sociology and anthropology.
WL: Yeah, yeah.
EB: And we had a—and we had a chap who had a PhD from Ohio State University. And I forget
where Richard [unclear] did his work. He had been a journalist and then gone back to get his
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PhD at one of the very strong schools in anthropology. He was a super scholar. And Dr.
Shivers, of course, that I mentioned. And then I came in. Dean [Mereb] Mossman, of course,
was on the faculty, on this faculty, and was still teaching a course every semester. Although
she was—when I started, she was dean of faculty and then she became the first vice
chancellor for academic affairs. And they had some part-time people I’ve forgotten. They
also had had some other faculty earlier who became quite well known, quite outstanding in
their field. So, you know, I felt even though it was small that it had kind of pretty good
substance to it.
WL: Mereb Mossman—was she involved in your interview when you first arrived?
EB: Oh yes, yeah. She was dean of faculty so, yeah, I had a lengthy interview with her. Then she
was there at the cocktail party, so I then met her informally. She was very easy and very
[hesitates]—I thought—I always found her to be a superb administrator. Now, like all
administrators, you've got those who are detractors and her supporters. And, in retrospect, I
think she's even a more superb administrator than I thought at the time. And I don't know
many administrators that don't have those who dislike them, but I at no time ever felt that I
couldn't, no matter what it was, get an appointment very quickly to go into her office and
blow off steam, whether I was a young assistant professor without tenure or what. And I
used to get mad because I didn't think she was paying enough attention to some of the social
sciences. You know we all want more, but I really always had great respect for her, and that
began at the very beginning. My initial contact was a positive contact. So I hadn't been here
very long before I was filled in to that decade before, which had been fairly—not fairly, but
very acrimonious.
WL: Right.
EB: I was so glad that that was past , [laughs] but some of those scars—wounds—were still
lingering, but I didn't pay any attention to that.
WL: Were there still divisions in the faculty?
EB: I think, you know, when you're just fresh out, and you're just kind of getting your feet, you're
not sure, but I felt tensions those first maybe first two or three years in the faculty council
that I later didn't. There were people that no matter what they recommended, there was
another group that would vote them down. And I'm thinking now of Warren Ashby
[philosophy professor and founding director of the residential college], another person that I
had great respect for and got to work with in honors and other things over the years. There
was that early period when no matter what Warren might say, there was a group that would
veto it, including a major in philosophy. I couldn't believe one group had blocked philosophy
major on a liberal arts campus when—but apparently Warren had taken a stand that he felt
was a fair stand, and there were those who didn't— I use that as an example. I mean there
were other things, and I don't mean just to pick Warren out, but I don't think Warren would
mind if I used him because again, you know, I respected him so much and found himself to
be so absolutely fair-minded all the time. So there was some of that. I think there were other
lingering things. I think there were lingering angers with Miss Mossman that's—on some
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people's part.
WL: Which lingered on? I gather there—as you say, there were people I talked to, and I've talked
to a number of people either were very, very much admirers of her or tends to be a group of
detractors—
EB: Oh, yeah.
WL: I guess that's natural, but she does—
EB: Oh yeah, in a sense polar. I think that there was some of this with the dean of women
[Katherine Taylor, dean of students] too, who was very powerful when I first came. And
indeed I found her very difficult myself. I found—I felt she was unfair often with students.
That was just my perception. Again, she has people who, you know, would support her to
the hilt. But I think some of the animosity there probably—there was a—you know, you
could go around, and as I say, I wasn't that aware, but you can't help but pick some of it up if
it's the second most powerful administrator or if it's somebody who is really as first rate as
Warren Ashby was. You sensed, "What's going on here?" But in a little while, I didn't get
that so much. There was a lot of attempt to try to protect one's own turf as far as any changes
in curriculum for a while, but then I began to get a feeling that this opened—and it might
have been that you got a change in some of the personnel, and sometimes that makes a
difference. So that by the mid-sixties, I really got a feeling of kind of a—I'd walk down the
campus, and I'd get a really warm feeling and I'd—you knew everybody, and you'd stop and
talk. Now we got—very soon got a new president, as you know, and he came in with some
ideas to change things and did, and stirred the pot. It probably needed stirring.
WL: This is [Chancellor] Singletary?
EB: This is Otis, yeah.
WL: Yeah.
EB: And the best thing that Otis did was, I think, to bring [James B.] Jim Ferguson [became
chancellor] in as his vice—first as the dean of graduate school and then into—I don't know
what he moved him into—something. But anyway—
WL: He was acting chancellor.
EB: Oh he—yeah, when Otis went to Washington [DC].
WL: Right.
EB: I'm sure that he said, "Let's let Jim do that job."
WL: Yeah. Let's get back to Gordon Blackwell some more.
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EB: Okay.
WL: You worked with him. I suppose he was here—
EB: He wasn't here at all. He was here that spring that I was hired, but he went—
WL: He was gone by then.
EB: —in August went to Florida State [University].
WL: Oh, I see.
EB: So I never was under him.
WL: And didn't know him that well?
EB: Well, I had a graduate course with him my first semester at Chapel Hill. It—one of three
professors teaching a special course in research methodologies, so I knew him that way.
WL: Director of the Institute [for Research in Social Science].
EB: Yeah, but I did not know him in other—another capacity.
WL: Yeah. This is probably a very unfair question, but I wonder what kind of impact you think he
had here?
EB: I don't think he was here very long. Do you?
WL: Wasn't here long enough. No.
EB: I think what he—. Oh, I think what he did is probably exactly what [William C.] Bill Friday
[president of University of North Carolina System] wanted. He came in as a southern
gentleman and kind of put the lid on all this—which it needed it because I think it had gone
on and on, and I think Bill Friday was probably—had about enough of it. [laughs]
WL: Yeah.
EB: Because [Edward Kidder] Graham, [Jr.] had gone, and it just kept going, and I think maybe
Gordon was—might have been selected to do that job before he went on. That's just—I don't
have any proof of that. That's just was my hunch.
WL: Yeah, yeah.
EB: So I don't think aside from that that he had much—
WL: How would you describe his personality—Gordon Blackwell? This might be another unfair
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question.
EB: Ooh. It's hard for me to remember.
WL: You said he's a southern gentleman. Was he courtly?
EB: He's a very—yeah, a very good looking—I thought always handsome and, you know,
dressed very carefully and gave you the—he had the trappings, I think, you know, of a
southern intellectual tradition. I suspect that he could be a very tough administrator. I don't
know. I mean I have no notion. I think he was fairly conservative, but, you know, I don't
know in that short time what to tell you. I just don't—he wasn't like Otis. Otis came in, you
know, phew—[laughs] Daddy Rabbit was all gung ho. Very different.
WL: Yeah. Between Gordon Blackwell and Otis Singletary there was an acting chancellor,
[William] Whatley Pierson, who came in twice as acting chancellor, once between Graham
and Blackwell and then between Blackwell and Singletary. Maybe you don't remember him,
but I was wondering—
EB: Well, I might have been gone.
WL: You might have been gone. This was '62, I believe.
EB: No, I would have been here.
WL: Yeah. He didn't make much of an impact, I guess.
EB: No.
WL: There was a one-year period—
EB: Only that he married—later that the head of the math department married him, I think. That's
the only thing I remember. Yeah, I think I forget her name. She was very powerful on
campus, and she ran McIver Building with an iron hand. The whole—and I mean the whole
building. If she said you were supposed to do this, you didn't do it.
WL: Are you thinking of Donald Anderson?
EB: Oh, I'm thinking of Donald Anderson. Was he the one?
WL: Yeah, Anne.
EB: Anne. Well, who's Whatley Pierson? I haven't the foggiest—
WL: W. W. Pierson. He was dean of the graduate school over at Chapel Hill.
EB: Are you sure it wasn't Don Anderson that came over and did this?
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WL: He was vice president under Bill Friday.
EB: Yes, okay, yeah, sure. Yeah, okay, that's right. Well, then I don't know who Whatley Pierson
was.
WL: Yeah.
EB: That was. [laughs] I missed it. No, I don't remember.
WL: Yeah.
EB: Isn't that funny?
WL: Where was—tell me about the physical location of the sociology and anthropology. This
building didn't exist.
EB: No, we were on the third floor of McIver [Building].
WL: McIver. The—
EB: We were on the—or we had the wing—you go up the elevator, okay. And our bailiwick
went around to the corridor that takes you across over at the ark.
WL: Yeah.
EB: And then down to oh, what was his name—there was just one office and that was classics—
Frank.
WL: Frank Lane?
EB: Frank's office, okay.
WL: Yeah.
EB: And that—and the seminar rooms and so forth in that were sociology and anthro, and then
from—then down from there were colleagues in romance languages, I think.
WL: How did sociology fit into the college curriculum? Did it—were there any required courses
that—did you have large classes? Were they—?
EB: Yeah, I did. For the size of that student body, my classes were large. They were larger than a
lot of my friends were having. Certainly than my friends in history were having—sixty-five
students in introductory freshman American history. They were large because there were
some things that required them.
I'm not sure, you know. I think we were always, you know, kind of working to get
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more inclusion of social sciences and political science and then geography as it came.
Because traditionally, particularly in the South, history sort of had the control of that
bailiwick.
The—as I say, the advantage that we had was that it was one of the—it is one of the
oldest programs on the campus. I wrote a little history—one of those thousands of times we
have to do a five-year plan, so I went over and I dug all—everything out of the library that
they could find for me going clear back. So it was something like 1914, 1915 that we began
to offer courses and bring faculty in. And there was an early time when we had a College of
Arts and Sciences with social sciences and so on, and then that was done away with—but
anyway, I don't—I can't quite remember. I think, you know, there were social science
requirements beyond the history requirements in the curriculum. I'd have to go back and
look. I just don't remember, except that I always had big classes.
WL: Oh yeah.
EB: And we always had lots of majors. And during those early years, we had awfully good
students, lots of student leaders, and well—one of my first students has been mayor pro tem
of High Point. She's a beautiful woman—
WL: Who was that?
EB: —in her forties. Betsy—what's her name? [Becky Rhodes Smothers, class of 1961]. She's on
the council again over there. Oh, I just saw her not long ago. I can't think of it. Of course,
Dorothy [Kendall] Kearns [Class of 1953, MEd 1974) was a major, but she was before my
time. But they were young women who've done very well. All of those women, like Emily
Harris [Preyer, Class of 1939, honorary degree 1977], student body president my first year,
Emily Harris [sic] [Herring] Wilson [Class of 1961]. They were good—awfully good young
women—just very able.
WL: How would you—student life in that period? Let's say in 1960, '61, '62 seemed to have had a
unique set of characteristics to it, unique traditions and unique habits that they followed—
customs that were followed. Indeed, looking at 1960 and comparing thirty years later with
1990, student life seems to have been radically different, a radically different environment
student life. Is that true?
EB: Yeah, yes, no. I think the—much of the sixties, certainly the first half of the sixties maybe till
we were getting into '67. Well, although they brought fellows in in '64, it didn't really impact.
But we began to then get some student unrest, and that thing that happened in the late sixties,
'68, '69.
But I would say that what I found was closer to what they had had for the last—since
the forties. The gals still had all sorts of rules and regulations about wearing apparel. You
know, if they had jeans on, they had to have covered, and they couldn't go to class in them.
You had to be dressed, and you couldn't do this and you couldn't do that. And there were still
penalties for being caught drinking. There were all sorts of penalties, and for reasons why
you could be sanctioned in one way or another. And I suppose I was here, and I heard—
because I began to serve on as a faculty advisor for this or that group. The beginnings of the
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sense of disquiet the young women had with all these super in loco parentis. I mean, it's
really—and so those early days were much more traditional where there was a firm hand and
the dean of women just could put in a lot of controls.
I think this was something—I had a sense that— I didn't know whether it was Dr.
Singletary—it was two strong-willed people fighting each other, or whether he thought that
there was too much tightness. Certainly I think Jim Ferguson was much more concerned
about a lighter touch. And I don't think that ever bothered Mossman. I never felt that it
bothered her one whit—that she was quite comfortable with the loosening. But that came at
the latter part of the decade. Really began to see the change. You just couldn't do that.
This—the kids were certainly not radical as they were at the University of Kansas or at
[University of California at] Berkeley or the University of Washington or Cornell
[University] or Columbia [University] or all those other places. But in their own way, they
were mouthing off and doing all those things. [laughs]
WL: Yeah. Did you notice that in the classroom or the—?
EB: I began to see a change, yes, in the classroom. There was—moving into the late sixties, early
seventies, a lot more yeastiness and a lot more talking and a lot more going on. There were
some exciting times, and students were interested in meeting in faculty homes and going into
lots of things that were happening.
I was teaching race relations. Of course, that was the only course for years and years
on this campus that had anything to do with black-white relations, and I remember having a
class of seventy students that semester and invited anyone from A&T [North Carolina
Agricultural & Technical State University] that wanted to come. And that included a young
man by the name of Nelson Johnson [civil rights activist, minister, member of Communist
Workers Party], who is their vice president. You probably may know. He's been involved in
one way or another. And I invited a rabbi who preceded [Arnold] Trask [Temple Emanuel,
Greensboro], but he was equally good, and I invited some former students, black and white,
who were doing graduate work at Chapel Hill. And the kids—they didn't go home. They just
stayed. It went on and on, you know, and they just were full of it.
And that was—and it was the same way in the classroom. The class period would
end, and they would just go on and on. That of course was an appropriate course, but it was
happening in others too during that time. I thought it was a tremendously exciting, yeasty
time, I really did. And the kids were terrific.
Now a little bit later as we got into the seventies, we got into a pattern that was not
uncommon from Stanford [University] to Harvard [University] and all these places in
between, and that is the attacking—the ugly period of name calling, racist, and this and that.
And we got a little bit of that. And I got a little bit of that.
WL: As a sociologist, sociologist of race, I wonder if you'd mind sort of going back to when you
first arrived here and talk about the presence of black students and the subject of race on this
campus and how, if at all, that changed over, say, the course of that ten years—1960 to '70.
There must not have been very many black students.
EB: Just a handful when I first came.
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WL: Was that course—I presume that course wasn't taught?
EB: Oh yeah, that course had been in—as I say, it's the only one that was on the—
WL: It was on the books when you got here.
EB: On the books and had been for some time, and it had been taught, I think most recently, by
my good friend, Richard [unclear] in anthropology, but he was happy to turn it over to me.
He said, "That's not my—I'm a cultural anthropologist, not that." But I had—from the outset
I had—I always had two or three of those black students, at the minimum, in my various
classes. Some of them were majors. But those who weren't, of course, were interested in
finding something they could feel attached to.
The first two years I didn't get to know the black students very well. They were—
then they were very highly selective, of course, and I think one of them I think I did have in
class is—she—I went to the McIver program workshops. I went to the first morning, first
day this fall, and she was chairing it. I don't know whether she's an alumni officer or the
chairman of that program, but she's a very, very attractive black woman, and she was a
student here in '60, '61. And she's one that was in a class that I didn't get to know because it
was a sizeable class. It wasn't a race relations class, by the way. It was something else.
WL: Yeah.
EB: Now, early on some of those youngsters felt comfortable about—because we talked, and
when you're young, a young faculty, it's—you get rapport. And often after class I'd walk over
with them to the soda shop, and we'd sit on the steps and have a coke and keep talking about
whatever. Soon some of those black students along with some of the white students that had
been—they had befriended, either in class or in the dorms, would come into the office and
hang around the offices after class, so I got to know them. So that they felt pretty
comfortable. So I picked up—we began to pick up things. Of course, the administration had,
as you probably have been told, segregated the first black students in the dorms. Well, they
resented that very, very much, of course. And then—
WL: That was still the case in—
EB: Well, I think it was probably still the case my first year or so—that I think that stopped soon
after I came. I didn't hear any more of that. I sometimes heard concerns or hurt feelings
because when they would walk across campus, particularly in the week—. And sometimes
the gals' boyfriends who'd come on campus would make racist comments to them, and that
was kind of hard to take. I think that they felt a sense of isolation, because there was such a
small number of them. And I think they were always happy to find a faculty member or
another white student that could join this small group, so they felt like they weren't being
surrounded by the enemy. It was kind of hard.
But these were, for the most part, very able youngsters who—a lot of them went on
to graduate work. I had one young, beautiful young woman. She was an English major.
Diane Oliver [class of 1964]. She received a fellowship to continue. She went into creative
writing. And she—I think she studied with Bob Watson [Robert Watson, English professor],
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that group, and they saw that she got a good, good scholarship to Iowa. And she had her first
short story published in the Red Clay Reader. Shortly thereafter she was killed in an accident
there. I had her. She took two courses from me just because I gave her a chance to feel
something about being black. So there was a—there were good people.
I remember then early on—I don't know, I had a—the beginning of some of the
demonstrations when Otis was still on campus, so what would it be—pre-'65? I forget when
he went up to Washington. Anyway, A&T was demonstrating and some—a few of our black
students went, and one particularly feisty one went, and she was thrown in jail. And she was
thrown in jail at the beginning of our final exam week, and she got messages to me by way
of her roommate, a young student who was a major (and a very good one) that got a
fellowship to Washington University in St. Louis to work on her doctorate. Anyway, Gwen
gave me word, and I remember going over to the dean of something, who was at that time
Laura Anderton [associate dean, College of Arts & Sciences, biology professor]. I forget
Laura did that for a couple of years. You know who Laura is?
WL: Yes.
EB: She may have been the first dean of—academic dean or something. Anyway, I went to
Laura, and I said, "Laura, I've got a student. She's a senior. She should not be penalized.
She's in jail for standing on what she believes because all the kids who were—it was passive
resistance, and she went in. I want to be able to either give her her exam, if she's going to be
in there for several days. If she wants to take it then, I'll wait and waive it and not turn in a—
." So she said that she—that sounded reasonable, and she'd check with Otis. I don't think Otis
was very happy, but I said, "Laura, if you say 'no' to me, I won't take it. I won't accept 'no.'
There's no way I will accept 'no,' and I want you to tell the president I will not accept 'no.'"
So, I don't know what they thought I could do, but [laughs] you know, I might have called
the Greensboro Daily News, who knows. But anyway that worked out. And I didn't give her
the exam the kids had. I asked her to use that experience in jail to tell me how she as a black
student at a white college was relating what was going on. It was terrific. So there were these
kinds of things.
WL: Who was that student? Do you remember?
EB: I can see her, but I can't pull it. I'd have to go back to my roll books which are all under here
and pull it out. I just can't think of it. Her roommate was Gwen Jones, and I can think of
several of them, but—
WL: I'd be interested in knowing her name, since I didn't realize there were any students from
here that participated there. There were, in addition to her—
EB: Oh yeah. Oh well, in addition to that, I gave students permission to use—to put their picket
signs in the corners of the seminar room that I used in McIver [Building] for both for my
research methods and my race relations because they would go after—one of the classes was
an afternoon class out at about 3:00 [p.m.], and they would go directly there down to the
corner to picket, and they didn't have any place to put them. And I said, "Well, sure you can
put them here." And another time after class—
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WL: This was picketing actually the segregated facilities—
EB: The facilities—
WL: —right here on Tate Street?
EB: —on the corner. And another day they said, "Dr. B, would you do something for us?" And I
said, "If I can." Said, "Would you take a—the whole class down to the Apple House for coke
after class?" I said, "Sure." And then I smiled and I said, "Okay, I got it." Because there
were three blacks in there, so we all went, and we sat down, and they first ignored us and
then finally somebody came over and started talking. I said, "Before you say anything, I'm a
member of the faculty. This is my class. If you don't serve all of us, I will be sure to let every
faculty member know and every student know that this place is off limits." So they served
us and that was—that broke it.
WL: You desegregated it?
EB: Yeah, it was easy, you know. Then the—but the kids were the ones that were doing it. They
were brave. And they were so disciplined because they were frightened ‘cause the Ku Klux
Klan would come rolling up. And they were never in danger, but they didn't know. You
know, those early days—those young Southern gals. That was a pretty big step. So there
was a little of that going on, and I got to see it. And I was, you know, I felt they did a nice
job. And they organized it.
WL: Did the numbers, I gather the numbers of black students increased by the end of the decade.
EB: Yeah, yes, each year.
WL: So let's say by the late 1960s, there's—although not a large number of black students,
significantly larger than had been.
EB: Yeah. I—you know, because the total student body still was what—we were growing from
2,500 to 3,500 to 4,000, so there were always black students—were always a presence in
McIver Building because of the programs that were over there. They were all taking history;
they were all taking language; they would take, electing to take, they were taking English;
they were taking poli[tical] sci[ence]; they were taking soc[iology]; they were taking
anthro[pology]. So there were—I saw probably more than maybe some disciplines, you
know. I don't know what they were seeing in home ec[onomics], for example.
But they began—they continued to grow. And they began to be—to voice their
anger, and then when I returned from the University of Kansas, they had just developed,
organized their Neo-Black Society. And their first president had been a young black student
I'd had before I left as a freshman. She was a senior. I'd had her in a freshman honors section,
and she asked—she was an art major. But she asked Dean Mossman, Vice Chancellor
Mossman if I—if she could get permission to ask me to direct her senior thesis in which she
wanted to combine her art with kind of a social commentary about what was happening. And
13
so Dean Mossman wrote me at Kansas before I had returned—when I had already told the
chancellor I would and asked me if I would do that, and I said I would, and so I did that. And
that was a very exciting thing. And that Neo-Black Society was the beginning of a new kind
of tension then. They were fining themselves, and sometimes they wouldn’t speak [laughs]
to the whites, and they were segregating themselves somewhat over at the commons and
so—but that was when they were beginning to find their voice as they moved into the
seventies.
WL: The Neo-Black Society was organized as a sort of an expression of—?
EB: Black caucus.
WL: Black caucus?
EB: Expression of—
WL: Consciousness?
EB: Consciousness, black power, black pride, “black is beautiful,” soul—the whole gamut of
strategies that had begun to emerge within the black community, particularly among the
young.
WL: Were you—did you—were you here after the cafeteria strike? Did you—?
EB: Yes.
WL: —you returned after that?
EB: No, no, I was here.
WL: Oh, during it?
EB: I got back just as it started, yeah.
WL: What do you remember about that?
EB: I remember walking the campus at night with [James B.] Jim Allen [Presbyterian campus
minister, vice chancellor of student affairs], Warren Ashby [philosophy professor], some of
the students—Shirley Flynn [dean of students for residence life], who was the—I think—I
don't know whether she was the dean of women back then. Some of the other people—we
were on a committee the chancellor had appointed to analyze race relations on campus. That
was hard to do. It wasn't a good thing. [laughs] But anyway we had a meeting in the library,
and then we went out. I remember that night. And I remember during the day, you know,
trying to be sure that things didn't get out of hand, particularly because the police kept
wanting to come onto campus. We didn't want them on campus. That wasn't what was
needed. But I remember that well.
14
WL: Was there much of a campus police force at that point?
EB: No.
WL: Yeah.
EB: A few campus cops. I bet four, maybe. And they'd been around forever, you know.
WL: Yeah.
EB: Kind of typical. And I remember the committee that Jim Ferguson appointed: Harriet
Kupferer [anthropology professor, Class of 1943] and [Robert] Bob Calhoon [history
professor] and Henry Frye [chief justice, NC Supreme Court, first African American justice],
I forget who else. It was a good group, and I can remember they were in there meeting
morning, noon and night. And then I talked to one of them, you know, afterward to see what
was going on.
WL: These—a similar sort of thing was happening on a lot of the campuses in North Carolina.
EB: Yes, Chapel Hill.
WL: Chapel Hill.
EB: Very much involved. I don't know what was that much was going on in Raleigh, but that
could be simply because I wasn't paying any attention. I always knew what was going on in
Mecca, in Chapel Hill [laughs] and here.
WL: And A&T, of course.
EB: Well, of course, A&T. And of course, A&T—what was happening here was not separate
from what was happening there, as you well know. We had a lot of those people working our
food service that were A&T kids, I think, and plus probably some of the catalysts were from
the Nelson Johnsons over there saying, "Hey why don't you guys get on the stick. Don't you
see what's happening—hat the state doesn't even have a minimum wage? They're not even
paying national minimum wage," all this. And in effect kind of fired the guys up. And I
suspect that some of those kids from over there were over here helping organize. It would be
very odd if they weren't. I mean—that was—of course, that's the name of the game.
WL: How would you describe the conflict over the—the conflict involving the strike? There
seems to be more than—there were certainly more than two parties involved. Correct me if
I'm wrong, but there seems there were a lot of students who were sympathetic perhaps to the
strikers.
EB: Yes.
15
WL: The strikers themselves, the administration, the ARA [Food Service], managing—
EB: Yes.
WL: —and there were perhaps the people in the city who wanted all this campus turbulence to be
settled to an extent. I mean to the extent that they were involved at all. How did these—all
these groups work together?
EB: Well, the students that probably didn't care one way or the other were fairly irrelevant at that
moment. They didn't —they weren't out there trying to do anything to stop those students,
and you—your leaders came from your student government. The student body president ran
the what's her name?
WL: Bryant.
EB: What?
WL: Randi Bryant [Class of 1969].
EB: Right, yeah, Randi Bryant was out there. And one of the things that we hoped is that Randi
would keep her head on her shoulders. [laughs] No, for a while the students perceived Jim,
who was the epitome of the administration, as the enemy. And, of course, Jim was not the
enemy. Jim was the one that had to pull the groups that you mentioned together to be sure
they were meshing. And it was a slow process. You know, it wasn't—it couldn't be done just
overnight. He had to—but he did act. He acted very fast. He put in a first-rate group of
people—
[End Tape 1, Side A, Begin Side B]
EB: —afraid there might be a little damage to Foust [Building] that one night, and then they were
going to march on Jim and get kind of a—I think—I guess they did march on Jim and
Frances [Jim’s wife]. But they finally, I think, realized that he wasn't blocking anything they
were doing. He was trying to organize. And you had to deal with ARA. Was it—were we
with ARA then? I've forgotten.
WL: Yes.
EB: We had to deal with them, and there were also some state laws involved and we had to get
that going. And I think as a whole it went fairly rapidly, and I don't think—it just seemed
like a long time—three or four or five days. The townspeople, I don't know what they
thought. I was—everybody who cared were so involved with what was happening here that
we didn't pay any attention.
WL: Yeah.
16
EB: My recollection is that the newspaper was sympathetic—that there wasn't anything. But then
I've found from the moment I got here that that paper had a sympathetic, very sympathetic
voice to race relations. In fact, I was told when I first went to Chapel Hill that, at that time (I
don't know that they'd say it today.), but at that time the Greensboro Daily News was one of
the best state papers. That they thought it was a good, solid paper—been run well. It was still
not owned by an outside group, but—and I think it still is a good paper, but I think it was
better then. So that would be the only thing I would know from the outside, and I think they
were was quite sympathetic.
WL: The cafeteria strike has been described by some people as Jim Ferguson's greatest challenge.
Do you think that's an overstatement, or was it perhaps the greatest crisis of his
chancellorship? Is that accurate, or do you think this was a case in which his rather
distinctive leadership abilities came to the fore, or—
EB: I don't think that it was his greatest challenge. It certainly was his most volatile, emotional
challenge. I think Jim faced a lot of different kinds of challenges. I think this was a hard one
for him because here's a person who devoted his life to the cause of racial equality, and I
think it always hurts—I remember how it hurts when somehow—suddenly out there
somebody's perceiving you as some kind of a racist or bigot simply because you're not just
jumping and ranting and raving, you know, instead of trying to think things through. So in
that sense, maybe, it was heart wrenching for him, but I think Jim faced an awful lot of
challenges over his tenure of various kinds that weren't as dramatic.
WL: Such as?
EB: Well, gosh. [laughs] I think the whole problem of growth and change in new directions was a
major challenge for him and attempting to keep this a community of scholars while it grew. I
think that was major challenge, and I think he did that well. That cause I think was lost soon
after—began to be lost soon after he stepped down.
He was challenged to continue a job for a number of years while his wife, Frances,
was in and out with cancer, and they had been a terrific team, and that was very difficult.
And he never showed it, and he, at the same time, he had his first bout of surgery that
ultimately led to the cancer that he died of. Those were challenges that he faced, and we
didn't see—he was just there for us.
So there are lots of different kinds of challenges he faced. I suppose one of the
greatest criticisms of Jim was that he didn't get enough money out of the budget for us, but in
retrospect I think he did a lot better than has been done. And the other thing is that he was so
highly respected by Bill Friday, the whole university administration, the whole state. I mean,
he was a real intellect, a real man of education.
WL: He seemed to have a close relationship with Bill Friday.
EB: Oh, very, very close, and the legacy that he left, if we had followed it, could have made a
real difference. I mean the groundwork was there. But yeah, the race thing was a hard one
for him. But he had others, and he handled them well.
17
WL: I wonder to what extent someone like Bill Friday would have contact with this institution,
with Woman's College or UNCG. We—nowadays as a faculty member, I came into this
university here in 1981. I gather that the president of the university, Bill Friday, and then
later [C.D.] Spangler occupied a different position, say, thirty years ago. It was more of a
regular presence or—
EB: Oh you mean Bill Friday?
WL: Bill Friday, yeah.
EB: Yes, oh yes.
WL: Was he on campus a lot? Did you see him?
EB: Yes. He came periodically and spoke to us in faculty meeting over some major issue. I
remember the—following the '64 opening he came and talked with us about the blueprints
for the three campuses that would be major research grant and advanced degree granting
institutions and how that would work. As I say, the blueprint was there, and Jim Ferguson
helped set it. We just, you know, we lost out. We lost our preeminence as the three Triangle,
big brother, little brother and little sister and—but we had it under Jim. And he very often
was here for Commencement. Not until the eighties did he begin to get substitutes, or no
longer he came.
WL: Did he—he must have known a lot of the faculty here too?
EB: Bill?
WL: Bill, yeah.
EB: I expect he did. Yeah, I imagine he did.
WL: That doesn't seem to be Spangler's style at all, really.
EB: No, I don't think Spangler's ever been over here for a faculty or a Commencement, anything
like that that I know of.
WL: I think he was over here once last spring.
EB: Was he? See I wasn't here so I—
WL: Yeah.
EB: —I have to be careful to say never because [laughs] when you're in and out with leaves of
various kinds you miss out.
WL: Yeah.
18
EB: So I, you know—and I think all those other administrators in the Consolidated [System of
the] University [of North Carolina] office had strong ties—like Don Anderson [vice
president, Consolidated System of the University of North Carolina] and all those—and were
friends, and I suspect there was some socializing back and forth, you know, from time to
time. So that was a strength for the campus in those days.
WL: Did you have any kind of—coming in the early sixties, did you perceive that this was a
place—institution that was undergoing a transition? Was there a feeling on the part of—
perhaps even anxiety—on the part of the faculty about what—?
EB: I think there—I didn't, of course. I didn't. It was imperceptible, but I think there was some
anxiety of a few of the old faculty when Otis had been here a couple of years and was
stirring things up a little bit, and I think it quieted down. I think the—I noticed it when Jim
asked me to come back because they were beginning the big move in ours, and they had
brought in—were bringing in some very fine people: Wayne Thompson [sociology
department] from Cornell [University], the chair, and [Edward William] Bill Noland
[University Distinguished Professor of Sociology] was one of—a Burlington professor, and
Dean Mossman gave me the go ahead to call my good friend, Joe Himes [sociology
professor], and see if he might be interested in coming over as a Alumni professor, and he
was. They began the graduate program and began to see history grow its graduate program,
and English, and psych[ology], and those kinds of things then were really big steps that were
coming in the seventies. Whether that frightened some people—a lot of people were
unhappy about the making it coed—
WL: Yeah, yeah.
EB: —but that was—we didn't have any say. We didn't have any say. That was just, you know,
the new law. [laughs]
WL: Yeah.
EB: You couldn't have state universities where they were sex segregated. And I suppose I remain
neutral on that. I had gone all my life to coed colleges and universities, so it wasn't anything
new to me. But I really respected the feeling—the special quality of women and men's
campuses, and I just—but I just, you know, thought, what, you can't get exercised. That's
foolish.
WL: Yeah. Did—tell me more about Otis Singletary. And he had, I gather, a somewhat
controversial style that, again, tended to either attract people to him or—I gather he had a lot
of supporters. I mean, I've talked to plenty of people who were great admirers of him. Maybe
they are in retrospect more than they were then.
EB: Probably.
WL: Did he stir things up to the extent that he alienated faculty?
19
EB: I don't know that he was stirring faculty up, but he sure—stirring some of the administration
up probably, and I think he stirred a few programs up. I think he thought there were some
things that could be cut out or consolidated and so on to make way for other things. And I
think he wanted the emphasis to grow on academic excellence, and he encouraged
publication and that might have looked like he was playing favorites for some. He was
willing to go to some lengths to keep faculty that he wanted here, and that may have caused
some little acrimony—I don't know. His style—he's such a handsome dog—but he wanted—
he was—he didn't have patience. He didn't suffer fools. He wanted things to move and he
wanted them to go his way, but that didn't mean you couldn't make your case—that he
wouldn't listen. That wasn't true. But I think he was a very ambitious guy, and there was a
lot—he got all things going, and then he popped off to Washington for that thing, and back
and forth and that probably upset some faculty. I think there are those faculty who had not
been here long who probably saw him as a really terrific potential for change, but he
wouldn't have stayed here no matter whether he'd gone to Washington or not. He was—this
was a stepping stone for him and that makes perfect sense. He was a young man with great
abilities, and he went from here back to [University of] Texas for a higher position, and then
to [University of] Kentucky. He's had a few—taken a few lumps at Kentucky—
WL: Yes.
EB: —over the years. But he didn't—this wasn't going to be just a nice little Southern liberal arts
campus. “You're going to publish. If you're going to publish, I'll see if I can get some money
to underwrite the university press that's going to do it for you. If you're going to do this, and
you're being—beginning to get some feelers about other jobs, I'll see if I can get you that
raise and rank and get you a little salary increment—bigger.” In those days, we didn't go
through—the rules of governance were a little bit different, you know.
WL: So these things were done informally, were they?
EB: Yeah, well, they had the various committee structures, but the—it was quite easy to
manipulate those, I suppose. Anyway, he probably was considered confrontational by some.
But others I think felt this is just what the doctor ordered.
WL: The department of sociology became the department of sociology at some point along here,
breaking away from—
EB: Oh, the sociology and anthropology?
WL: Yeah.
EB: That came under Alvin Scaff [Excellence professor of sociology and anthropology], who
was the—had come to us—he had been the dean of graduate school at Iowa State
[University], and he came here wanting to get back into straight soc, and he was a terrific
guy. Again, I was on leave [laughs] the year this happened. And I don't know what it was. I
guess it was a squabble over who got the next faculty position in a faculty meeting because
at that time we were getting a lot of faculty positions. Everybody was growing and quite a
20
bit. I think most of us have shrunk from those—the heyday of the late sixties through to the
end of [Chancellor] Jim's [Ferguson] tenure. He was really pushing to get that. He did a
terrific job of getting salaries up, being competitive to bring in strong candidates. Those were
the days when we didn't have to—every position didn't have to be filled with a beginning
assistant— that we had money to hire good name people. We could get them and things like
that. And I think it came over probably—that split in the department came finally over that,
and I think Alvin just thought well, the best way to do this is just let there be—I'm not sure
that was smart. I've talked with Harriet Kupferer [anthropology professor and department
head] about this a few times, but the other people in anthro wanted it, and I don't think either
of us have blossomed as much as we'd like to get it together, but that's okay. This same thing
happened to poli sci and history. They were ready, and they'd been together for years and
years.
WL: When did you move into Graham Building? That must have been a major change.
EB: That was—well, that was completed in—It was—. Wayne Thompson was brought in to
head the [sociology] department from Cornell. He had—he was a full professor at Cornell
and had been the head of their research institute. That's the kind of person that Jim was
attracting—really some good people. And Wayne got here before we finished it because he
was able to make some changes. It must have been 1970 we moved in here. Both McIver and
Graham [buildings] suffer from the rabbit warren syndrome for these things that I didn't see
repeated in the Ferguson. My colleagues in that thing over there have decent—but—
WL: The cinder block—
EB: Yeah, but I think there was a choice. If your money is never as much as you need, you
choose to either lay new brick walks and elaborate facades or you put the money into the
academic, and I think Jim did this. We had more money for buying films, for bringing in—
we had funds to bring in visiting, distinguished professors. I know they brought a marvelous
guy in for a semester from the University of Rhodesia. Other departments did too—visiting
dignitaries. So as far as I was concerned, I could live in this kind of thing if you had the other
kinds of things with students and stuff.
WL: He was a very faculty-oriented sort of person?
EB: He was very faculty-, very academic-oriented.
WL: And so rather than facilities, he was concerned with—
EB: No, and also the size of the administration didn't just burgeon, triple, quadruple. It was a
pretty sensible size, and you knew what the administration office's role was and what they
were doing instead of—you know. So, you know as I saw it, those were the best of times,
and I saw it again last year when I was on a very, very wealthy, very fine liberal arts campus.
The administration remains in some kind of sensible size, and the faculty and the students
get the big goodies, and there's a sense of a community of scholars, and the president is
approachable, and other administrators are and they're concerned about ideas. I think we've
21
grown and kind of lost some of that. That's—
WL: Do you think that's a function of size, or—
EB: Well—
WL: —of style of leadership?
EB: I think it's style of leadership. I don't think size—it has to be size. I think that we've got a
different style. We've got different goals. They're not idea—academic-idea oriented. The
intellectual climate of the administration is nil, as far as I'm concerned. They're interested in
appearances, interested in making the campus more attractive from their lights. They've been
very interested in building business administration in their ties, way out of proportion to
what the rest of the campus is getting. And that's not just unique to this campus, but it's tragic
for this campus, I think, because it's take [sic] a long time. I think that as a consequence
we've brought in a great number of very mediocre kinds of people in administrative
positions. God knows what three-fourths of them are doing, but they’re doing something,
and I don't think that the faculty's particularly respected.
WL: As much as it was?
EB: Oh, no, no. And I don't see departments getting any the kinds of funds for enrichment that
we once had. Just get nothing. Our budget isn't—the budget—I don't know what history gets,
but I'm sure that if you compare what you were getting in 1972, 3, 4, it wouldn't be anything
like is certainly true here.
WL: In terms of—?
EB: Compare—you know, you've got to look in terms of get it in perspective. Number of
students, number of faculty. But this is happening in a lot of places, I think.
WL: Yeah.
EB: Higher education has gone through a lot of convolutions, some trauma. Maybe we could be
on our way to a new phase, I hope.
WL: Do you think the—what sorts of things occurred in the transition from Mereb Mossman to
Stanley Jones [vice chancellors for academic affairs]? And I gather Chancellor Ferguson
must have delegated a considerable amount of authority, and that's a very powerful position.
EB: To Mossman and Jones?
WL: Yeah. To Mossman and Jones' position.
EB: Yes, and I've never thought of it, but in retrospect I didn't see that much. They were very
different, and I could get madder than the dickens at Stan. I was on his committee—selection
22
committee, too. [laughs] But he was firmly committed to quality education, to higher
education. He was firmly committed to the state university systems. He saw this system in
this state as a very honorable thing. They both used Paula Osborne [Andris, class of 1944],
who was the connecting link through many generations as their administrative assistant. She
knew things about what had to happen when they didn't. Just as the woman that went out
when Jim retired as his administrative assistant had known through a number of persons.
Those two were such—there were such continuity, so that I didn't—
I never thought of it as a matter of style, perhaps, but as far as policy. Now we were
growing and under Stan, we were growing pretty rapidly, doing a lot of hiring. He seemed to
want more hands-on on some things, and he was delegating authority to the first dean of the
College of Arts and Science since modern time. And so you were getting—that was one new
layer, but it was necessary because of the size of the college. So there was some feeling that
we had to go through a few more bits of bureaucratic red tape than we did, but it was
nothing, really. So I don't really—I don't see that—
WL: So Stanley Jones wasn't really interested in building up a bureaucratic empire?
EB: No, I don't think so.
WL: Yeah.
EB: I never felt that. He didn't have five thousand assistant associate things. We had same—we
had the head—[Dr. John W.] Kennedy, who was the head of the graduate stuff.
WL: Right.
EB: And we had Bob [?], but I think we did—I don't think, I think the dean of college was in
place before Stan came in. I don't remember a lot of building up. There might have been a
few more assistants or secretaries, but there wasn't a big—he was interested in making—he
wanted to bring in good people, and you had to fight and you had to make your case. But I—
WL: Do you think—I've heard specific criticisms of Ferguson have been—to the extent that there
have been criticisms—have been directed toward the question of facilities and deterioration
of facilities that took place. There's also been a good deal of criticism about Henry Ferguson
and the way he ran business affairs. How would you react to that? In other words, in shifting
off all the resources to faculty, the physical plant—
EB: Well, that isn't quite fair because I remember the budget requests that went in for plant. And
they were there. The requests for—to upgrade the dorms, or upgrade this, or to do that. We
got the budget through in the new wing on the library, the money for this building; the
money for the Ferguson Building was on the books. The money for some of the renovation
of education may have been on the books too. But by that time, we were—we weren't just
competing with Raleigh [North Carolina State University] and Chapel Hill.
Now, remember what Bob Scott—when Bob Scott was governor, he did a terrible
thing. He threw everything into the kitchen sink and said this is what it's going to be now. So
you then had suddenly you had the university at [UNC] Charlotte and [UNC] Asheville and
23
[UNC] Wilmington and East Carolina [University]—very, very aggressive, taking funds that
had—we might have had a better crack it, you see.
WL: Yeah.
EB: So this was a really difficult time. So I don't know how much to say that—it wasn't that Jim
wasn't paying attention and that he wasn't getting stuff ready to move along. The Ben Cone
[Cone Mills family] gift [with wife Anne, named building that houses Weatherspoon Art
Gallery] on that came by way of Jim. It didn't come by way of the present administration. He
wouldn't—Ben wouldn't have given the present administration two cents. That was already
in the pipeline. So you have to see what was happening, and then these things take time. But
yeah, he didn't probably—well, he was only charging us something like ten dollars or twelve
dollars to park. And he was putting—when he put the new parking lots, he didn't think that
we needed to be charged the money—that that would take care of it. Well, what are we
paying now? I don't know, a hundred [dollars] and something?
WL: Yeah, a hundred and twenty [dollars].
EB: And the community is now very angry because they have to—are charged if they
come up for something.
WL: Yeah.
EB: I never heard of such stupidity. I don't know a university in America that does that. Henry
Ferguson, like all—so I'm going to say, Jim put students and faculty first. Facilities for
academic were high and probably didn't get as much money as if he'd been a loud mouth,
coming up there and banging around. But he kept getting stuff, and then it got harder to get.
Henry—yeah, nobody ever had anything good to say about him. I don't—but I've
been on five campuses, and I've never heard anything—anybody say too much [laughs] and
people who had to work closely with Henry now say Henry was bad, but the present—what's
his name?—[Vice Chancellor for Business Affairs] Dick Drake [Fred]—is horrible. [laughs]
So what are you going to say? I don't know.
WL: Yeah, there are always complaints, I suppose. That's the kind of position that does receive a
lot.
EB: Yeah. Henry was tightfisted, but we didn't hear rumors constantly of money disappearing
and some slush funds and money being taken away from—as we hear now. Whether it's
coming from the infirmary or a million dollars disappears or this or that or whatever. So you
know, I can't answer that. It's just—I don't think the business—I don't know who was here
before, but I don't think he's any more popular, and I never heard anything good about
Chapel Hill or [laughs] about Kansas, so I can't say.
WL: I gather your view of the campus in the last thirty years has been of decline. Do you think
the campus has declined? In what respects has it declined? In what respects has it
improved?
24
EB: Okay. I think that—I think there has been a real decline in the quality of students that we
now attract. I think that began by the late seventies to become obvious and is continued. I
think that the—except I think there probably lots of young faculty like you that just bop
along like I did when I came. But I think there's a lot more discontent within faculty than
there once was—a real, real discontent.
I stopped—when I dashed—I've been working at home trying to get some stuff ready
to fax to South Africa, so I didn't even change clothes. I hope you don't mind. But I stopped
at the credit union to do some business, and I ran into a colleague from romance languages,
and we chatted. All I said was, "How you doing? Are you keeping out of trouble?" And
boy, I mean, you know—and the administration. That didn't use to be—you know. You say,
"How you doing? You keeping out of trouble?" You might have a fun conversation, but I get
that a lot. When I get to—when I got back, I was—I'd had such a terrific year, I kept saying,
"I don't want to hear it. Just don't talk about it." [laughs] You know, because—so I feel that
in that sense there's a lot of dissatisfaction. I think they're a lot more uptight, there's a lot
more confusion about expectations and I don't know anybody that has much pride right now
in our representatives. I mean there might be indifference, but there's not.
I felt proud when I'd go out in the community because the community respected
people. You know, I don't get that sense at all now. They respected the university; they
respected the faculty; they respected the leaders. I think there has really been a decline in the
stress on academic excellence. That didn't have to happen.
There's been a misplaced stress on athletics. In God's name, all this state needs is
another big athletic program. Now I'm not talking about facilities for the kids. They should
have all the facilities we can afford, if they've got equal facilities for their chemistry and all
that stuff. But I find that sad because we don't have the resources that we need, and I think
those are misplaced too. And I—there's no person fonder of college football than me. I adore
it. [laughs] And I adore good basketball being played, but I don't see this thrust has been
helpful any more than I see the thrust to make a School of Business Administration as big as
the College of Arts and Science.
WL: That's all part of a larger—
EB: Totally misplaced values or what is a good university about. I have a friend in the art
department. I'll just tell you this, maybe just give you. And my friend said one day, "I had the
most interesting dream last night. I had drawn a new painting of the college. It was all of
these little people walking to work with their little black lunch pails. And they were going
over to work on these little VWs [Volkswagens], and they're being observed by all these
faceless people in suits." She said, "We—I said I feel like the administration thinks of us as
the labor force working on students, little VWs." [laughs] And I said, "You really are
Freudian." [laughs] I think there is some of that sense—a lot of that sense among some
faculty, not all.
WL: That they've become a kind of proletariat?
EB: Yeah, that they're really not—that they're really just—. So that does make for a less than
happy campus. It is reflected very, very much in the lack of faculty participation in faculty
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governance. We have lost—this was one of the strongest faculty bodies I've ever been
privileged to be a part of at one time. And we have practically no say. We just—a lot of what
we do is just show.
WL: When you first were here did the faculty participate in it and were cohesive and had an
impact?
EB: It didn't have to be cohesive, but, boy, they participated, throughout the sixties and well into
the seventies. And we had—everybody had a say so, and we fought through on all sorts of
things. We—faculty made major decisions about all sorts of things ultimately.
WL: But it was sort of a hierarchal system too, wasn't it? A—very strong dictatorial heads often?
EB: Yeah, but they didn't control faculty council; they didn't control faculty.
WL: The faculty council was another arena?
EB: Yeah. They didn't—at the council they only had one vote. Yes, I think that—but you still
have that. You can still get a department head who can block this or that, just as you get your
dean who blocks. All you have to do is serve on the university promotion and tenure
committee to see what happens from department to college to school to the university to the
president—the chancellor—to see whether or not it's working. Once in a while you will still
get one of those. You could get that. Yeah, [Richard] Dick Bardolph [history department
head] had probably a lot more clout than Allen [Trealease, history department head] has in
history.
WL: Right.
EB: And in that sense it's been better.
WL: And they were sort of heads for life, weren't they?
EB: Well, I don't know. I didn't pay attention.
WL: That's an exaggeration, but they were heads for a long time. They were—
EB: Yeah, but that wasn't—Jim didn't put that in, and that continued under the present one
because we—this department suffered under a head that I would have liked to chopped off.
Took us—agonized, we couldn't get any help from [Chancellor William] Moran. So that
even though now they rotate four—possibly four more, or variance of that, I think. Like in
our department, we're doing the different model now. People are taking it for two years
[laughs] to see if they can stand it.
WL: No one wants it.
EB: Well, that's I think that's a better—that's an onerous, just a nonsense job.
26
WL: It's a healthy sign to see people—I mean, you want someone to have it who doesn't want it, I
guess, really.
EB: Yeah. This—and this is a problem that varies from campus to campus. And I think some—as
I say, I think some departments did have this sort of problem. I never felt it here until just—
from 1980 to '86 or '87 is when I felt it. And, see, that's a whole different time. But faculty
committees really had something to do, say, be heard. Curriculum committee wasn't
manipulated by the administration, as it very much can be manipulated now if they want to.
Very much faculty controlled. As I say, the faculty council, which was the faculty as a
whole, was open and—[laughs] I can remember going home at seven at night sometimes—
they would go on. But I always felt like the faculty had something to say, and as I say, most
recent time, I haven't been on the current type of faculty council, which is representative.
You know, I served on two different terms for six years, but it hasn't—it's just sort of a kind
of a sounding board. It doesn't seem to do much.
WL: And you think faculty are more passive generally than they were?
EB: Oh yes. Well, I don't think our younger faculty—one, are interested in doing all this
committee stuff, this service gets in the way because the pressure is there to publish—
WL: Right.
EB: —to get your promotion and tenure. It's a different kettle of fish. And they're just interested
in their thing. It's a—there isn't an encouragement to—for us to kind of pull together. Too
many other constraints. So it's different. I don't think it had to be. I don't think that climate
had to be quite what it is, but that's what it is. I sure understand it, and I don't think—I think a
lot of faculty, younger faculty, would be more interested in us getting a good basketball team
than they are in anything that's happening in faculty governance.
[End of Interview]