Oral history interview with Michael Dana, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Michael Dana
INTERVIEWER: Missy Foy
DATE: May 9, 1991
[Begin Side A]
MF: If you could start, I guess, with some sort of general information like where you're from and
when you attended UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro], just some
general information like that.
MD: Okay. I started out as a child.
MF: Yeah. [laughs]
MD: I was born in England in 1956 in the Lake District in northern England. We moved every
couple of years, ended up moving to Israel and moving back to England for a couple of
more years. And in 1967 we moved to Sanford, North Carolina. We lived there for three
years, and then in 1971 we moved to Greensboro, North Carolina. We were in Sanford
from December '67, so that's still only about three years. We moved to Greensboro in '71. I
started junior high school for the last half of the—excuse me.
MF: Okay. [laughs]
MD: In 1971, like I said, we moved to Greensboro, still in the ninth grade. Hello.
[recording paused]
MD: I started high school in Greensboro at Jamestown at Ragsdale Junior High School in the fall
of '71 and graduated in '74 and started at UNCG the fall of 1974. My major initially was,
sort of—it took me a couple of years to decide on my major, and I ended up majoring in
psychology.
MF: Goodness.
MD: And I still have six hours left to graduate. In the process, I have also acquired enough
credits for a minor in English.
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MF: And you were attending UNCG pretty regularly throughout the seventies?
MD: Almost from—well, actually no. From '70 to '76 I was in school and—
MF: Well, I guess I was saying—
MD: Then the fall of '77 I was in school, and then from '79 through '81 I was in school, and then
'83 and '84. '84, '83. Spring, '84—that's the last time I was in school.
MF: During the time that you were attending school at UNCG it changed a lot. There were a lot
of changes that took place. What are some of the changes that stand out most in your mind?
MD: The cafeteria.
MF: Oh sure. [laughs]
MD: That went though some drastic changes. That's not as trivial as it sounds. They went from
long tables, where a dozen people could sit at one table, and it went to mostly just the four
people per table, McDonald's [fast-food restaurant] style tables [clears throat], which I
didn't like at all. We went through several managements including—the food improved
each time.
Academically, I think the school in the time that I was there went downhill. When I
first started, there had some really good teachers there. They had some music professors
that were actually—particularly Dr. [Richard G.] Lane in the classics department—history,
I guess. Actually, he taught classical Greek and things like that. And mythology. He died
while I was there. He died in the late seventies. And after him, mythology and the classics
department just seemed to go downhill.
Also the school, while I was in the psych department was actively battling—there
was an active conflict between the people who wanted purposive or cognitive psychology
and behaviorists. And during the sixties and early seventies, the school had gotten a
reputation as a behavioral school, and now the cognitive people were trying to make a
comeback. I knew more of them than I did behaviorists, so I tended to go with the
cognitive, particularly Janet [unclear]. She was a good teacher.
MF: Oh sure.
MD: Any questions?
MF: Yeah. What about some of the—there were lots—
MD: Oh, another thing that I noticed that changed an awful lot for the worse was the access to
services that the students had.
MF: Oh, okay.
MD: Library now is closed for a lot of the time. It used to be accessible on weekends up to
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midnight. Now it's closed on five [pm] on weekends. When we first started out—and this
was our fault, the students' fault—when we first started out, there was a very complete
laundry service that served all the dorms. You just dropped off your laundry, and it was
returned to you in a couple of days folded, washed, you know. But it was a mandatory
service and the students in '75 voted not to make it mandatory—better to make it optional.
Well, because of that the company that was doing the laundry said that they couldn't
guarantee enough customers if was optional, so they dropped the service altogether. From
then on, the school just had to install some laundry machines in dorms, and they were
constantly being mistreated and half the time they didn't work.
MF: Oh yeah.
MD: Yeah. It used to be a real good deal.
MF: But you lived in the dorms for a while?
MD: The first two years.
MF: Which dorm?
MD: Bailey [Residence Hall]. The first two years in school I lived in Bailey. Then I moved off
campus, and then when I came back to school in '77, I lived in I-House [International
House].
MF: Oh, okay, good.
MD: But when I came back to school and lived in I-House, it only lasted half a semester because
having lived off campus for two years, I just didn't want to live back on campus again. It
wasn't the same.
MF: Yeah. It was too restrictive, I guess.
MD: Yeah.
MF: In the early and mid-seventies, though, a lot of sort of traditional rules and so forth in the
university were scrapped because of students saying, "We don't want this or that."
MD: Yeah. I think in a lot of those cases people didn't really think through to what it would mean
if they achieved their goals.
MF: Yeah.
MD: Another thing that happened was the meal plans used to be mandatory, but they also used to
be transferrable.
MF: Right.
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MD: So that you could take anybody you wanted to go to dinner, or you could sell your meal
card. And personally, I did end up buying used meal cards for the first six semesters I was
there, and it was a really good deal but then after Tucker [?] or DeMarco [?], I think it was
after DeMarco started. No, it was toward the end of Tucker's term as manager, he made
meal cards nontransferable. He also charged more for them. He also went to a computerized
system, which may have been more efficient in the long run, but I thought it was a big
hassle.
MF: Yeah. Socially there were a lot of changes too, though, on campus. It had been a women's
school, and now it was coed and also it was biracial now. [clears throat]
MD: Yeah. All that happened before I got there.
MF: Right, but there was still an adjustment.
MD: The ratio changed.
MF: Yeah.
MD: The ratio changed. When I first started it was—the male/female ratio was like 3 to 5 or
maybe even two to five, and I know it was at least—it was quite a bit more even by the time
I left. It was probably more like three to five or four to five.
MF: Yeah, especially with the admission with the blacks to the schools. There were still a lot of
tensions in the seventies. There were still a lot of adjustments. I think there were some
major problems—
MD: There were.
MF: —with the Neo-Black Society [campus organization whose mission is to provide
awareness, understanding and appreciation of African American culture].
MD: Yes, I was just thinking about that. One thing that would happen regularly was each year
the student government would vote on a budget, and there would always be acrimonious
discussions about how much money the Neo-Black Society deserved and what they actually
took. I had friends in the Neo-Black Society, and you know the organization. I had no
problems with it. I did think they ended up getting more money than a lot of other
organizations basically because they were a black society.
MF: Yeah.
MD: I also felt that even though it was called Neo-Black Society, it was a reason for that. The
reason was that they were not exclusive. They couldn't be and be a campus organization.
MF: Yeah.
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MD: So instead of being the black society it was the Neo-Black Society to indicate that other
people could join. However, the whole time that I was in the SGA [Student Government
Association], which was most of the time I was in just in school, there was only one white
member that I knew of in the whole society, and he was there for education. He wasn't
really there as a member, as a committed member of the group.
MF: Right.
MD: He was more there to make a point about being the only white student in the group.
MF: Yeah. Did he—?
MD: That caused some tension, but at the same time Sam Hawkins [did not graduate] was the
head of the Neo-Black Society [NBS] in '76 and '77, and he was a great guy. He was one of
my best friends. So individually I didn't have any problems with it. As a group, I had some
questions about the allotments.
MF: Yeah. How did those discussions go? Because I know sometimes they tried to withhold
funding from the Neo-Black Society, but then it seemed there was always resentment
because some members of student council, student government, felt that the Neo-Black
Society got more money than they should have in the end, and so—
MD: My recollection is, and it may not be accurate, is that generally the NBS ended up with
money that they asked for.
MF: Yeah.
MD: I remember one specific—really, again, acrimonious discussion, in student senate, and that
was over sending a choral group somewhere. We were paying for this trip, and it wasn't
really a competition that the university was involved in; it was just more of a trip that the
Neo-Black Society wanted to send some folks on. And a lot of people questioned the
necessity of that. I think they ended up making the trip anyway.
MF: Oh, okay. Do you remember much about how blacks and whites seem to get along?
Usually, I hear that there wasn't really anything blatant, but—
MD: There wasn't. I wasn't terribly aware of prejudice when I was in school.
MF: Yeah.
MD: Later, I could. In the last ten years or so I've become more aware—I was possibly naive
when I first started school. There were occasional tensions. One thing that would happen,
especially toward the end of the seventies, was the spring fling or the Falderal. A lot of
students from A&T [North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University,
Greensboro, North Carolina] would show up, and a lot of UNCG students resented it, not so
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much because they were any particular race, but because there was only so much funding
and so much activities to go around, so much beer.
MF: Only so much beer. [laughs]
MD: Yeah, oh yeah, only so much beer.
MF: Oh yeah, let's get to the heart of it.
MD: [laughs] And they didn't feel like off-campus students really deserved to be there that
weren't guests, visiting guests. That was a bit of tension. And another bit that—something
that caused tension, racial tension, was when they first started the sororities and fraternities.
Up till whatever it was, I guess '79 or '80, there had only been one fraternity and one
sorority, and those were just service fraternities. I forget what they were. They weren't
for—they weren't social fraternities. They were there for—to perform services, you know,
provide liaisons between students and faculty, to do physical work or something like that.
But then after they legalized fraternities and sororities on campus, fraternities polarized
quite a bit.
MF: Yeah.
MD: There were black fraternities, there were white fraternities, and there was much more
competition, and especially—maybe I just notice this because I'm white—but the black
fraternities and sororities, and actually I think sororities are more guilty of this than
fraternities, would hold parades through the cafeteria. They would all sing. They would line
up and hold each other's shoulders and have a row of people. They would take up large
lines, take up large blocks of space in the cafeteria like that, and they wouldn't permit
anybody to cut through the line to get to the silverware or something like that because
symbolically it would be breaking them, it would be separating them. That's the impression
I got.
MF: Oh yeah.
MD: But, practically, it wasn't very practical. I mean sometimes you have to get through some
people to get to somewhere, and frequently you couldn't. And if you tried to, then you
would be accused of being a racist or stirring up trouble or something. I didn't particularly
care for that.
MF: Oh no. I can see that. Yeah, but basically there wasn't anything really much more blatant
than that is the impression I get.
MD: No, I don't think so. We—I forget who was the SGA president or the vice president. One or
the other was a black student when I was in the SGA.
MF: Yeah.
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MD: I forget the guy's name. I remember him, but I just don't remember his name.
MF: Yeah, but he flunked out of school, I believe. Okay, the first one flunked out of school, the
first black SGA president, and the second one—I know this because somebody just told me
this the other day. I don't just naturally pull these things out of my head. [both laugh.] And
the second one was involved in—
MD: I was going to say you must have been in about what, the eleventh grade, tenth grade?
MF: Yeah, [laughs] and the second one was involved in some type of scandal out at Sears
[Roebuck & Company department store], where he was stealing the credit cards of the
people and then charging something on them real quick or something to that effect.
MD: Yeah, I don't know the details, but I remember something about credit cards. Yeah, that's
right.
MF: And so I was told by a member of the Black Alumni Association in the past couple of days
that they're still waiting for—to get a black SGA president who will go all the way through
without falling from grace, so to speak.
MD: Yeah. Well, I hope they find somebody. It shouldn't be too hard to find somebody.
MF: Well, you got to find somebody willing to serve as a guinea pig.
MD: Yeah. Well, it's not a lot of fun being in SGA period. It's a lot of work. You don't really get
much for it. Best you can do is put it on your resume.
MF: Yeah. You were saying that you were in student government?
MD: Briefly. I was a senator.
MF: Somebody was telling me that [clears throat], excuse me, that during this time period,
student—
MD: Actually, I was a like a stand-in senator or an assistant senator. I acted as senator maybe
three times that semester, but I would go as a senator—but I went as an observer most of
the time for that semester.
MF: Yeah. Somebody was telling me that student government during this time was really losing
a lot of power—that they were becoming just sort of a figurehead association.
MD: I got that feeling. I know a lot of people felt that way. I can't really say anything. I can't tell
you anything factual about it because I don't know.
MF: Yeah, because you didn't [unclear].
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MD: But it seemed like that the administration was actually doing most of the deciding, that we
were given the opportunity to come up with opinions in order to satisfy ourselves, satisfy us
that we had some kind of input, but in actuality, it's like we didn't really have that much
input.
MF: Yeah. Another thing is that—that I want to ask about—is that I've from people who've
attended UNCG during this time that the focus of their student experience was not the
classroom as much as it was Tate Street [commercial district near campus].
MD: I can't really comment on that. It wasn't for me. I wasn't that devoted to my classes either,
but I spent most of my free time on campus also.
MF: [laughs]
MD: I did a lot on campus. Tate Street always has had a bad reputation, an undeservedly bad
reputation, because even in high school I remember—like I said, I went there in 1974, I
remember reading occasionally about somebody being arrested on Tate Street.
MF: Yeah.
MD: You know—drug dealing on Tate Street. My parents warned me not to go down to Tate
Street.
MF: [laughs]
MD: And even as recently as this last semester—I mean last fall semester—a student came in
and said that she hadn't come down to the bookstore because up till then—because one of
her advisors had told her that Tate Street was a dangerous place and that she shouldn't go
down there. And this was ridiculous.
MF: Yeah.
MD: The only thing that makes Tate Street—I don't even want to say dangerous because it's not
dangerous. I've never had a problem, but it's just a much more visible police presence
sometimes, and sometimes there are altercations between police and people on Tate Street,
but with the occasional—with the exception of the occasional drunk, you know, which
happens just about anywhere, especially where there is a bar.
MF: Oh, sure.
MD: There's—you know, we don't have any problems. And I can say that as a student and local
resident, and now I can say that as a merchant on Tate Street.
MF: Tate Street, though, has sort of been sort of a gathering area for a lot of students that aren't
ultraconservative.
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MD: That are not ultraconservative?
MF: Yeah, that are not—
MD: Yeah, true, but where else would you go. You could go to Aycock [Street], you can go play
in the highway, on Market Street or Spring Garden Street, which is almost as busy now. So
Tate Street's the only area, short of a mile away down on the corner of Elam [Avenue],
where there are bars and restaurants and places to hang out. So where else could you expect
people to congregate?
MF: [laughs] Yeah, it always has had sort of a certain atmosphere.
MD: Yeah, yeah.
MF: I thought you were going to say it's always had kind of a reputation, and it has, but I don't
think it's really deserved it.
MD: No, I think it's got a kind of neat atmosphere.
MF: Yeah, yeah.
MD: There have been a lot of nice places. You remember Friday's [live music establishment]?
MF: Oh sure.
MD: That was cool. It's too bad it closed down.
MF: Yeah, and King Arthur's.
MD: Yeah. [laughs]
MF: [laughs] Yeah that draws a little bit of a laugh, yeah.
MD: I've still got a tape the time SD [Standard Deviation] played, if you need a little
background.
MF: I've got a tape in my backpack right now.
MD: Oh really?
MF: Of Standard Deviation.
MD: When they were at King Arthur's?
MF: Yeah.
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MD: All right. I bet it—it probably is the same tape.
MF: Probably.
MD: The one Brian mixed in Winston[-Salem, North Carolina] and then made copies of?
MF: Yeah.
MD: Yeah, okay.
MF: Yeah, I just got it from the library.
MD: Can you hear me in the background going "whoo."
MF: I haven't listened to it yet.
MD: Oh really?
MF: Yeah.
MD: Well, it's a good tape. I've still got it.
MF: What about the music scene on Tate Street? I know that's a big part of—or at least it used
to be a big part of Tate Street.
MD: Used to be.
MF: But that's changed a lot. I mean partly because of the change in drinking age.
MD: Yeah, particularly since Friday's. Oh yeah, that too, that too. You may be right, I guess.
That hurt some business. I really don't know what effect it had on music at that time. Well,
you know Night Shift just closed down, too.
MF: No, I didn't realize that.
MD: So, yeah, Night Shift closed down on January 29th, so I'm trying to think. That was about
the last place you could really see a band. Occasionally New York Pizza is doing something
now, like Wednesday nights.
MF: Oh, okay.
MD: They have like an open mike night, and they built a little stage in the corner. So they are
trying to get some live music in, but until recently, I don't think anywhere else. There really
has been a lot of live music. I guess the Edge plays—the bands play the Edge.
MF: Yeah.
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MD: And I haven't been in there since they opened. And that place has been, what, at least a half
a dozen different places since I've been here.
MF: Yeah, it's hard to remember —
MD: Yeah, what it is.
MF: —the names.
MD: When I got there it was Danny's. No, it was Jokers Three.
MF: Jokers.
MD: Then it was Danny's. Then it was what? It was closed for a long time. Then it was like—it
was something before Mr. Rosewater's. Wasn't there—across the street? It was across the
street.
MF: Yeah. Mr.—I remember it as Mr. Rosewater's.
MD: Mr. Rosewater's. And then it —
MF: It was the Joker. Jokers Three was up where No Name bar was.
MD: Oh, that's right, that's right. Joker. And after Rosewater's it was something for quite a while
too.
MF: I don't remember what though.
MD: It was whatever it was until recently with what became the Edge. Then it got closed down
again for a while and then, I guess, it opened up as the Edge about a year or two ago.
MF: Yeah.
MD: Other than that, right now there's not really any place to regularly see a band on Tate Street.
Friday's used to have big name bands. They had R.E.M [rock band], of course, before they
were really famous.
MF: Yeah.
MD: R.E.M.—
MF: Glen Phillips [Toad the Wet Sprocket (rock band) singer/songwriter].
MD: Glen Phillips, yeah, quite a few times. I'm trying to think of something else. They had a lot
of bands who didn't make it.
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MF: Oh sure.
MD: That it was a good place to go see music. When I first came here, Friday's was not a music
place at all.
MF: Oh really?
MD: No, it was just an absolutely straight restaurant, you know, a small lunchtime-type
restaurant.
MF: Oh, I didn't realize that.
MD: Well, they made a lot of good sandwiches. And then—I can't remember the guy's name—
Russ—I think his name was Russ—a big blonde guy who used to own it [clears throat].
Then he went into partnership with somebody when they started having music and lime
lights and stuff. And, I guess, that must have been about five or six years, and they phased
out the music, and they just closed up.
MF: Yeah.
MD: Most of the places—a lot of—there are only a few places that have remained the same the
whole time on Tate Street. The Corner.
MF: And NYP?
MD: No, no. New York Pizza has been a bunch of things before.
MF: Okay.
MD: It's—New York Pizza has lasted the longest.
MF: Yeah.
MD: But the only ones that have not changed since I started school—over on the corner used to
be Hart Appliance for years, but now it's [unclear]. Fryar's. When I first came here, Fryar's
was across the street. It wasn't where it is now. Although in '75 they moved into their
location, and they've been there ever since. Hong Kong House was here. The Playroom was
a bookstore; it was a bargain bookstore, a [unclear] bookstore. Then Addam's
[Bookstore]—before it was House of Pizza. Before that it was actually a cinema.
MF: Yeah. It was sort of a cinema/pizza place for a while or something.
MD: Oh, yeah, well that was House of Pizza. They had the big music screens, video screens and
stuff.
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MF: Oh yeah.
MD: And they did extensive work on it to build that. In fact, they spent too much money on it.
MF: Yeah.
MD: Across the street, you know, King Arthur's. When I first came over before it was Arthur's,
King Arthur's, it was some Mexican place first. Remember, they used to have that big
Mexican Aztec calendar on the side?
MF: Yes.
MD: It was a Mexican place first. Then it was Sarge's Pizza, sort of like a third location. Then it
was—I guess it was King Arthur's after that. Then it was Light Rain. It closed down for a
long time. It was Light Rain, and then it was Crocodile's, come to think of it.
MF: No, I think that's right.
MD: Well, where New York Pizza is used to be Northwestern Bank.
MF: Oh.
MD: When I first came in here. Except that the back room where the bar is—that was a different
store altogether, that corner area.
MF: Yeah.
MD: The bank was just in the front part where the pizza place is. It was Northwestern. Seems
like it—somebody else bought it out for a while before it became New York Pizza. Then
once New York Pizza started, then they bought out the corner store that's adjacent to it, and
they expanded so it's both stores now.
MF: Oh.
MD: That store's is now Fast Store, Gulf Store [unclear], sporting goods store.
MF: So a lot of businesses have sort of come in and out of Tate Street?
MD: Yeah, in and out. Where Kinko's [copying and printing store] is, that's been—that was like
a cursed location. There have only been like six places in four years.
MF: Oh yeah.
MD: Yeah, Kinko's has—
MF: Oh yeah. I can't even remember what was there.
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MD: Oh, I don't remember most of them. I remember for about three months there was a
Greensboro Sub there.
MF: I don't remember that.
MD: I don't think—I think it was before you even got here. That was like '77, '76.
MF: Yeah, yeah. I can't even remember any place that's been where Kinko's is now.
MD: Yeah, they've been there a good, good while. Of course where the Galaxy is—the
supermarket has basically been a supermarket. Where Galaxy is when I first got here for
years it was Discount Records, a big record store and a good record store. And actually it's
not Galaxy now. It's Copy Two now.
MF: Oh, that's right.
MD: [laughs] There are a couple of other places too. It was a couple of other places I don't
remember. And then all the stuff above, where there used to be a house on the other side of
that, or where these green houses were—a really well known Greensboro landmark that had
been allowed to go to seed, and really it was run down by the time I got here. In the
seventies it was run down. It was still standing. It was a big, two-story square, huge house.
It was historic, but nobody was taking care of it, and the school wanted to buy it out.
Someone—some people in the administration or the administration as a whole, I forget,
wanted to buy it out and restore it, but they couldn't get the money. And so eventually it
was sold to developers, razed, and now there's all those new stores starting to go on our
street.
MF: Yeah. Going up towards Hopin [?], yeah.
MD: Hopin, yeah. Things have changed quite a bit on Tate Street.
MF: With Tate Street, I think part of the reason it got this sort of notorious reputation was
because as the—well, I hate this term—but sort of the "drug scene" entered campus, I think
that it sort of drifted towards Tate Street, and I think perhaps that might be—
MD: I suppose so. That's what we used to be warned about when I was in high school—was that
it was a big drug center on Tate Street.
MF: Yeah.
MD: But again, I really don't know how true that was. There were always a few people around
that were countercultural people. But I don't even—except for alcohol, I never really saw
any drugs up on Tate Street. I'm sure there were people around that used drugs, but it wasn't
like anybody came up to you with a sign that says, "I use drugs."
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MF: Yeah. [laughs]
MD: You couldn't really tell, right? I never really saw major fights and major problems. I think
it's probably undeserved. I'm sure it was true somewhat, but then you could probably say
that about just anywhere.
MF: Oh sure. Yes, but there are—with a lot of the changes in the mid-seventies, alcohol and
drugs became a lot more prominent on campus, I would believe.
MD: You could be right. Now, again, when I first started college I was really naive, and I just
didn't see a lot of things. I wasn't aware of a lot of things, so it's hard for me to tell what
actually started happening during that time or what I simply started to become aware of. So
I can't really say it started at that time, but it could have been going on for a long time, and I
just didn't know it.
MF: True. A lot of other changes had taken place since that time period and through the eighties
now. I guess some of the most obvious ones are a lot of the building going on.
MD: Yeah, yeah. And even in the seventies there was a lot of building going on.
MF: Oh really?
MD: When I first started school in '74 the psych building over there didn't exist.
MF: Oh, no, I didn't realize that.
MD: And certainly there—even after that, the biology building—outside of that, that wasn't
there. That was a big parking lot where the psych building is—just a big dirt parking lot,
which was real convenient. But then they built the psych building, starting in what, '75?
MF: What kind of [unclear]? I didn't know that building was that new.
MD: Yeah, yeah. The one beside it is even newer. It wasn't until '79 or '80, I guess, that they
started on the biology building, the big one. And, of course, all the stuff that's been down
the street, I think quite recently, the arts and sciences—or arts, I guess, is about the same.
MF: Yeah, yeah.
MD: The B&E [Business & Economics] Building is new. That's all I can really place. Of course,
they've been able to work on the gyms now.
MF: Yeah, and then some more major renovations on the cafeteria and the fountain.
MD: Oh yeah, of course, all of the cafeteria stuff; yeah, all of that stuff.
MF: The fountain, yeah.
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MD: Where the fountain is now—you know it used to be a road going through there.
MF: With a bridge, yeah.
MD: Yeah.
MF: With walking a bridge, yeah.
MD: It looks nice now and—but I haven't eaten in the cafeteria since they did all that, so I really
don't know how efficient it is. But it does make me wonder how much money all that cost.
They did so much work on that for years.
MF: Yeah. Just backtracking just a little bit—we were talking about some faculty and classes
before, and you had commented that academic standards had declined over the time you
were here.
MD: Yeah.
MF: When you first started here, what—who were some of the faculty that really stood out?
MD: In the music department was Thomas Stafford, S-T-A-F-F-O-R-D, and he was a
musicologist. He was an ethic musicologist, and he was very—he was a popular teacher—
very—he was an excellent teacher, very intelligent and very enthusiastic. But from what I
understand—I don't know this for a fact, just what I heard—is that he was not very popular
with the rest of the faculty in the music department.
MF: Oh.
MD: And eventually, I understand that it was not a very amicable separation, but they eventually
forced him out, and the last I heard he was teaching in Southwest, in New Mexico
somewhere, which is probably better for him because that's closer to where his—he was
interested in both Latin American music and Central American music as well as Far Eastern
music.
MF: Oh, okay.
MD: He taught a course in non-Western music as well as music theory and [unclear] literature. I
took all of those as [unclear]. I did start taking some theory. I took the rest of his courses.
MF: Oh, okay. [laughs]
MD: Another one was Francis [actually, Richard] Lane, the guy I mentioned earlier. He was a
very—he was well known in Greensboro too—A former friend of Jarrell, Randall Jarrell
[associate professor of English, poet, literary critic, essayist, novelist]. Of course, he was
getting up there. He was probably in his early seventies and he was still teaching, but he
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was an excellent teacher. He was very—also very enthusiastic. Janet Guys was a great
teacher. She was my advisor for classes. And also she was in psych, and also, Regan, Dr.
[Joan] Regan. I can't remember her first name. It might be Joan Regan, but she was a psych
professor. I had her for a couple of classes. [laughs]
MF: Yeah. [laughs]
MD: It's not because she taught psych, but we ended up doing a lot of physiology in the class.
Perceptual, perceptual?
MF: It could be. Perception—sensory processing.
MD: Yeah, that might have been it. She was good. I'd like to put in a word for Dr. [Walter]
Salinger [psychology professor], since he's getting so much flack these days.
MF: Oh, yeah, with all the animal rights.
MD: Yeah, yeah. Because I took—I started out—ended up dropping out that semester because I
was ill, but I started to take animal behavior from him, and he was a great teacher.
MF: Were you here—I think it was '78, '79—when an animal rights group broke into the
psychology department and let out all the pigeons and rats go?
MD: Yeah, yeah, I heard about that. I wasn't in school then, but I heard about that. I vaguely
remember that. I knew a lot of people in the psych department, and they were pretty
shocked. But I wasn't actually in school at that time.
MF: I heard that all the pigeons didn't know what to do, and they were pecking at the windows,
"Please let me back in." [laughs]
MD: [laughs] Well, probably, they'd been raised in captivity and never been outside.
MF: Yeah, and a lot of the rats died from pneumonia because of the cold floors.
MD: Yeah, that makes sense. I'm not in favor of animal testing for cosmetic products and things
like that, but in medicine it's sometimes necessary, and it's better to experiment on animals
than humans.
MF: Sure, yeah.
MD: If it's avoidable, I would avoid it, but sometimes it's not avoidable.
MF: Yeah.
MD: I also think Dr.—I know—I talk to Dr. Salinger on occasion, and I think he's a person that
has a lot of integrity, and I don't think he'd be doing unnecessary animal testing,
18
unnecessarily cruel animal testing.
MF: Yeah, well everything has to be approved through the animal rights committee.
MD: Committee. Yeah, I didn't know that.
MF: Yeah, and a—animal rights committee, I guess that's actually what it is.
MD: Okay.
MF: Under the APA [American Psychological Association]. And human testing has to be
approved through the human rights committee under the APA.
MD: Okay, that's good.
MF: To avoid all the cruelty to the little mice.
MD: Well, you know, I don't want to be cruel to anyone. And I don't think anybody intends to be
cruel to animals. It's just—people do—scientists do what they have to do.
MF: Sure. What did you know about Residential College [RC] while you were here?
MD: I took a course that first semester I was in school. I took science fiction with Keith Ferrell
[class of 1975, but did not graduate], who is now a writer for Omni Magazine and one of
the editors for Omni. And I was really mentally very impressed with RC because of the fact
that it was the one class that people came down with cups of coffee in bathrobes.
MF: [laughs]
MD: I thought that was really neat. And later on in '77—later on when I was back in school,
again I took two more courses through RC. I took a course that dealt with ascent of man
book, The Ascent of Man. It was introduced by the course. It was taught by a physics
professor, Dick Whitlock. And I also took French Cinema with [pause], a French professor,
who was a very good professor, who also died in 1980, 1981, whose name escapes me right
now.
MF: I might have the name from somebody I just—no, that was someone else. [Dr. Randolph]
Bulgin, [English professor] maybe?
MD: No. It was a French name. I'd recognize if that was it.
MF: [Dr. Elizabeth] Barineau [class of 1936, romance languages professor]? Those are the only
two. I was just talking to somebody who had been a French major. [laughs]
MD: Well, I had another name—another instructor that I was extremely impressed with and that
was [Dr.] Claude Chauvigné [romance languages professor]. I took French with him. I'd
19
made Ds and Fs in foreign language before I took his class, and I made straight As in his
class—five semesters—just because he was such a good teacher. He knew why I was
taking from him. I was still in school then.
MF: Yeah.
MD: The other guy's name is Herb. It will come back to me. His first name is Herb.
MF: Okay. What else do you remember about Residential College? Do you remember sort of
what types of students were in Residential College or—?
MD: My impression was of the people that I knew was that the—it tended to be a little bit
more—only marginally—a little bit more liberal than perhaps the mainstream college
students.
[recording paused]
MD: So, It seems to me that that's more prevalent, and that bothers me.
MF: Yeah, sort of a different philosophy in education, I guess.
MD: Yes.
MF: Part of that, yeah.
MD: Well, again without being able to hand you examples, I feel like education is moving that
direction. Everybody is so worried about their job, and committees are so worried about
proving that the students are graduating and things like that really—
MF: Programs and deadlines and—
MD: Yeah, exactly—that they're not really focusing on the student anymore they're just focusing
on performance tests, you know. That doesn't tell them anything about the student. Tests
tend to be multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank type answers, which doesn't really explore
whether you really understand the subject or whether you can just cough back an answer.
I think that's a big problem with education right now, and it looks like it's getting worse to
me.
MF: What do you see for UNCG in the future?
MD: I got to tell you I'm not really happy with the way it looks like it's been going. They're
spending more and more money on sports programs. This whole, multimillion dollar sports
complex they are building seems to me just to be a way to attract attention to the sports
program, money into the sports program probably, at the cost of academics and particularly
20
to give the alumni a reason to contribute back into the school. I don't think that's a reason.
The fact we have a successful sports team shouldn't be—we shouldn't be going towards that
in order to generate money for the university. The focus of the university should be quality
education, and we should be encouraging people to—alumni to contribute money back into
the school in order to further the educational process, not to see their team win. I don't see
that as education, but I think that that is exactly what is happening in school.
MF: Are you very aware of any of the controversy that was going on between the Alumni
Association and the Chancellor [William E.] Moran?
MD: Right.
MF: For the past three or four years, with Moran apparently heading up the faction that felt the
university should control funds that are donated to the school, and the Alumni Association
feeling that they were losing control of things such as the Alumni House and—
MD: I wasn't aware of the controversy, but I feel like the chancellor is the chancellor. He's
appointed to be a chancellor by the Board of Trustees, I guess, in order to supervise and run
the school, and I don't think he should have back seat quarterbacks, armchair quarterbacks,
you know, telling him how he should do his job, even if they ask nice enough. I mean, that's
the same problem I have with political action committees where people contribute large
amounts of money to a campaign and they expect to be able to tell the person that finally
got elected how to do their job to favor them because they made large contributions. I don't
think the school nor a politician needs that kind of outside interference.
MF: All right. Is there anything you can think of that I'm forgetting?
MD: No, but I might want—I want to say one thing about the parking situation. It's another
consequence of uncontrolled growth on the part of the school—is that nobody seems to be
paying much attention to the parking situation. They are building more parking lots, but
they are not doing anything about the roads. And I've seen just in fifteen or sixteen years or
so that traffic has tripled. You used to be able to walk across McIver Street pretty easy.
Now you really got to wait.
MF: Oh sure.
MD: You have got to wait a long time for the stoplight. They did end up widening the part
immediately north, immediately northwest of the school, Spring Garden [Street] running
between Jefferson [Street] and Aycock [Street]. It used to be just another—just two lanes,
just like the rest of it is, but you notice that they widened that up four lanes but problem is
the bottleneck's right back down as soon as you get down near the school.
MF: Yeah.
MD: And that's a big problem on Tate Street too. Tate Street is getting so—you never could park
there because there's not enough parking, but now it's dangerous to walk across the street
21
because there's so much traffic and they go so fast. So nobody is really taking into account
the infrastructure, like providing transportation and access. All they're interested in doing is
building more things that attract more students. They're not really thinking about how these
students will be able to get around, and I think they really need to pay attention to that. I
don't see—I don't really see an easy solution—but before they just continue to grow without
thinking about that, they need to start looking for some answers. That's about all I got.
MF: Okay. Thanks very much.
MD: Sure.
[End of Interview]