Oral history interview with James H. Allen, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: James Allen
INTERVIEWER: William Link
DATE: September 11, 1990
[Begin Side A]
WL: Okay, I'd like to start just by asking you to remember, if you can, your first, earliest
impressions you may have had about UNCG from when you first arrived here, and what sort
of institution this struck you as being, what kind of place you thought it was when you first
saw it.
JA: Well, Bill, when I first came it was in December of 1967. And I came as the first full-time
Presbyterian campus minister, so I was one of four full-time campus ministers on the campus
at that time. And I was arriving at the University at a time when it was into the fourth year of
its, of its change of mission. The change began in 1964 with the increased responsibilities for
doctoral studies and the movement for coeducation.
When I came, we had just opened in September, because that's when the school year
began In those days, mid-September. We had just opened the first residence hall for men,
and it was not quite completed at that time. There was still some finishing work that was
being done. And that, that was Phillips Hall, which was hooked onto Hawkins Hall. So we
had, we had approximately 200 men on the campus when I came.
And the, the place was dynamic because there was a sense of excitement about
developing a new university. The students themselves were, to be sure, overwhelmingly in
numbers female. But still, at that point we had the edge as a university in attracting the top
women students because [the University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill, at that point, had
still not become fully coeducational at the under-class level. They still were not letting
women in until their upper-class time, until they reached at least junior status. Very, very few
women were there.
So we still, then, had the edge on the brightest and sharpest of the, of the
female students. So there was a, there was a great intellectual aliveness about the place at the
time—a place affected, to be sure, by not only what was happening internally, with a great
sense again as I said of excitement about developing a new university.
WL: Did this, did it have a sense of being a woman's college at this point in 1967? You
mentioned only two hundred men out of—
JA: Well, yes. I think, I think there still was more, was more sense that you were a part of a
woman's college than The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. And the reason for
that was, I think, to be found in several quarters.
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One, the overwhelming number of women because enrollment then was about 3,000.
And you had, you had a faculty that had a very significant number of women on it. I would
not—and the figures would be readily available—the accurate figures, so I would not be
accurate in what I'm saying. But my impression is that probably close to 40, 45 percent of the
faculty was female as well. So yeah, there was decidedly still a sense that you were in
primarily a woman's, a woman’s institution.
Moreover, we had still not developed by that point all of the academic programs that
would have, likely, more special interests for men. For example, the school of business had
not been formed. We were, of course, had a strong—for a long time had a strong department
of economics that was a part of the college. We still were not organized in any other way
other than as a general college would be organized. That is to say—there were no school—
there was no College of Arts and Sciences. It was just simply the university by name
primarily.
Again, not only the academic program development was lacking, but also the student
life development was lacking in terms of anything other than business as usual for those who
had been in charge of it when it was a woman's college, because the people who were in the
student affairs administration at that time were the women who were in place when it was
still a woman's college.
WL: What would student affairs have been composed of in those days?
JA: Well, in those days Katherine Taylor was the dean. She was called—she was the main, she
was the main dean. They had just appointed that year the first person to be dean of men.
Well, I say that, that year. It was done the year before because it was when Otis Singletary,
just before Otis took his leave.
Otis had already left when I came. Jim Ferguson was, had just been installed as
chancellor when I came. He, Jim, had come here as the dean of the graduate school. He
had—Otis, just before Otis left to go to Kentucky, he appointed the fellow who was director
of continuing education to be the dean of men. And so as he jokingly—Otis said, he, later he
told me—I got to know Otis very well, because he was such a good friend of Jim Ferguson's.
And on visits here he laughed and told me that when he appointed the fellow he said he was
appointing him "dean of man" because there was only one or two male students here. But he
made him dean of men.
So he appointed, he appointed this person as dean of men. And he—there’d always
been someone called dean of women, and then there was the dean of students. And
Katherine Taylor was really the dean of students, if you will. Her title got changed about that
time because a very curious thing occurred.
When Otis appointed the dean of men—because there was still some rather hard
feeling on the part of the, Katherine Taylor, who was the dean of students at the time of the
appointment, and was not particularly pleased that the mission of the place had changed—
Otis found it necessary to then have the dean of men and the dean of women report directly
to him, not to the dean of students, and have the dean of students reporting to him. So he
bifurcated, almost from the start, their operation.
So there was not any real student affairs division in place until, well, until '73, when
the whole thing was brought together. But in any event—
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WL: There was considerable confusion?
JA: It was great confusion because what then occurred was this: that in effect, the dean of men
and the dean of women were involved in residence operations, and residence life, and in
residential programs, and nothing more, because the dean of student services—the title was
changed when I arrived on campus in '67, a year later. The title had been changed to dean of
student services, which meant in effect that everything other than the residence operations
was under her oversight, which meant the union operation, student activities—all of that was
under her operation.
So its orientation, the orientation of the student union was still that of the Woman's
College [of the University of North Carolina] and, frankly, everything else. The operation of
the student health center, it was all, it was all, it was all geared toward a residential operation
for women.
WL: And this came largely out of the—reflected that the fact that Katherine Taylor had been the
Woman's College person and that had a—
JA: That's right. And now one—and it's hard for—you would not be able in any kind of written
history to talk about one's—other than the fact that the association was there, she continued
what was in place. But the fact of the matter was, Katherine was just bound and determined
that's how it was going to be, because she didn't want the men around here anyhow. But that
was—you can't put that in writing—but that was exactly what was going on.
So she simply continued what was and didn't care at all whether it met the needs of
any men or positioned the institution in a way to really become a genuine, genuinely
coeducational institution.
WL: Be attractive to men.
JA: Exactly. Didn't care. So the—what made the difference though, Bill, in those days when I
arrived was the fact that we had all of these very sharp, capable, women students. They were
really sharp. And it was an exciting intellectual place because you could get, you could get
large numbers of students to come out for lectures. We could get, it would be no problem
whatever to, to have several hundred students so you could even fill up Aycock Auditorium
with the right kind of program and speakers that you would bring in.
You know, we brought in people from the [U.S.] State Department, [Edwin O.]
Reischauer and people of this kind, and we could get fantastic response. And the women
went to the, to the concert lecture series things in large numbers, I mean, because that was,
that was an interest to them. So it was, there was—
WL: Well, a community.
JA: There was a lot of community. Now it was that very pattern, by the way, of community and
wonderful sense of community and belonging that caused the faculty later, in developing the
instrument of government, to stick primarily with the model of the aggregate faculty being
responsible for everything, because that was just the way the place operated because it
didn’t, it wasn't divided into units. That began, so that began. Bob [unclear, perhaps Miller]
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came. Bob arrived in about '69, as I remember, and was given the task of organizing the
college. And so that was, that was done.
Well, in any event, those early years were—my early years here—were years in
which students were involved in a lot of social issues. You could get grand discussions going
on, on matters of, that related to what was happening in the world.
WL: A lot of these would take place in Presby[terian] House? Was Presby House in existence
then?
JA: Yes, it was, it was there. There, and then all over the campus. We were in the—the campus
ministers were invited to be available to students in the residence halls on some kind of
basis, on some kind of opera[tional]—hourly basis, where you could work with the student
leaders of that particular dorm in anything they wanted.
If they wanted you simply to be there to be available if anybody had a problem and
wanted to chat about something, or if they wanted you in there to talk about some ethical
issue or some question related to values or morals in some way, you were there, and you
could do it. And you—it was great interchange.
For example, Warren Ashby, who was, in those days I guess, Warren—when I came,
what was Warren? Warren was, he may have been department head of—yeah, he was the
department head of philosophy when I came. We could get, we could enter into dialogue, the
faculty, particularly with the faculty in philosophy and the faculty in English and some of the
history faculty were people who were quite willing to be involved in discussions of campus
ministry, discussions on values issues.
And so we could move those things out all over the campus, in residence halls, or in
different places in the union, or in the religious centers themselves. Because the Presby
House was there, Baptist Center was there, St. Mary's House was in place over on Walker
Avenue. Tom Smythe was there as the campus minister. And then the Methodists had, they
were housed by then in College Place [United] Methodist Church.
But because of the interests of the students intellectually in the world around them—
not just the University—it was a very, it was an intellectually pleasing place to be. It had
about it all the characteristics—because I kept thinking this and when I arrived, because my
background had been thirteen years as a parish minister—always in a parish. And I
remembered when I came here I thought how wonderfully exciting intellectually the place
was because it was like the collegiate experience I could remember as a student. But now it
was so much better because I was an adult and I could be a participant from the other side.
And it was just, it was wonderful because people were not at all timid about getting involved
in discussions of substance.
Now that time also was a time when there was a great deal of concern that the
students were beginning to manifest about what role they ought to have in deciding what the
place was becoming. And so it became—and that was also the time that all of the parietals
were going out, and so the students then were beginning to get involved in shaping what the
rules are, what the rules of conduct are.
You know, when I arrived on the campus, the women had to have signed letters of
permission from their parents to be able to be out of the buildings after the evening hours, I
mean, after a certain time in the evening when the place closed or then the buildings were
locked. They couldn't be out of them unless they had permission. At certain times of day
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they couldn't leave the campus. They couldn't go out on dates, leave the campus without
signed—all those kinds of things were in place when I arrived. But those were the parietals
that were typical of a woman's college. All of those things were in place.
Well, they all began to crumble. But the—it was wonderful, because a lot of those, a
lot of those tough kinds of issues on things like visitation—well, no, visitation—because I
was a part of the administration by that time. But self-limiting hours, that is the right of the
women not to—to decide for themselves when they could go and come. All of that got
ironed out along about '69 and '70.
And as one of the campus ministers trying to be involved in reconciling those first
points of view, it was, it was wonderful to be a part of that experience. But it was also
intriguing to see how tough it was for the university administration to accept those kinds of
changes that were occurring.
WL: When you say these, when you say the parietals crumbled and the parietals went out the
door, was this primarily because of student pressure, or—?
JA: Well—
WL: Outside pressure, perhaps?
JA: Two, the pressure was coming from two sources. One, of course, there was the actual court
case that had said in loco parentis is gone. I mean that had actually been ruled legally now
by the federal courts as saying you can't make those kinds of—
WL: The university didn't have the authority anymore.
JA: No, the university didn't have those kinds—you’re not the parent. You’re not the parent and
the location, and the school can't assume a parental role. But that's what all those rules were
about. Those were, those were parental approaches to student life. So the pressures were
two-fold. They were coming because they wanted—internally the students themselves were
at the point where if this is a university, then let's let it act like a university. Let's quit being a
woman's college. Let's quit treating us women like children.
And then they had the added incentive of the fact that the court had recently spoken
and agreed with that point of view. So it was coming, the convergence was, both because it
was a natural time of development because of the fact that we were changing what we had
been, and they had good solid support from outside.
And the thing that they also knew that they had going for them was that ultimately
the board of trustees would have to agree that some of those things would have to change
because the courts had made it clear they would have to change. So they were well informed,
they knew that. So the pressures were coming in both ways.
The other, the other thing that was also a big factor here, too, I think, Bill—now
we're talking about a period of about three years, the first three years that I was here when I
was not in the university administration, because I didn't become the dean of students until—
I came in December of '67, I became the dean of students in May of 1971. So the—over that
period of time, a lot of changes were going on internally that directly affected student life.
The changes with respect to all the rules and regulations that governed the residential
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setting were changing. And don't forget that probably then we had a very small percentage of
commuting students. We had some, there were very few. I would say that the percentage was
probably, when I arrived, was very low, no more than maybe 15 percent of the head count; it
may have been slightly higher.
But they were, the commuting students in those days were almost all part-time
students. There weren’t the—and they were mostly graduate students. Very, very few
undergraduate students in '67 were part-time, and very few were commuters, very few. So it
was still largely a residential campus and largely female, again, so—because as I said, there
were only a couple of hundred men here.
Well, the other thing that happened that was a rather dramatic indication of the fact
that the students themselves were, were taking on a different role for themselves with respect
to how they were going to relate to the university. They were becoming more vocal, as I
said, about what their role ought to be in shaping what the place was like.
So they had developed such organizations as part of the student government as a
specific arm that could engage in some research on what—and to be sure, not sophisticated
research, but student, undergraduate student research—on what kinds of academic programs
students really were that current with, the students really were interested in. Things of that
kind.
So they were beginning to try to, in a responsible way, try to contribute to a dialogue
with the faculty and the administration on what are some of the changes that are called for
here? We know there are social changes that need to be made. We know that there are social
programming changes that have got to be made. But what are some of the academic changes
that need to be made?
And this got into such things as later discussions on what really does constitute the
core of undergraduate education? What should it consist of? What are the rules by which
people are going to be allowed to be judged by the faculty as to the nature of their
knowledge base? Coming back to, it was the students who put in, who pressured for a
pass/fail system, for example, on the core courses. And so it was very careful work that went
in and went on to decide on what this should be.
Well, a lot of the things that began to happen over time started then in those first
three years. When the students—my first three years here I began to see the kernel of how
the students were going to begin to get involved in shaping some very different questions
that came on the scene.
One of the most dramatic times was when, was when the cafeteria workers and
ARA[mark Food Service] went out on strike [in 1969], and there’s plenty extant material on
that, that was all around, that clearly could be looked at. But I refer to it only to cite the fact
that student government in those days was a very different creature from what student
government is today. Student government was really that. That is to say, when it spoke,
when those leaders were moving, when they were taking actions, they really were
representing most of the students, because most of the students were out there voting,
electing these people, or they were in dialogue with them. So student government took a
very special role at that time challenging the university administration, because in student
government’s view, the university administration was not doing enough to put the pressure
on ARA to make a just settlement.
And so what did student government do? Student government hired a lawyer. And
they couldn't have made a better choice because they hired Henry Frye. And Henry, you
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know, is today, of course, one of the justices of the North Carolina Supreme Court. Just a
superb person. Because the majority of workers who were out on strike of ARA were black.
And they [student government] felt very strongly that there was a basic issue of economic
justice here, as well as work justice, you know, work conditions and all of the rest of those
things.
Now what student government, what the student leaders did not fully appreciate at
that point was that the university administration was extremely pleased to relate that student
government was into the act in that way. Because they—[Chancellor] Jim Ferguson had
profound respect for Henry Frye anyhow, because they were—had had many exchanges that
went on prior, long before this happened. So did other members of the faculty who were key
people working with the chancellor trying to resolve the matter.
What they also came to understand was—what they, the student leaders, came to
understand was—that they had as much to do with the pressure being put now on ARA with
the, now, the fact that the administration could really join the student government in that
sense, in being willing for additional pressure to be brought to bear with ARA.
For example, the ARA people, the ARA vice president said he wasn’t going to meet,
he wasn’t going to be in a meeting with Henry. He refused to meet with him. So Ferguson
picked up the telephone and told him in no uncertain terms who Henry Frye was, and he
better very well meet with him. And so, you know, it was this kind of stuff that was going
on.
WL: But you think that the administration, and Jim Ferguson particularly, favored this kind of
pressure or some kind of pressure on ARA, or at least sympathized with the objectives?
JA: Yes, right. And the, because student government had then called a strike against ARA and
called on the students to boycott the cafeteria. Now—so what the campus ministries did,
where there were centers, was then offer those centers to student government as often, as
food sites. So the student government got involved in buying food, making sandwiches. Oh,
I mean it was an incredible scene for three or four days to be a part of the place to see what
was happening. Because all the while now, the governor was all upset. And he was, and he
had a hundred or so patrol types nearby that he was ready to move on the campus at the drop
of a hat, and in fact, did a couple of times. He got them off immediately.
WL: Of course, he did, in the case of Chapel Hill, he did send the state police in for a similar
strike.
JA: That's right, that’s right. Well, we would have done everything we could to try to keep from
having those kinds of confrontations because, again, it was tense because our student leaders
were moving quite responsibly, but they were white. And the black government—the black
student leadership at [North Carolina] A&T [State University], Nelson Johnson was the vice
president, and Nelson—if you know anything at all about who he was at that point, who he
later was, I mean, with the Communist Workers Party and all of this stuff.
Well, Nelson was always a rabble-rouser, and I say that in those terms, because
Nelson, Nelson was at any confrontation. He loved them. And I think he staged this business
that later resulted in the Klan shootout [with the Communist Workers Party, November 3,
1979], because he was—but you notice, even in that situation, Nelson, when the moment—it
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was pretty clear what was about to happen— Nelson got on very safe ground very quickly.
Well, he did the same thing constantly. He did it on the A&T campus—when he
would create trouble, and the police would have to come in. You’d better believe Nelson was
nowhere to be seen. He'd stirred it up, but he'd gotten out. He was always able be able to take
care of himself.
But anyhow, Nelson came over here, and he tried to take over the situation from our
student leadership. And it was a particularly tense moment one night in Cone Ballroom when
about two o'clock in the morning, he was at the microphone with all of our students. And he
had brought over a contingent of a couple of other black students from A&T, and they were
all in there. And so they said they were going to march on the chancellor's house. He began
to get them all stirred up to march on the chancellor’s house.
And so Katherine Taylor and I were with—motioned for the president of the student
government [Randi Bryant] to come up there, because she'd been up there talking about the
fact that that was not the appropriate thing to do—didn't want, they didn’t want to march on
the chancellor's residence. So we said, "Randi, you're about to loose it. We've got to call the
chancellor and tell him."
So we did get on the phone, and Katherine called Jim and I was on the other line.
And we said, I explained to him what was happening and said, "Jim, we're recommending
that you agree that there will be a meeting, an open forum tomorrow morning in Aycock
Auditorium, and you will be available to discuss the matter with the students." Well, he said
no, he would not do that under any circumstances, because he wasn't going to be, he wasn’t
going to allow that kind of confrontation to occur.
I said, "Jim, you can't appreciate what's going on right now. I’m telling you." I said,
"Randi is trying to keep a thousand people from marching over on your house at this very
moment. And do you know what's going to happen if this happens? Instantly the police are
going to be here. The governor’s going to bring it all in and we've got—and she's doing
everything possible. Now if she could get in there and say, ‘There's no reason to do this. The
chancellor will have a meeting tomorrow morning. We will be able to discuss this in a
session with that he will call for the university community.’”
Well, he said, "Okay. I understand." So Randi then was able to go back in, grab the
microphone away from Nelson and say, "I just want to indicate the chancellor has just said
that we will have—he is calling, he is calling, tomorrow morning, an open forum meeting for
the whole university community at Aycock Auditorium to discuss the issues of the strike, the
role of the university, and what's happening, how we’re trying to resolve this matter." And
that took the sting out of it in terms of being able to do things.
But my point—I'm illustrating this only to say that there was remarkable sensitivity
on the part of the student leadership about their role in making the university a just place.
They looked on a situation in which there were things occurring to people who, to be sure,
were not, were not part of the university officially. But they were there serving the
university, and they felt an obligation that the university should speak out on these matters
and should, should really be involved in making the place just. So—
WL: Was there much communication between the cafeteria workers and the student leadership?
How much communication was there?
JA: There was with a couple of the spokespersons of the—
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WL: —strike leaders?
JA: Right, the strike leaders.
WL: From afar, what seems to be going on here perhaps is that you have three or four different
players working at, sometimes working with similar purposes, sometimes working at cross
purposes.
JA: Well, oh, there's no doubt.
WL: Student leadership, cafeteria workers, A&T people.
JA: Oh yeah, oh, there’s no—
WL: State police.
JA: Oh absolutely, no doubt. That was exactly what was happening. And the key thing was,
trying—for the chancellor, what he was trying and what he needed was a way to bring all of
those the conflicting cross-currents to some kind of reasonable accommodation so that he
could prevent all kinds of troubles from occurring. So that's right, that's exactly right. You're
right on top of it.
WL: Other people I've talked to describe this as the greatest crisis affecting Jim Ferguson's
chancellorship. Do you think that’s correct?
JA: Well, I suspect that's—it's certainly true in terms of the visible outside conflict that could
have resulted in some tragic loss of life even, because it certainly could have been that.
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Now there was, there was another that followed a couple of years later, after I was
dean of students, that was not far removed from this. And that was when the student
government itself voted to remove funds and recognition from the Neo-Black Society. That
resulted in a very tense five days.
WL: That was 1973?
JA: About '73, yeah. Incidentally, one other thing I want to say about the kind of things that the
students themselves were doing in my first three years here that was really an indication of
the fact that they were up to some very significant things in terms of making the whole
university aware of sharp societal issues. They had a forum, the student government had a
forum on black power, and they brought in some national black power leaders here to the
campus.
Now there was great consternation, people were all upset, “I don’t want these
students bringing all of these radical types in here,” and all this kind of stuff. Well, that was a
responsible act. I mean that was what the world—that was happening, whether people liked
it or not. So they needed to—why not bring the people in here who were talking about these
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things? And that's what a university really ought to be about. And so they weren't afraid to
tackle some things.
So in many ways we've lost some of the intellectual excitement that student
government brought to the university. That's been lost. [unclear—both talking at once]
WL: Sort of pushing forward into the seventies and maybe even later, when do you see this, some
of the characteristics that you've just described about student government and student life,
this kind of vitality—not that the university isn't still vital, I think it is.
JA: Oh, it’s vital.
WL: But clearly things have changed. When did you—
JA: Well, I think, Bill, I think a lot of that began toward the latter part of the seventies. Students
became—well, by that time so many things had happened to put in place of, officially,
changes in the law that affected civil rights issues. The war was over. A lot of those things
that were really a part of the sort of dynamism of the changing of American society at that
point, those things were all over.
And students became much more complacent in the sense that they were, they were
less concerned at that point about deciding about what the university should be. They were
much more willing to come in here and be just sort of recipients of whatever the faculty and
administration said that, you know, these were the rules of the game, and this is what
education is.
And so they became more and more toward the end of the seventies, it became less
and less of a situation where you got people into any kind of much, kind of intellectual
discourse outside of whatever they had to do to do in the classroom.
WL: And the character changed rather radically of the student body here.
JA: Oh it did, it did. We were going through—we went down, we went through a period in
which we no longer had some of those very sharp, intellectually stimulating students around,
because we had failed to do a lot of things we should have done. We didn’t have—there was
just not the attention being given on the development of student life that should have been
given to it. And I don't mean that in any kind of detrimental way against Jim Ferguson. He
probably was the very, one of the closest friends I've ever had.
But Jim had a Herculean task on his shoulders. He was, he was at the helm at the
period in which he had to change the intellectual programs of the university. The whole
academic life of the university had to be changed. There was no way that mission of being a
doctoral-granting institution could be—and coeducational—there was no way that could be
done with quality without the total absorption, really, of his time in thinking out what the
academic development of the place should be like.
Now we did not have, therefore, the same kind of support on the—
[End Side A—Begin Side B]
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JA: There was rather a real strong resistance to any kind of change in the programs that I was
trying to bring on.
WL: From whom?
JA: Well, the resistance was coming essentially from the business area where—I mean, because
the things I was talking about were going to cost money. And the general approach was we,
the obligation that we've got is to keep the cost of attendance as low as possible.
Well, because we weren't doing all kinds of things that we should have done with
respect to student activities, I was trying to get some significant changes in this building over
here so we could do—so we could have the kinds of things that a university union would
normally be expected to do. Hell, what we had over here was a building designed as a union
for a woman's college, and what was the union program for most women's colleges? It was
teas. It was—that's why there are all of these meeting rooms over here. I mean they’re just all
over the place.
Because what you did, I mean, you—the faculty and the students would get together
and have these teas and have these kind of exchange. That was union programming for most
women's colleges. They weren't into all the activities and all the kinds of game areas and all
the rest of these things that you've got to have if you’re going to develop a dynamic program
of activities that, really, a university should have. You got to do, you got to start having
quality in your residential settings. You need options. You need different kinds of options.
You need options.
You wouldn't believe the struggles I went through to get even different options on
food service. I didn’t control that. That was controlled by the business people. I couldn't
get—the quality of what was being done was terrible. There was no interest in that because
the interest was we would keep it as cost-efficient as possible.
Well, what was happening in the meantime, we were losing—we didn't have any
competitive edge, because the bright students, our programs were not quite in place
academically. They would, they would get there. And even now we've got an academic
program mix problem. We need to, there are some things we need to do to really be sure that
we don't loose out on what it means to be a doctoral-granting institution.
But in any event, we sure as heck weren't doing anything. I couldn't get the support
to do what I needed to do in the student life area. So we were doing some modest things, but
we were not beginning to be competitive in the sense of having the out-of-class environment
that top-flight students want. And people didn't like to hear this.
But there was no question about the fact that—and the facts will bear it out if you go
ahead and look up the files. There’s no question about the fact that the male students who
were first coming in here were inferior academically. They weren't sharp people. They sure
as heck, most of them, as a group, couldn't hold a candle to the women students who were
here. But even all of that started to change because we were not doing all the things we
needed to be doing.
I couldn’t—for example, I thought—this is kind of simplistic—I thought, well, you
know I’d talked to the people responsible. Now think about it: two major kinds of activities
that really are of great interest to students are things like intercollegiate athletics and campus
recreation. What you do, you know, for recreation things. Okay, now where were these?
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These were in what, by that time, was the School of HPERD [Health, Physical Education,
Recreation & Dance]. They were the departments of an academic unit. Well my Lord, the
academic unit doesn't have any interests in that. They shouldn't. That's not an academic
program, either. Neither of them.
Okay. Well, they were limping along. I mean, everything that should have been done
to really say, okay now—I talked some of these things out to the chancellor, but there was
too much going on in the academic area. So no attention was given, in other words, to
what—besides academic development—what are the logical co-curricular or extracurricular,
whatever term you wish to use, development that must go on inside of it in order to be able
to be a university? It was all piecemeal.
So the people in place in the academic area weren't about to—they didn't want to
give up, they didn’t want to give up having intercollegiate athletics, because they could keep
that down here, where it really was not going to be any kind of thing other than just a little
bit of stuff that was not going to bring any—certainly wasn’t going to call any attention to
the place because they didn’t want that. That was not proper. So they were going to be sure
that's—and recreation, well, they even had, they had some classes in that too. So, you know,
so we won’t do but so much of that. So—and they didn't want to move out of the school. It
was properly housed where it belonged.
So that battle was not going to be joined, so there was nothing that could be done
there. So I had this simplistic notion: well, alright, what about let's start developing a Greek
system. Because there are, whether people like it or not, and there are all kinds of negatives
with it and I'm very aware of all of that stuff, but you expect for—some students want that
experience. Why not give them that experience? Why deny them that, you know? And try to
develop one that can be a good contributor to student life.
Well my Lord, you would have thought I said I wanted to turn a couple of the halls
into bawdy houses. I mean, God. I mean what I had to face with that was just absolutely
incredible. And it took me five years, five years to overcome the faculty resistance and the
trustee resistance to get the Greek system started.
But that was what we were working against. Nobody was thinking about what are all
of the things that make a place attractive to good students, so the quality of the student body
was going out like that. And there's no, there’s just no question about it.
Now we didn't start getting that thing turned around until the start of the eighties.
When—by the time Bill [William Moran] came as chancellor, we were at probably the time
when the kinds of questions could be raised and called that have been called and we've been
into for the last decade about looking, taking a total look at what needs to be done to be an
attractive, first—rate, doctoral-granting university.
Now that has meant, then, we've done, we've taken a look at many, many things.
We've looked at the physical environment. We started there. One of the first things that I did,
I got Bill, the first—after he came as chancellor, after the first couple of months he was
here—I got Bill to give me two hours of his time one morning so I could take him on a tour
of the residence halls, because I wanted him to see, I wanted him to see what these places
looked like. He was absolutely horrified when he saw the condition.
I started him in on College Avenue with South Spencer, which was in much better
condition than some of the others actually, but. Well, he couldn't believe that we were
putting people in places like this. I mean there was plaster down, and you know. A student
would be in the room and it’d be, there would, may even be a hole in the ceiling. Like I said,
13
some of the plaster was gone, and so it was. The paint had peeled off, and there’d be holes in
the tile on the floor.
I mean it was absolutely incredible, absolutely incredible. Because all I could—I had
no control whatever over, over anything other than student life. I had the authority of
assigning students’ rooms, any student programming, but that was it. That's where it all
ended, after that. No authority over anything. And such stuff as—typical of me is this quick
aside, then I’ll get back to the point, but I just want to illustrate.
There was a lady who was responsible for the physical appearance in the hall. One
day they showed up. One morning I got a call from the director of Phillips[-Hawkins] Hall
saying, "They've come in here and they have put an indoor/outdoor carpet down on our rec
room floor and that's where we have all the dances." And they said, "You know, the students
are all upset about it." And I said, "Well, no wonder. I don't blame them."
So I called the lady, I said, "Why have you put a carpet down on the rec room floor
of Phillips-Hawkins?" Well, she said, "Because I want it down there. It looks much, much
better and I want it there."
And I said, "Well, that's where the students have their parties. They've got dances." I
said, "As a matter of fact, they are supposed to have a dance this weekend and they'll have a
keg of beer in there. Now what—will you tell me why in the world this thing is down there,
and do you realize what's going to happen? First of all, its going to make it tough to have this
kind of activity. And you sure as heck know that beer is going to get spilled or soft drinks or
anything else, food, sandwich stuff, all that sort of thing."
Well sure enough, you know exactly what happened. On Monday morning I got a
telephone call from this lady, irate. [mimicking female voice] "Your students got beer all
over the floor down there. There where the keg was, it spilled all over. There's this big ole'
terrible spot down there on the rug. And I want to know what you’re going to do about it!"
And I said, "I'm not going to do a damned thing about it. I told you that that shouldn't
be done."
Now we had this running battle and six weeks later the carpet got taken up, taken
out. But that's the kind of, the nonsense that went on. Nobody, no way in the world could we
influence anything, our staff, about what things should be, because there wasn't a way to do
it.
Now, so Bill Moran came and he took a look at this, and he looked around and he
said—and I showed him a lot of things—and he said, "Clearly we've got to give some
attention to all this." And so over time that's been done, and we've put in place the kind of
mechanisms where we can do that. We have it now where Fred [Drake-vice chancellor,
business affairs] and I have total, total, equal responsibility for the whole operation.
For example, the residence life and food service. And so we work together carefully.
We plan together. We have five year plans. We know exactly where we are today. We know
exactly where we intend to be, what changes we intend to make in the physical environment,
all of those things. We’ve carefully programmed that. Why there hadn't been a—a mattress
hadn’t been bought in twenty-five years. [laughs]
WL: With Henry Ferguson [Business Manager], this kind of coordination wasn't there.
JA: Just wasn't there because there was no interest in it, because the approach was—we will
keep costs down and we must—and the notion was we will be competitive by being
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inexpensive. Well, that’s—
WL: Jim Ferguson's emphasis might have been more on faculty development, do you think?
JA: Well, on the academic program development.
WL: Yes, on the academic side.
JA: And on bringing in—right, on the academic side. Jim was—and it was not that he didn't love
students and did not—he just had to be so absorbed in that. And he would say to me, "Jim,
work that out with Henry." Well, hell, I couldn't get it worked out with Henry. I could never
get anything, changes done. And Jim was so occupied with the other that I just did the best I
could.
But he never could get to the point where he really could see that we were going to
be in serious trouble if we didn't, also if he didn't then take the bull by the horns and say that,
okay, to Henry, "Some of these things are going to have to be done. And we need to figure
out some mechanism to make them happen." And that just, that never, that never happened.
And again, when I say this it sounds as if I'm being terribly critical of Jim, and I'm
not. I'm trying to say that he was doing what he had to do at that point. When you’re given a
mandate to take a woman's college—and that's what he had on his hands when he became
chancellor, because there was only just, the only graduate, there were only two areas where
there was any graduate work at all. And a mandate to develop a full blown doctoral-granting
institution—not a research place, that was clear. He understood what he was supposed to do.
Well, it absorbed tremendous energies and time to do it.
And he was remarkably successful, because when he stepped down as chancellor and
when Bill arrived, there was in place a solid foundation upon which he could, he could begin
to expand. And he inherited a place that was very strong academically, very strong, had
strong faculty. Jim brought some tremendously able people here. And those able people
brought other able people. And he had the remarkable good judgment of recognizing all of
that talent, academic talent, and supporting those academic leaders, the deans and the
department heads, in their choices of faculty, and in their recommendations for tenure.
Because he had a remarkable sense of being able to test out just about who needed to be
granted tenure because of what it would mean in terms of the overall development of the
place.
So he was so absorbed in that that he just did not have the time, I think, to devote his
energies equally in the other direction. I wish he had, because if he had done it, we, I don't
think we would have lost quite as much ground as we did loose. Because those things,
those—the quality of life of a place means a lot to students.
And if when they come here and look around and visit, if they see that the out-of-class
places are kind of shabby and there’s not a whole lot of excitement about it—and then
also nobody was, of course, even then—fortunately there was enough new construction
going on that people didn't get alarmed at what was happening with deterioration of the
other, of the other instructional spaces that was going on at a place like the Petty Science
Building. And so that there was enough new academic construction under way that—
always—that it kind of cloaked the problem. And it was not, it didn't become as apparent as
it certainly did in the decade of the eighties. It was pretty clear.
15
WL: The—a lot of what you’re talking about may also be tied to the under-funding by the state.
Do you think that was a factor against—
JA: Oh absolutely.
WL: The fact that there is UNC at Chapel Hill and [North Carolina] State [University], and then
there's UNCG would always be third, even when there was just three—
JA: Exactly, exactly. And that under-funding was cloaked again in the fact that we were getting
new dollars all right, but they were enrollment dollars primarily. And then when the, in '73
when the reorganization occurred, in my view, this institution suffered most of all of the
sixteen. And the reason I say that is this.
It was—we were already, we were already, I think, having our problems,
significantly, up until '73 when the reorganization into the, into the UNC System occurred,
because we were number three still in the funding phase. But [UNC] Charlotte was pressing
hard as well as [UNC] Wilmington, because they were expanding campuses. And by that
time there was six of us. There was [UNC] Asheville and Wilmington and Charlotte, as well
as the original three.
So we were The Consolidated University of North Carolina, with one board of
trustees, and one president and the six chancellors. So we were third all right, but even then
we weren't getting what should have been properly ours as the doctoral-granting institution
because of the attention still that was going to the other three that were just coming on board,
but especially Charlotte because of the growth there.
Well in '73, the situation really was exacerbated for us because when Bill Friday then
had to assume the presidency of the system, he did so with—already, that move had been
strongly opposed by what we call Regional University System, and especially East Carolina
[University] and Appalachian [State University] and Western [Carolina University]. But
especially East Carolina, because they didn't want to come into—East Carolina didn't want it
in the first place. They didn’t, they were fighting it tooth and toenail. And really the other
regionals were not happy at all. And the black schools didn't like it at all.
And so the political reality was a system had been created. The Consolidated
University was not happy. The six really didn't really like it all that much, because they then
saw that, "Mmm, this is going to be tough for us." As indeed it proved to be, at least for this
part of the consolidated. Because the political reality was [President William] Bill Friday had
a, he had a tiger by the tail.
There were five of these institutions, the black institutions, that were in terrible
condition as academic institutions. And these were going to be in the University of North
Carolina? Well, my Lord, something had to be done about that. And they didn't want to be in
there anyhow. I mean they really saw themselves absorbed, they were going to loose their
identity. They probably even had some of them closed up, they thought, okay. Well, that was
worse in terms—then you had these regionals. They were mad as could be. They didn't want
it, in this thing.
So General Administration had to prove, indeed Bill had to prove he was going to be
president of “The” System. General Administration had to prove it was going to be the
administration of “The” System, because the chief players were the same as the chief
16
players of the whole Consolidated University. The vice presidents, the first three vice
presidents were still the same ones. [laugh] And so then Bill had to then bring into his staff,
as he did, some of the people who were associated with the old Board of Higher Education
and that operated—it was a coordinating group for the other.
Well, so all of that meant that the funding of this place got sacrificed. You know they
would never sacrifice the funding to the two research campuses, never. That was safe,
always is going to be safe. Chapel Hill and State will never have any problems. Now they're
crying right now, but a lot of what's going on is wolf. I mean there’s some political moves
that the [unclear] Company is doing, [laughs] and that's smart. I mean it may smart, it may
not be smart. Just depends on what reaction the legislature gets on it. But in any event, they
don't have to worry. Research institutions are that, and they are going to be protected. And
they should be. I don't mean to suggest otherwise.
But nobody understood really—and it’s very clear that the new president didn't
understand—what is a doctoral-granting university? When he was over here and spoke to the
faculty, he talked about the three kinds of institutions in the system—the research
institutions, the comprehensives, and the baccalaureates. He didn't say that once, he said it
three times. He doesn’t even know we exist. I mean he certainly doesn’t know what UNC
Greensboro is.
Well, this place got sacrificed to making a system work. And so we got money only
because we continued to grow, and the only reason we were growing was because
everybody was growing. I mean, you know, that was what was happening in the late
seventies through the mid-eighties, toward the latter part of the eighties. That was what was
happening.
WL: So every time you'd then report higher enrollment, you'd get more FTEs [full-time
enrollment dollars].
JA: Yeah, you’d get more dollars, more FTEs, but you weren't getting the dollars that really
counted, I mean to address what was seriously wrong with the whole funding base. And at
the same time we were severely handicapped because—in an area like this for example, I
couldn’t get—starting in, from '73 forward when I was trying to expand the student activity
areas. For example, just to take a simple illustration, like union staff, when I was trying to
bring program people in, N.C. State and Chapel Hill already had these people in place and
they were being paid for by the state. They were, they got allocations for it.
We couldn't get any budget money for it. So what did we have to do? We had to do it
through fees. We just had to, we had to tack it on to students fees. So we, even today, have
probably—but I've been working on it, with Bill's help, for the last six years to get it
corrected. But we probably still today have more people being supported out of fees than
certainly Chapel Hill or State has.
WL: A portion of EUC [Elliott University Center] staff comes out of fees?
JA: Yeah, yeah, right, right. And so the thing is that then even that was, put us at a disadvantage.
But the—we were not getting the funding because they didn't have to do much but throw us
a few crumbs, because they had to concentrate on what they were going to do about A&T
and Winston-Salem [State University], and [North Carolina] Central [University], and all
17
those [historically black universities]. They had megabucks they were going to have to
spend. They had a real quality control problem over there they had to address.
And they were trying to keep reigns on East Carolina and Appalachian, because they
were, they had—those three—Western, Appalachian and East Carolina—were the biggest
threats outside of the blacks to [Bill] Friday. They were the biggest threats because they
each, all three had very political power bases, very strong in the legislature.
And indeed one of the first, one of the first defeats that Friday and company took in
the new system was the medical school issue at East Carolina. Because Leo Jenkins and his
people had done a thorough job of selling the legislature on the fact [there] needed to be
another medical school in the East, because look at all the lack of doctors, and health care—
insufficient health care— in the East. And we need it, and we've got the base to be able to
support a school, they asserted.
And so the board of governors said, "No. There won't be another medical school.”
They don’t want a medical school. They turned down East Carolina's petition for permission
to establish a medical school.
So they went right to the legislature, and the legislature did the very thing in the first
two years or three years that they said they would never do. That's why they created the
system, so they would be out of the business of deciding academic programs. But they got
right back into it very quickly and said, "Oh yes, there will be a medical school."
Well, that only intensified the need, in my view, of Friday and his people to prove
they were going to be in control. And so they gave all of the attention that they needed to
give to those regionals and to the black schools, and here we were. They certainly were
going to take care of State and Carolina [Chapel Hill]. And here we were, on our own, if you
will, in a sense.
I'll never forget when this building was dedicated. Arnold King, who was the
assistant to Bill Friday, was the speaker. And he—because he was a very close friend of
Mereb’s, Mereb Mossman. And so he was asked to make the dedicatory speech, address.
And he began by saying that he wanted the audience to know that this institution was always
the best institution that the president and the president's staff had to deal with, because this
institution never gave the president any trouble. That's what he said, flat out, meaning it as a
compliment. [laughs] But it was a terrible slap, because that was—[laughs]
WL: Did it have that effect at the time, or was that your reaction when you heard his speech?
JA: Oh yes, yes. And so was the reaction of all the deans. They knew exactly what—[laughs]
because they’d come to expect this campus to become, to be genteel and very above the fray
and all of that kind of stuff.
WL: But somewhat passive also?
JA: Very passive, very passive. And you see, the thing is, it was passive because they—where all
of the sticking should have been, where all of the pushing should have been was on the fiscal
side of the house, because they were pushing the academic development. I mean, Stan Jones
[vice chancellor for academic affairs] and John Kennedy [dean of the graduate school] and
Jim Ferguson were doing their job of academic development. But we didn't have—nobody
was doing the job of pressing them hard on the fiscal development. And there was not, there
18
wasn't enough sophistication to—there to understand, what is it, if you’re going to take on
this mission, what does it require? I'm talking about on the fiscal side.
The—what a difference, if you've got a person—I think Fred Drake is probably, is
probably the most able financial officer around anywhere to be found in the country, because
he has a keen understanding and appreciation of the academic mission and of the
requirements of an academic mission. And he's got a keen understanding of what faculty
need if they’re going to be able to do their job. And so he presses, man he presses hard. And
he presses, he presses the case with GA [UNC General Administration], he presses the case
with the budget people in Raleigh.
When the self-study of this place was done in 1971—you might want to go back and
look at it. It's an interesting thing when they comment on the business side. One of the things
that comes out in that self-study is that the university business operation is oriented toward
Raleigh. That is to say, oriented toward Raleigh in the sense of accepting whatever the
budget division says, and you become, you win points by not spending your budget. Well,
they look at you as just you’re the most wonderful thing in the world, because that's four
million dollars you didn’t spend. That's fantastic, that's great!
Okay, you better believe that they are pressured on every front, weekly, by Fred and
his people. And GA is pressured all the time there. They can't ignore—now, we don't begin
to get everything. But we've got the expertise and Bill now has in his hands a fantastic piece
of information, carefully, careful documentation of a study, a resource study between us and
peer institutions like us—a group of schools around the country with a mission similar to
ours that are doctoral granting, under the, from the definition, you know, the official
designation as doctoral granting, that have a program mix similar to ours. And it’s hard data
now that GA can't ignore and have had to say within the last three months, "You've got a
very persuasive case."
Okay, now, that—there was not that kind of sophistication, though, being brought to
study the resource needs of the place. And for example, when I had one of the things—when
I laid out some of my notions about what I'd like to see happen programmatically in the
student area, well, Fred went to work and developed for me, very carefully, over a five-year
period what actually it would take us, what would be required financially, what it would cost
us in terms of fees to accomplish the various changes I'd put out to look at, like elevating the
intercollegiate athletic program, getting into a major kind of enhancement of campus
recreation, looking at some significant changes in the physical environment of residence
halls, and food service, and so on.
And we got together and discussed it. And he laid out a very careful fiscal plan,
financial plan, that enabled us to start out on these changes and start moving, knowing that
we could do it. I mean knowing that if we do this, this, and this, and make these careful
incremental steps, then we could bring it off.
Well, now, you can make some significant strides when you've got that kind of
ability to help you understand what the resource requirement is. And so we've got that in a
remarkable way in Fred’s leadership. And so we didn't know. We lost out on, at a time when
the case could be made, we had all kind of complications facing us: the change in the system
that allowed GA to divert its attention because nobody was jumping up and down on their
case saying, "You guys can't do this. You've got to come in here. If you’re serious about this
mission of ours, don't turn your back on it."
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WL: Let me ask you—we're running out of time. I know you've got other things to do. But as a
last, sort of a last question, it doesn't necessarily follow logically as the last question, but it’s
something that I've been wanting to ask you. How, as a person very close to Jim Ferguson,
how you would assess his leadership style, his approach? I guess ultimately his contribution
to—
JA: Well, I think Jim was probably the only person who could have—and I don't think I'm
understating it when I say this—I suspect he is the only person who had the right approach to
have been able to have brought this university through the transition from the Woman's
College to University [of North Carolina] at Greensboro. I've had some chats with Bill
Friday about that, and Bill feels that very strongly and I concur 100 percent.
He—Jim Ferguson's influence upon this place was just incredible. And you see it in
terms of what the program, what the academic program is today. You see it in terms of the
kinds of people who are here, and some who still are here, who were brought here by him, in
the academic side of the house. You see it in the remarkable goodwill that was there between
the university and some of the alumni, who really are alumna, who were fiercely opposed to
the fact that we became the Woman's College [sic].
Now there's another little squabble going on right now, but that's going to get
resolved. But it doesn't have anything to do about the fact that we are no longer WC
[Woman’s College] , in the same way it did then. Oh, psychologically, subconsciously it
probably does, in some way—[interruption from secretary].
But the fact that the battle ended, and—because there was some sharp, a lot of sharp,
hateful things that were being said out publicly that dissipated because of the—Jim's
approach as a leader was this kind of approach. He was calm, quiet, deeply respectful. He
was a marvelous listener. And he was an extremely bright person who could articulate then a
vision of the place and could help draw people out.
He had a wonderful capacity to be able to get people to be as creative as they could
be. I mean—and it was done in such a wonderful way of reinforcing you. I mean he was
always good about encouraging you. That's the best way. It wasn't praise, because he was not
into that, but how to encourage people and to be aware of good things that they were doing.
And so I would say that Jim Ferguson was the right man for the right time. He
clearly brought this place through very troubled times internally and all kinds of external
troubles that we avoided. Whereas some other places—other campuses— had deep divisions
between the students and the administration, that never happened here. It didn't happen here
because Jim didn't allow it to happen. He made the students know that he was reasonable and
he would be willing to work out reasonable accommodations.
So the fact that, for example, students were, were given a role to play in shaping
academic policies in admissions by the committee structure. He worked in a collegial way
with the faculty to establish that kind of approach to university governance. So he respected
all sides. He was not afraid to disagree. It was not that, because he would certainly tell you if
he didn't agree with you. He was not, it was not that Jim was ever afraid to make his stand
known, because he would. But he would do it in such a gracious way that people would
respect it even if they didn't agree with it.
So he had the profound respect of the faculty. He had the respect of the student body.
And he certainly had the respect of his administrative colleagues. And we would, we could
have good lively debates and exchanges, but it was always in this accepting spirit as though
20
that’s just the way we do business.
And then we'd pull together and once the decision was made, he'd be the first person
to support it. Even if it was something that he would not have, that would not have been
something that he would have preferred, he'd go on and he would be the biggest
spokesperson for it. So that's the sort of person he was.
And it was a genuine treat to work with him. I'm forever grateful to him because he
gave me my opportunity to be a part of the university. And I've never, ever forgotten that.
And I, always to the very end, he knew how much I appreciated that. And the fact that I
knew very, very good and well, I was where I was not because I had any of the academic
qualifications at all to be the chief student affairs officer, but because he felt I had other
qualifications that could be equally as important to help me do the job as somebody who had
the academic credentials in the student personnel area to do it. So I’m grateful to him.
[End of Interview]