Chaplin, Gwen

CWU LIVING HISTORY PROJECT

Gwen Chaplin

(Transcription of Tape 1, Side 1)

KB: Today is Friday, March 18, 2005, and I’d like to thank Gwen Chaplin for coming to Central Washington University. I’m Karen Blair from the History Department, and I welcome the chance to hear about your Chairmanship on the Board of Trustees at Central from 1996 to 2003. I understand that you were ten years on the board, and I look forward to hearing your experiences and your impressions of the issues that you dealt with. Would you start by telling us a little bit about your background?

GC: Sure. I have been for now almost 30 years the President CEO of Planned Parenthood of Central Washington, so I’ve actually held that position almost 30 years, and I am living – actually my home is in Selah, I’ve worked in Yakima Valley for all that time. Our program has been a regional program. We have health centers from Walla Walla to Cle Elum, and staff about 100, and we see about 30,000 patients every year for family planning. So that’s what I do professionally. I am a graduate of WSU, and I’m married to the same man for nigh on to 50 years, and we have four sons who – one of whom is a graduate of Central, and they all still live in the State, and I’m very proud of them. That’s my achievement in life. I had those four sons, and raised them to be productive members of society.

KB: Are you a native of Washington State?

GC: Yes. I grew up up in Lynden, in the fine, conservative Holland Dutch country, and they no longer claim me as a native because I’m this way out liberal-leaning feminist.

KB: Why did the Governor decide to nominate you for the Board at Central?

GC: You know, I really don’t know. I’ve had a couple of people tell me they are responsible. One of them – at that time we had a Democratic legislator, Vic Lemon, and he said oh, he put my name up. Well I followed Graham Tollefson, who was the Chair of the Board. He was from Yakima, and he was County Commissioner, and he loved his work at Central. And both of them were Democrats, and Democratic Governors. So I’m assuming that they might both have had some input to my being selected.

As I have sat on the Board and watched things come up, it’s hard to tell where they come from, because they do allow the University some input into it, but they don’t – I mean, Gary Locke always had his own agenda, and we had some great Board members from Gary Locke, and when I left the Board we wanted very much to have Sid Morrison come on the Board. Well they called me – the appointments office – several times with all kinds of ideas of other people, and of course, Gary Locke and his staff made no secret of the fact that they wanted some people of color nominated, and so – um – the people he called me – or he didn’t call me, of course – his appointment people would call and say, “Well, what about – ” and they wanted somebody, and we really said “It needs to be somebody from the Yakima Valley, because we have somebody from Cashmere, and we had me, and everybody else is from the West side. All that’s representative of our students. We have a whole group of people in the Yakima Valley who should feed this University, and we really wanted his office to pay attention to that. So I actually got a call from the appointments office the morning that they announced to the Board that they had actually appointed Sid. And so we really lobbied them to get him, because we felt like he brought a whole lot of knowledge to the University, and the fact that he’s a Republican, and a Democratic Governor – we kind of told Gary Locke to get over it, you know. We really need the representation on this Board, and we needed that strong person here.

I really have no idea how he’s doing, but he usually does very well at the positions that he accepts, so – anyway, the Governor’s office does kind of what they want to. Now what Ivory told me was that – his theory on this was that if I could get along in a conservative community doing the work that I do, that I ought to be able to help in a – in an academic setting. That I should know something about working for – with Boards. So he actually talked to me about that, because I had worked for a – successfully for a Board for over 20 years, so he thought I might bring some wisdom about working with a Board. So I don’t know, but that’s the rumors I’ve heard.

KB: Okay. Well you worked with three Presidents at Central: Ivory Nelson, Dolph Norton, and then Jeri McIntyre, and I’m anxious to hear your views of all the leaders that you worked with, but why don’t we start with your entrance on campus in 1993. What were the issues that you faced when you got to the Board?

GC: Well the first Board meeting I went to, it was in – what was the Hall that had asbestos in it, that we closed temporarily in [inaudible]?

KB: Dean?

GC: No, it’s the one down by the Round Building.

KB: Black Hall?

GC: No, it’s the one – [inaudible] – Bouillon. The first meeting was in Bouillon, so I went in there, and here are these people standing around with these big, fat notebooks, so I knew they were Board members, but nobody said – even said “Hello” to me that day. And I went and sat down at the Board meeting, and then Ivory [sounds like “sparked.”] He had a woman that worked for him named Mary Marcy. Did you ever know her? And she had been part of my contact with the University, and I did meet her, then, after I got there, and of course Gloria Craig was always very gracious. But the Board was sort of strange, I thought, because nobody came up to me and said, “Oh, you are?” I had heard from no Board members before the meeting, and Sue Woods, the former Senator from Edmonds, I think she was, was the Chair. A wonderful, elegant lady who did a very nice job of chairing the Board meetings. And Ron Dotzauer was on the Board, and Frank Sanchez, and David Pitts, the attorney from here in town, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten somebody else who I should be able to think – oh, Roz Wodehouse was still on the Board then. But the Board meetings, I thought early on, were rubber stamps. They – I mean, the – and the motions were all written out – almost the discussion was written out for you, and it was pretty much a very structured Board meeting. And people – after I got on the Board, people were very gracious, but – no, it was kind of hard to get acquainted, and it helped me understand the next time we had a new Board member that it was important that somebody recognizes you, and reaches out to you a little bit.

I always enjoyed working with Ivory. He was – he was a very structured person. Very decisive, very disciplined. I thought he was a man of great integrity, and I think when Ivory came to the University, he was what the University needed at that time. As I understand, the Garrity Administration – and this is one of those things that I only – I’ve heard, is that it kind of ran on the good old boy system – that if you were in good with Garrity you got what you wanted, and if you weren’t, you didn’t. There were no administrative policies, and very little structure, and that was Ivory’s bag. I mean, he could come in and make decisions, and clean things up, and get a structure in place, and so he had – he had policy books so we knew what the policies of the University were, and he had systematic ways of doing things. So he brought a lot of organization to the University. He made decisions very easily. Very much kind of command and control. He was a scientist, so that he saw something that needed to be done, he made sure it got done. And so I think when he came, that’s what the University needed. You know, I’ve heard all the rumors, too, that Roz pushed to have an African American President. I have no idea if that was true. The Board members that were there at the time said it was not. But I don’t know, because I wasn’t there. He and I worked well together, in the early –

So I was on the Board for three years, and as I got acquainted with the people, they – I mean, Frank Sanchez always was so good about reaching out to people. For all the years he was on the Board, he was one person that when somebody new came in, he’d sit down and tell you a little bit of the history of the Board, and talk about the people that you were going to interact with, and there was no formal – well, there was too a formal Board organization, because Wilfred Woods from Wenatchee came on when I did, and so what we did was come up one day, and each one of the Vice Presidents came in and talked at us, and handed us another manual, and so, you know, you kind of – we always laughed about needing a hand truck to get out of there with the amount of material that you got when you came on this Board. And so over the years we tried to get that under control, so that – I mean, if somebody hands you a hand truck worth of material, unless you’re obsessive, you’re not going to read that, and our Board books were great big things, with tons of information on it, and as we worked with Ivory, and to try to get him to communicate better with us, and with the faculty – but he and, I think, his Vice Presidents as well did just dump more material at us. And so – it was overwhelming.

And so – but Ivory – once I was Board Chair, Ivory and I met frequently – usually about once a month I’d come up and visit with him, and discuss things that were going on, and I found him very – a very pleasant man to visit with. Very – obviously a highly intelligent man. He didn’t share very much of himself. He wasn’t, you know – he was almost the furthest thing from warm and fuzzy of anybody you could know. But he was very open to suggestions, and um – when I came on the board I said, “Look, I can’t – I’m either going to – we have to change this Board. It either needs to function in some way that adds value to the University, or I’m not going to stay on it, because this is a waste of time.” And he was very open to any suggestions that we had, and so the first year that I was Board chair, we had a little study session with a consultant on how Boards work, and then we –

We commissioned AGB to send a team out here to do an evaluation of the Board, and of the President, and Dolph Norton was part of that team, and the other one was a man named Ames McGinnis. And Dolph was kind of the scholarly person, and Ames was the talker in the two, and they put together an evaluation of – both of Ivory and of the Board, and I pulled that out, and I thought it was interesting. In the public document and in the one they gave to me it says that, um – that the Board of Trustees must become a more visible, cohesive policy leadership body for the University. So they supported our thinking that we needed – or certainly my thinking that we either needed to be adding value, or just admit that all we did was rubber stamp, and pretend that that was enough. “It must be more visible and accessible as a team within the University community, and the State.”

And um – and then they went on to give – I thought one of the crucial things they said was, “The University’s at a critical turning-point. It could lurch backward, reject change, resort to rigid protections against perceived threats, or it could move forward and change.” And so this was in May of 1997 that they gave this report to the campus, and of course, you live on this campus – you know how that would – you know, it would go through the faculty and the community that the committee had made suggestions that we weren’t perfect. Strange, isn’t it? Well and you know what, we’ve skipped over – because this is – now that’s 1997, but you know what happened in 1996, so for three years life was – I was trying to catch up with what a University is about. Believe me, it’s a different culture from anything the rest of us live in. You know, the rules are totally different in an academic setting. It took me a while to figure out that the Board had – or the – Board, or the President of the University has almost no real power. He doesn’t hire and fire faculty, he doesn’t raise salaries or give – I mean, he has – most of his power comes from persuasion, and through the cabinets that he hires, or she hires. It’s not – it’s not a straight line of control, so it’s very – it’s a very interesting setting. And then the academic customs that keep Universities from changing very rapidly – you know there’s a lot of academic rules of procedure that keep a University a civilized place, but they also make change hard to happen, too.

KB: Anything in particular?

GC: I just think of – I’ll – let me think on that as we go, but remember the power poles? Were you here for those? That was 1996, and it was after that – because after Sue was Ron Dotzauer was elected Chair of the board, and Ron is a great guy. He’s really outgoing, and outspoken, and a lot of fun, and he and I agreed, enjoyed one another, and worked well together, but we got mired in that mess with the power poles when we started the new Science Building and we needed to reroute the power line. And Ivory so wanted to keep the green space in the middle of campus, and so his suggestion was that we take down those old wooden poles, and rerun the power poles down Nicholson, and then cut down and go up – I don’t remember now where they went. Didn’t make any difference, because we got the ones going along Nicholson, and then – then all the furor was raised, and the community got into it, and of course Keith Love was the publisher of the paper, and he lived up on – that Craig’s hill – and he must have flipped out on them, and he kept it fanned in the paper, and we had meeting after meeting about the power poles, because – I mean there were – the big issue was the aesthetics, but the other issue was they were coming close to some buildings – to the library, I guess – oh, to Residence Hall. Anyway, they were so many feet, and so the whole issue of emissions, and did the emissions cause cancer was a big deal.

And I can remember being in a meeting up in Wenatchee and we were talking about the power poles, and that must have been our April meeting, and then in the June meeting we came down to campus again, and we had an open mike where people could come and talk to us about the power poles, and every – we must have spent two hours listening to people from the community, and you know, we got some very rational people, we got some very angry people, we even had one fellow who was running for office that got up and talked and made an anti-abortion speech, apropos of I couldn’t figure out what. But I wasn’t the Chair of the Board, so it couldn’t – I mean, I don’t think it was aimed at me, but it was just, I think, his stump, and so he gave it to us at the Board meeting. And um, the Board could sense the community’s unhappiness. I mean, we’d have had to be blind and deaf and stupid not to. So we decided to pull those poles down. An interesting decision, because we had – they’d gone thorough every process – legal process – that was required to get permission to do that. They’d done all the CECLA things, and all the SEPA things, and all the environmental scans, and all that stuff, and there was opportunity for community input, and it wasn’t till they went up that people saw what they were going to look like, and then all hell broke loose.

So I think one of the things that we learned from that is we live in a small community, this University does, and while we know that this community would be a backwater without the University, we’re still only part of the community, and if we aren’t good community members, we aren’t going to live happily together in this community. And so I think – I still think it was the right decision. It cost us two and a half million dollars, as I recall, to pull those poles down, and we sold them – some of them. Isn’t that interesting? So –

KB: They were [inaudible] on the campus [inaudible – something about “closed down,” or “poles down”]

GC: Oh, right.

KB: Were they simply a lightening rod for other issues, do you think?

GC: I think part of it was that. I think – I think part of it was that the unrest was there, and it gave some – some subject around which people could rally, and it was – they were so visible, and we – the University didn’t handle that right. So it was within a few months that we put up the water cooling tanks – I don’t know for sure which ones they are – but with that one, what they did – what the University did was ask the – they mocked up a picture of what they were going to look like, and had Keith Love run it in the paper – he was still at the paper – because they didn’t want to get into this again. It was something we had to do to better the heating and air conditioning. And he ran it in the paper so people could see what it was going to look like. It went right through.

And then this last time, when we had to reroute those same poles because of the Sub Rec Building, Dick Corona and Jeri met with people all over the community, and had open hearings, and we came – Trustees came out for the hearings and listened to people, and said, “Okay, these are three routes. What do you think? Because we want your opinion on this.” And I came to one of the last meetings, and there wasn’t a quibble about it. Again, they did computerized shots of the running along the Ganges, and one of the most dramatic ones was this is how many trees we’d have to take out in order to put the poles along there, and all those [inaudible – walnut?] trees were gone in the next picture, these – yeah, that was pretty stark looking. So they handled it altogether differently, and of course the community responded differently, but the community was in a different place, as well.

KB: Well what do you suppose was the underlying unrest that drove that first battle?

GC: As I said, I think when Ivory came, he was the right person, so change happened and structures got in place. But then, once change happens and there are structures, then – you know, faculty salaries – and did I tell you faculty salaries are really great here? And um – that’s a real issue for people, and they haven’t had salary increases, so there was basic unhappiness with that, and Ivory’s communication style was not that great. He did not involve people in decisions. We had this horrendous planning process that went with planning the budget. It was really a bit of a sham, because essentially Ivory wrote the budget, and Ivory wrote the plan, and it was beautiful, and nobody paid a lick of attention to it, and the budget and the plan weren’t really attached to one another, and so we produced beautiful documents that didn’t really mean anything. And as hard as Ivory worked on that – and he, I think honestly tried walking around campus and visiting with people. He tried having an open door policy, but he had – I think he’d broken some ties with people, and he’d done some things that – people were angry, and they were unhappy with their salaries, and so – you know, and then we did the campus climate report – you remember that? – and found out there was a lot of, kind of unrest about how people were being treated on campus, and I think – you know, it wasn’t Ivory’s fault. I think everybody was at fault, and when people start acting ugly towards one another I can’t make people act ugly. I can sometimes make people act better if I model that kind of behavior, but I can’t make you act ugly.

But if we – if we confront issues when they come up, and try to work through them – I think there were more and more things getting buried under the rugs, and we had a big uproar about air conditioning the President’s house. And talking about communication, that wasn’t even his house. It was the public part of the place where the President lives, which the community uses. It’s University property, and nobody wanted to have a meeting there, but it was – it was a big deal because we were going to air condition the President’s house. And Ivory told me one time, he said, “Janelle, the chimp lab is air conditioned, when the President’s house is not.” And so we weren’t – you know, it wasn’t that Ivory was being all bad, it was just a huge unrest on campus, I think, for a variety of reasons.

Then there was the whole Union thing, and that was an interesting conversation when – I mean, people came to talk to me, professors did, and tried to compare the University campus to working in a steel mill. It was laughable. I said, “Come on now, you know, my Dad was a Teamster and I’m a Union – I believe in Unions, but this is ridiculous. Don’t try to tell me that being a professor is like working in a steel mill. I mean, that is not a cogent argument. It’s not going to convince anybody.” And when they came to the Board and made their pitch, they sent a bunch of white men – I mean there was not a woman in the group that came to talk to us. There was just these old dudes that wanted to tell us that we had to accept a Union, and of course, at that time we didn’t have to. And it felt like what we were going to get out of that was just more antagonism – that we were setting up some kind of – another mood where we could fight. And so we voted against the Union, then the faculty voted no confidence in Ivory, and while the Board stood behind Ivory, um, there just came a time when enough was going on, and Ivory told me – and this is the kind of thing that I’ve never said out loud to anybody before, but he told me when – he said, “You know, if it gets to the place you think I need to retire, will you tell me?” And I said, “Sure.”

So things were just getting worse on campus. We were having demonstrations, and everything. And so finally I came up and I said, “Ivory, I think you need – you need to decide – while you can decide – that you should retire. And within 24 hours, he did. And um – and I’m not saying that’s because I had power. It’s because he knew. I mean, he was a reasonable man. He knew he was in trouble. So he said he was going to retire, and then he got that offer at Lincoln University, and went there instead. And I think they were in a terrible mess, and he went in and he cleaned them up, you know, so he’s had some success there. And I don’t know how long that will last, either, but – it was success.

KB: How would you assess the achievements, then, and the limits of his administration?

GC: Well I think Ivory did bring structure to the campus. He brought organization. You can find out what the policies were, and people abided by the policies. And while the budget process was not particularly good, you knew what the process was, and it wasn’t simply because you knew the right person that you got money in your department. Everybody was treated the same. I don’t think any of them were very happy about it, but at least they were uniformly not happy. It wasn’t because you went out and drank beer with Ivory that you got more, or went fishing with him, or something. And so I think he did bring structure that was much needed, and predictability.

He did – he did work well in Olympia, and I think early on people had real questions because he was outspoken, and certainly free with his opinion. But he worked well in Olympia, and he ended up getting the funds for the Science Hall, and for redoing Black Hall, and those were so badly needed, and I think he – he did good things in terms of – I mean, I don’t know academically what he did, because that’s not – wasn’t part of what we do. We don’t know what he brought to departments or anything, but I think he did that without a doubt. He was so proud of the campus, and it always looked beautiful while he was here. And we named the Japanese garden after Mrs. Garrity – I thought that was a generous – for after Dr. Garrity that was a generous thing that Ivory did. And he did relate well with people on the HEC Board in Olympia, and so that people knew we were around.

KB: Did he make contributions to the Centers in the Puget Sound?

GC: Oh, you’re right. He – honestly, he got those Centers really going, and he’s very proud of that. I’m glad you mentioned that, because he’d be appalled that I forgot that. Because we had Centers before anybody else did, and so as we now talk about branch campuses and all this stuff, Ivory was the one that got those going, and was very proud of that – and he nourished – kind of nurtured them, and made sure that disadvantaged students over there had access to our Centers. And I’m glad you mentioned that, because he was very proud of that. We never could quite grasp what the goal of the Centers – I mean, how – because people on campus would treat them a little bit like afterthoughts sometimes, and it’s only when Dave Soltz got here one time that we really kept pushing, “Ok, give us the context. Where do they fit in the University plan?” And I – when I was looking through these papers last night, found the paper that he wrote and presented to the Board at a retreat – a White Paper on the Centers. No, it was actually in the Academic Affairs Committee that he presented it, and for the first time it felt like we really had a coherent plan for what we were doing [inaudible].

KB: What did he say that helped you?

GC: Well he talked about them being a place for – um – the kind of degrees that – I mean, it’s not going to be a full University. It’s not going to be – it’s not going to be, um, the kinds of work that you do – not at the Center. It’s going to be more – and I don’t want to use the word “vocational” or “technological,” but the kind of hands-on work – skill building – and I’m thinking it sounds less academic than he did. I’d have to find it and see. But you could tell that the kind of degrees that we were offer – Law and Justice, and the kind of degrees that people need, for instance, in Yakima to go immediately to work. It’s not going to be a degree in Humane Letters. It’s not going to be, um, you know, some of the more academic degrees that you would get in the University setting. And I’ll get that to you, because it’s a good paper, and it – it helps you understand, and I think would alleviate the feelings of people on the campus that felt like we were draining resources away from the campus to the Centers. But their mission’s different from the University, and for a while, when – the last couple years Ivory was here, the enrollment was growing there more than it was here, and we needed that enrollment, so – uh – and then, after a while we weren’t growing anywhere, and now we’re growing everywhere, so you know, it’s that whole enrollment picture’s amazing.

KB: [Brief exchange with videographer.] Are you in a position to talk about President Nelson as interacting with town/gown relations?

GC: I don’t know a lot about it. I know it wasn’t very successful. My – my – I’m trying to remember back when we did the power poles – no, it was the Taco Bell. I had forgotten Taco Bell.

KB: When it’s something like that for [inaudible]?

GC: Well that was when the campus decided that we were going to put – and I don’t even think it was truly Taco Bell, but it might have been – we were going to sell tacos in the Student Union Building. And I can’t remember if we actually contracted with Taco Bell, or if we just got that wonderful name, because the community was so angry that we were competing with Taco Bell downtown – that’s when there was one downtown – and we fought about that. And after Taco Bell we said, “We don’t want any more of these. Whatever it takes, you do your planning ahead of time. We don’t want any more power poles, we don’t want any more Taco Bells.” Because what actually solved that was when a group of students met with people downtown and resolved that issue. And I was so proud of those students, because they figured out that they could talk to the merchants and say, “That doesn’t mean we won’t come downtown. That just means tacos are what we like to eat. We’re going to eat that instead of something else for lunch, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to come out – get out of the University to play.” And they resolved that issue, and that was not an easy thing for Ivory, and you know, if you were the only Black professional man in this somewhat rural community with values that surround the rodeo – I mean, he had to have felt isolated. And so for him to reach out to the Chamber of Commerce – he was a member of Rotary, but I can’t believe that he ever felt at home here.

He and Patricia had an apartment in Seattle, and I think that they had a group – well I know they had a group of professional African American friends over there, because one time – he was a member of some group of Black professional people that he had them come over for Rodeo, and they – we sat out in the front of Barge Hall on a little viewing thing while the parade went by, and you know, there probably were a dozen, maybe 15 African American men and women, all duded up in their Rodeo gear. I mean, they had so much fun doing it, and of course, Patricia and Ivory had beautiful black boots, and the whole thing, and they were so striking, and I thought, “This is probably more Black people than there are in Ellensburg at any one time any day of the year.” And it was – it was a strange thing because Frank Sanchez was sitting there, and some guy came by and he wanted us to make a contribution to the Sheriff’s Association, and Frank said, “I won’t do that. Your Sheriffs rounded up my ancestors and put them in jail!” You know, he was just the funniest way of interacting with the community that I’ve ever seen.

But – but Ivory – you know, it was hard for him because he knew people resented him. He knew that people thought that Roz insisted that he be here, and that he didn’t belong here, and there’s a fair amount of racism everywhere in our country, and he felt that. So it was tough for him, on that basis, because he knew people had – the people that lived here like long-time University ties would say outright that he didn’t deserve to have that job. So it was tough, and he wasn’t good at it anyway.

I remember when Mark, the Development Vice President was – Mark, what was his name? Anyway, doesn’t make any difference. He was the Development guy, and he wanted Ivory to cultivate a donor – just take him fishing a couple of times, because this donor liked to fish. And he said, “You know, it didn’t work at all. Ivory took him out, and asked him for money.” And so schmoozing, and cultivation, and small talk wasn’t Ivory’s forte at all. But then, I mean, he’d do anything he could to make the University successful, but that wasn’t who he was, and so it was tough.

KB: Well some [inaudible] make it sound like he was a – at the wrong place at the wrong time?

GC: He was in the right place at the right time for a while, and then when change needed to happen, I don’t – I don’t think it was in him. He couldn’t change who he was, and [inaudible] I think the time was right for the University to have different leadership. I don’t – I mean, I – is that a failure? I suppose in a way it is a failure, if you can’t change to meet what new eras require, but there are sure more of us that can’t change than can.

KB: Well I want to go on, but before we do I’d love to hear your reminiscences about the other Board members, or other leaders on campus that you had a chance to work with during President Nelson’s administration.

GC: Well I was remembering Marge Young, who was in Development, and David Dauwalder was – I mean, he was the last of – we had a whole string of Provosts at that time – we had Tom More, and Gerald Stacey was for a while, and Don Schliesman came back at least once to be the acting Provost, and then David Dauwalder came. And David, again, he brought some stability to that position, finally, because how does the President work without a Provost that’s working well with the faculty? I didn’t know that until I started working on the Board, but a Provost is really an important person on campus, and how he or she relates is of crucial importance to how the University works. And so, um – I mean, that was terrible, because I know when – Tom More was let go, right? And the faculty, many of them, were very angry about that, and of course, they shared that always with the Board, if they were angry, and so – and then to have it roll over so many times was very difficult, and I think made Ivory’s work even harder.

I liked David Dauwalder a lot. He was kind of a bean counter. He never found a detail he didn’t like, and so that – sometimes he didn’t – it was hard, sometimes, to understand the bigger picture from him, because he was so focused on details. But he was good to work with, and he was really helpful to me when we were selecting the Search Committee, because the Board decided that we wanted a faculty person to Chair the Search Committee, and so David and I worked on who that might be, and he was very insightful, and it was he who suggested Roger Fouts Chair it, and that turned out to be a very successful Search Committee. So I appreciated him for that, and for lots of other reasons.

When I first came on the Board, that Courtney? Courtney [Jones] – was the VP for Finance, and – what’s his last name? Anyway, I see him once in a while still. He runs marathons, and my husband does, and we see him once in a while, and he was awfully nice. Very helpful. And of course, then, after him in the Business Office was – oh, why can’t I say his name? Um, [inaudible] Abdul [Nasser], and he was a lot of fun. He, of course – one of the things that’s so tough when you’re a Trustee is trying to understand the finances of a University, and that’s one of the places that – one of the things that Ivory made a mistake one time that I remember. We had the big S&A team discussion. We finally cleaned that up. I told the Board if they ever argued with the students about S&A fees again I was going to call them out of order, because the students worked so hard on those, and then they come to the Board and it’s – it’s stuff that we can understand, and so like idiots we start discussing it, like “Why did you give $600 to Drama and $700 to Band, and – ” you know, they did out of a good reason, but we don’t really need – all we need to do is say yea or nay, and we should say yea and leave them alone.

Well one time we had this big argument between – I think it was Drama and somebody else, and they each needed $100,000 and we gave it to one, and Ivory said, “That’s okay, I’ll take $100,000 out of the President’s fund and fund the other, and then everybody will be happy.” Well of course, they weren’t all happy. Everybody just went, “Okay, [if you have] $100,000 for that, why don’t you have $100,000 for faculty salaries?” And it started that big rumor that there was some slush fund – remember that – out of which – I mean, that the President had access to, and so some very fine faculty minds spent a lot of time looking for that money, and I think – as nearly as I can tell, that was the President’s discretionary fund. But what a stupid thing to do, because it didn’t credit the student’s process, it discredited it. Didn’t give any credit to the Board, it discredited it. And [inaudible] giving credit to – it discredited the President’s office. So I thought that was just a bad mistake.

So, um – you know, I – David Pitts was a wonderful Board member. I enjoyed him a lot. He always had a good story to tell, and he represented – he was just a nice man. He’s since deceased, and – Wilf Woods was full of wisdom. I don’t know whether you ever knew him, but the publisher of the Wenatchee World, and a hiker, a man in his late seven – or mid-seventies. He finally went off the Board and said, “I want to go play more, and this is cutting into my playing time.” He and his wife hiked, and skied, and traveled, and that’s what he wanted to do. But a very wise man, and enjoyed him so much, and uh –

Fritz Glover from here was – tried so hard to make everything right for the community of Ellensburg and that whole mess with Ivory, and um, was certainly a very earnest Board member. So we had – we had, certainly, people who cared so much. Mike Sells, the fellow from Everett – he came on the Board right after I did. Very good Board member. He was appointed by the Governor before Locke. He was certainly – I see him – Lowery – and very much a union guy, and he came on as a union fellow, and the people who wanted the faculty union lobbied and lobbied Mike.

KB: Let’s turn over to the other side.

(Transcription of Tape 1, Side 2)

KB: Let’s resume on this side.

GC: He uh – he’s a fine Board member, and he always looked out for the broader interests, and he would meet with the faculty – united faculty group and talk with them, but never felt like he compromised his role on the Board, ever. And he was elected legislator this last year, and now we’ve got – we have a past congressman, and a legislator on the Board. I think that’s pretty neat. And Mike is a good, strong Board member, so –

I’m trying to think. Oh, of course Pappas was around always, and a good friend of Ivory’s, and he was always a joy to – for a Board member to work with, because he always wanted to give us information. He was certainly one of those guys that never could regulate what he talked about. He couldn’t talk in five minutes, it was twenty-five minutes, and he produced way too much paper for us, but he was certainly – had the University’s well being in mind. And when Ivory left, I think – what’s his name – first name?

KB: Jim.

GC: Jim. Jim Pappas and Abdul, I think, both felt like they could make an argument for being the Interim President, and uh – and I was – we were at some – Fritz and Joan gave a party for Patricia and Ivory up at their house, and we were just beginning to chat about the Interim, and I said, “Well, why don’t we talk – see if Dolph Norton would come?” Because I knew he’d been the Interim, and he was – he was getting up in years, and he had said, when I called him, he’d just told Faith Tyler that he felt that was the last Interim that he’d do, because he’d been with the Adelphi [University on Long Island, New York] thing, and he thought that he was probably ready to retire and not do that anymore. Well then when we called, and we had – I had carefully thought why he would be a good person, and when I told him what our arguments were, I convinced him he should do it. And I think that Dolph brought a wonderful personality and a presence for the transition. He was an academic without question, he had a PhD from Harvard, and he’d been involved in University governments for years and years, and his kind – kindness – I mean, he had a hearing problem that he struggled with, and he got hearing aides, fancier ones, while he was here, trying to do better with that because he lost things during conversations. But – but – he knew how Universities should run, and he worked hard with David Dauwalder to try and build that Provost position to where it needed to be. And he brought eminent civility to the campus, and gracious Southern hospitality, and a wonderful sense of humor. And he was just a delight to work with.

KB: Did you get to know him because he came in to help assess the [inaudible] before?

GC: Uh-huh. He had been there and spent a couple of days, and while he was much the quieter, he was still very impressive. And Ames McGinnis had come and worked with the Board two summers in a row at our retreat, and he was very good. He was a facilitator, and more of a professor type, and I don’t even know – I probably know what his credentials are, but I’ve forgotten them. But Dolph was always kind of the wise one in the back, and in terms of the wisdom that went into that report – in my interaction with them, I just gravitated towards Dolph because I felt that he really understood what a President’s role was.

KB: Was he, then, important in helping the Board take more charge and assess the needs of leadership?

GC: Ames was a lot of help because he met with us in the summer for a couple days at a time, and we met at The Sleeping Lady a couple of times, and – before the budget got so bad that we were embarrassed to go off campus and we just couldn’t do that anymore. But he worked with us, and helped us see that – I mean, we were not working well together as a Board, so – part of it was conflict. We were getting a lot of pressure from a lot of people in the community, and from the campus – a lot of faculty pressure, and it was tough sledding. But we had some problems on the Board where people were – where we’d make decisions as a Board, and then one of the Board members would – would not abide by that decision, or would talk in the community about disagreeing with the Board’s decision. Well that’s not good Boardmanship. And we tried very hard to get a hold of a long-term direction for the University. And so part of what we worked on is what it should be. We went to AGD conferences, and met with other Trustees, and that was a useful thing to do. And so I think we began to get a picture of what the University could be, and so we worked with Dolph on that, and when you get a presence like his on campus, it does help you see that things could be a lot better.

And so then we started that search process, and of course, then Jay Reich came on the Board. And when he first came on the Board, before I’d met him, sort of the rap on Jay was that he was a mediator – that he – wherever he was, people got along. And the first time I met him, you know, you can feel that presence in him. He’s, uh – he brings a lot of – his mind just works, “Okay, how can we make this work together so it happens?” And he was a great addition to the board.

And so he and Judy Yu, who’s wonderful, I think, and Mike Sells were on the Search Committee, and – along with some faculty representatives, and who would have guessed, George Popotich was on there, and you know, George was such a radical, and so angry with us, and he worked so well on the Board – on that Search Committee. His wife works for me now, and George is a good friend. But he was angry with us, because I’m sure he thought that we were screwing up, which we probably were. And the Search Committee – we charged them with modeling the kind of open communication that we wanted for the campus because Dolph had done that. I mean, his office all of a sudden was a place of civil discourse – a place where people came to problem solve, not to try to harangue each other into changing, but a civil discourse, and an open communication. And he didn’t tolerate fools very gladly, so he – people when they were out lying he’d call them on it – and – so he made a couple tough decisions that then Jeri didn’t have to make.

KB: Like what?

GC: Well he worked on the budget a lot – tried to get the budget process so that it really did have departments working on their own budgets and bringing something instead of – I think it’s departments, it might be whole schools. You know that better than I do. But at least the budget – whole budget process meant something, then, and he worked very hard to try to get a handle on that so that it was real. So that she didn’t have to do that. And just in terms of a couple of his recommendations in terms of the Cabinet, so when she got there, that – um – but we charged her with – I thought – [inaudible]. What we asked her to do was, we said that we wanted her to help establish a community of scholarship, teaching and respect. We wanted her to pursue excellence and insure that our accreditation and our reputation as a highest – we had the reputation of the highest academic standards. We told her we wanted to increase enrollment, to define our niche in areas of excellence. We wanted her to identify more external funding sources. We wanted her to raise the profile of Central in the state, and we wanted her to change the climate on campus so it was more congenial and collaborative. So that’s what I told her, the night that I called her, that we wanted her to do, and uh –

You know, that – you have taken part in that interview process. Was that not interesting, when we got those three people? When the Search Committee – I remember when they told us that the three finalists were all women. We’d never had a woman President before, so we knew right away some changes were going to happen, and it was so fascinating because Jeri came first, and she was so much who she is, and just pleasant to talk to – easy to talk to. And one of the funniest things I remember – because we went over to Seattle and met so that people from the Centers over there could meet with the candidates – and Jimmy, you, and Leslie Jones and Jeri and I were all in the restroom at the same time, and it just was so funny because we all started giggling and saying, “No, this is going to be different – the President and the Board of Trustees are in the restroom chatting about something!” And she’s such – so natural. And then the woman – oh, what was it – the one that came from Florida, that was quite a task master, so she was second – no, I don’t remember which one was second – it was the one that was the – that made such a pitch to the faculty. She might have been second. I have their names probably here, but –

KB: Sally Jenkins?

GC: I don’t know. Anyway, she was the one that, when she talked to the faculty she spun these stories, and at one point in that conversation she said, “I will not be a CEO. I will be an academic,” or something. So my first hint that she wasn’t the right person was that I saw her I said, “Okay, so tell me what’s wrong with CEOs?” And she took forever – she got so flustered by that. I said, “I’m a CEO. Tell me what’s wrong with me,” because I was just teasing her. Because I knew what she was saying, because we got into that little space and spate of time when were talking that this should be more like a business, and obviously the faculty said, “Yeah, right this is a business. What am I doing here if this is a – I mean, what are you doing to what I’ve given my life to, calling it a business?” So I understood what she was doing, so I was just teasing her. She never got over that – that I’d asked her that. She fussed about it the whole time, and we went over to Seattle she was still fussing about it, and I thought, “Oh come on, grow up. It was not that big a deal.”

So she really didn’t make the cut, but that other one, Menjoris or something like that – her name was Peggy, or something like that – she was a real hard-ass, and she was going to come and clean this place up. There would be no more of this faculty getting out of line and stuff, and I thought – I mean, she just – she was just – but she wanted us to court her. She said, “You may think I’m coming here to look at this, but you need to sell yourselves to me.” And I thought, “Yeah, over my dead body.” But when the Board got together, it was not unanimous. We worked quite until eleven o’clock at night figuring out what we were going to do. We worked hard on that, because the Search Committee – they brought us three good candidates, and they said, “Okay Board, it’s up to you.” But they had – they presented everything that they’d learned about people, and then they left it to us, and –

I got to call Jeri and offer her the job, and she’s brought – from my perspective she’s just a jewel to work with. She’s done what we wanted her to do. She started in with the direction of the University and put together a strategic plan – the vision, or the mission, you can actually read and understand, and five or six, seven goals that make sense to people, and she built a budget around it, and she stuck to it, and she’s used that as the basis for what she’s done. Then she had the misfortune, right after she got here, that Dolph said – he said, “The enrollment figures aren’t going well.” And what we kept hearing was that they were, and they weren’t. And so somebody got in trouble over that, because the information that he was giving the Board and the President was not good. And so first year she’s here we’ve got declining enrollment, and Dolph said, “You know, that’s the worst thing you can do to a new President, is have enrollment decline.” But Jeri made it through that, and when the budget’s been so bad, one of those things that she did when she talked about re-envisioning the University or something like that, and try to see is there any way we can be more entrepreneurial? Are there things that we can do that we’re not doing? And of course, then all this enrollment started hitting us, and we’d like to give her credit for that. I don’t think we can, but I think she has – one of the people from her University told us that she – there was a hand of steel under that velvet glove, so don’t ever underestimate her. And I don’t – I think you would underestimate her at your own peril, because she is a strong woman. And I think she’s put together a good Cabinet. I think those people are delightful. Charlotte Tullos is a nut. I like that in her. And Paul Baker is doing a good job, and the Provost, as far as I can tell, is making sense out of the – I mean, I haven’t had any interaction with him since I left, but I really enjoyed him because – you know, the Board finally divided the Board up into committees, and we started the Academic Affairs Committee, and Janine chaired it the first time through, and we had the most fascinating discussions, so he would lift out people that are doing great things, and the Board actually got to hear from faculty, and what you guys do, and – so we got some value added to our lives because we got to interact with some of the superb faculty. Then we could go and brag about it. So that’s something that’s worked really well. I mean, those are good people that are working for her now, and I was so glad that Corona got the job in the Business Department. He’s done a good job. And now we have this spectacular building arising on campus which Bill Herbert – he says I have to go look at on my way out of town, because he’s so proud of it.

KB: The Student Union?

GC: Uh-huh. We talked about that for years on the Board before then, finally it’s happening now. But trying to work out the funding for that was really challenging, because it’s student funds, but the University has to guarantee the bonds on it, and so the Board had to be sure that we did that in the appropriate way, and it was very helpful to have Jay, with his background. That’s part of what his business is, is to do that. So –

KB: Well what – what is your hunch about the – the legislative funding problems. You were with this University through very tough times – the Nineties were not pretty.

GC: Mm-hmm. Well, I think there’s an understanding in the State of Washington that we have to do something. We can’t – I mean, I’m appalled to think that we might throw money at branch campuses in Vancouver, and Tri Cities, and Bothell, when we’re under funding our four-year Universities. Because – I think the legislature will do that. They’ll build a building when they won’t pay for faculty, and we’ve got to get through that somehow. I was so glad to see Jeri and Dr. Kaminski from YVC saying “We’ve got these Centers. Let’s use them. There is a cheaper way to educate. We don’t have to have all these buildings in the Tri Cities and Vancouver now. We can use University Centers instead.” And I think that’s a concept. I mean, that’s an innovative concept to collaborate so we’d open the two-year to the four-year, for the upper division classes in a more seamless way. I think the people in this State believe in higher education. I just – we somehow haven’t communicated that to our legislators, though. Gregoire certainly is supporting, but – I was so pleased to see that our financial situation is better. That we, instead of 2.2 billion, we were down to 1.5 billion shortfall. Gregoire says she’s going to do something for higher Ed, but I think we’re going to have to mount a campaign like K-12 did. Are you running out of time?

Videographer: Yeah, I have to change the tape.

GC: Okay. Is it because we’re still on the frontier, and we think that – I mean, I don’t understand that. That we need people – I mean, we want Boeings, and Boeings are only there if we feed engineers to them. And we want to live in – we want a quality of life that supports libraries, and good book stores, and stuff. We’re not going to have that if we don’t have educated people. So I don’t understand it at all. I guess on this side of the mountains, where we’re more of an agriculture community, I can figure it out, but what’s the I-5 corridor’s excuse? And you know, there’s a lot of power over there. But you know, when we get some more around trying to – when we talked about an initiative for higher education – that’s been thrown around now for the last five years – a citizen’s initiative – and it’s harder to – when you have little kids running around on a playground and you’ve got to keep them safe, and move them up through high school, it’s – you’ve got all the parents, and they’re so invested in that. By the time kids get to college – and a lot of college kids make their own decisions, and they’re not as tied to their families anymore – that kind of touchy, feely, warm snugglies about education – higher ed – aren’t there, as they are for K-12. But somehow we’ve got to go there, to get the attention of the legislature or the people of this state, that we’re not going to be better until we get – fund higher Ed better.

KB: [Inaudible] town/gown tensions have presented themselves. Do you have any hunches about the sources of that?

GC: Well, I think it’s a push-pull in terms of power. You know – I think that the very fact that the University is so important makes it harder to live with for a town. I mean, there are some good things happening now – the fact that Lianha Armstrong’s [Dean, College of Arts and Humanities] husband is so important to the community – that’s a nice tie. And it feels like – it feels to me, from a distance – I still read the Ellensburg paper because we have a clinic here – that there’s a lot less acrimony now. I don’t know what you feel like internally, but I know Jeri’s worked hard on it. I know the people that she surrounded herself with in her cabinet are dedicated. I mean, Charlotte’s building a home here. She’s a homeowner and a part of this community, and I think people are working on that, but I think – I haven’t ever seen a University community where there wasn’t some of that. I mean, the community wants everything that you bring, and yet doesn’t want you to be too powerful, and I think that’s probably – I don’t feel the acrimony now. I think it’s much better. I don’t know what the student rec center is going to do – if we’re going to have another uproar about putting the gym out of business or something, but it seems to me like with more students coming to the campus, it should be better for the community, and there should be more money to go around for everybody. I just think that the community is crazy not to court the University. But then, I have a bias, I’m sure.

KB: Do you mind going back to the question of faculty union – you said that the Board discussed this, going on in the Nineties, but came down against it. Would you be willing to talk about the reasons for that?

GC: Sure. The arguments that the faculty made were not persuasive. I mean, that’s where I came out on it – that – how does a union – I mean, if what you do for a living is communicate, what I see isn’t – you know, you teach. You teach people. You talk to those people, and persuade them that History is important. So why do you need an organizer in front of you speaking to the Board? It seemed incongruous to me personally that a group of highly educated communicators would want a person between them – why would they, of all people, need somebody to speak for them? I’m trying to negotiate a lease right now, and the person that owns the building we’re in says, “Talk to my attorney. I don’t want to talk to you.” Well, she’s not a very good communicator, but it does make communication a lot harder if you have attorneys talking to attorneys. So if you have a union person talking to the representative of the University, does that make you stronger? I mean that – my feeling was that that’s what you’d do when communication fails, and I – I mean it’s not like I tried to persuade the Board of that, but that’s where the Board was. What does the University gain from this? Because we had people come from campuses that were unionized successfully come and talk to the Board, and ones where they’d had fights forever talked to us, and it was hard to get a picture of how that was going to improve things on campus. We didn’t believe it would, so we voted against it.

KB: What kind of time does it take to be a Board member? [Inaudible]

GC: To be a good Board member, you need to come to all the meetings, and you need – I mean, we got in – we set the pattern of coming in the night before, after Jeri got here, and having dinner, and having some time to talk to one another before we went into committee meetings and the Board. So that would be essentially two days out of your life, about six or eight times a year. We tried very hard then to get better at being more visible on campus, so we – we’ve tried to come to things like homecoming, and be there so the Trustees were there, or different events on campus, so that people knew that we didn’t just show up six times – that we had an interest in the University. It takes – so that would be a little bit more time. It takes time to keep up on the issues. It takes time to go to Olympia. We tried to get to Olympia to talk to legislators – to at least be a presence on the Capitol campus. It could take as much time as you could give. And when I was the Board chair I usually came up at least once a month and spent time with the President.

And then there are other things that come up, like when I called Judy – Judy Miller was such a support to the Board. She’s in her quiet way made things happen so that Board members lives were easier. I mean, that is a gift. And I called and thanked her that she answered the phone, because I wasn’t sure where I could park, because I’ve always had a Trustee’s pass. And she said, “Well do you still have that?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “Put it on the dash, and we’ll take care of it if anything happens.” So I did. But – something – things would come up that the Board Chair needs to be involved with that would take a little bit of time. Truly you could do it if you only put in your two days six time a year – wouldn’t be much fun. It’s like anything else – if you’re going to get rewarded, you need to really get into the life of the campus.

You know, we started when Ron Dotzauer was chair having those conversations in the fall with faculty, and I don’t know if they’re still doing that. It felt like it kind of ran its course, because there were fewer faculty coming to talk to us, but – but those are the kind of things that make it more fun, when we finally got to know some faculty so we could speak to people, much less the students, you know. We tried eating in the dining room a few times, but it takes a pretty gutsy student to come up and talk to a group of Trustees. They’re not going to do that. But at least we were someplace where they could see us.

KB: Tell me, when – in the Nineties the student representative began to be appointed by the Governor [inaudible].

GC: That was an interesting thing.

KB: How did that change things?

GC: Well it added a different dimension. I remember I told you on the way over here that the Board wasn’t – it wasn’t the idea of the Board to add somebody, because we had – what you’re doing then is having a person with a constituency instead of the wide State constituency. It was always perceived by the students that they had a student Trustee, and Trustees – the student Trustees, some of them were very good at saying, “No, I’m just a member of the Board.” But truly, we did want them to give us the students’ perspective, and so it was – we kind of jerked them around a little. It – the down side is they only serve a year, and we always had good student Trustees, but after a year they were usually seniors – they were usually ready to do something else anyway. But while we didn’t – um – advocate for it, I think it enriched what we did.

It’s tough to get a student Trustee up to speed every year, because they usually would come – their first meeting would be the retreat, and we’d be deep into some subjects that we needed to be deep into, so that was kind of hard for them. And then, you know, just the – as I told you – getting – understanding the academic system for any of us is tough, but budgets and all of that for a student, who’s already carrying a full load of courses, to cram that stuff into his or her head was one more challenge. But they were great leaders – great fun. We enjoyed them all, and some of them became our good friends, and some of them we just watched them do great things.

Does it add a lot to the Board? It certainly added – I mean, it added an interesting human being to the discussion of the Board, if it did nothing else. We had students participating, and the student body President always is invited to the Board meeting and has a chance to speak. Then we had two students. We’d didn’t always – that student Trustee spoke as other Trustees, not as a – making a speech, but the ASB always got [inaudible, sounds like “cherries”] a chance to report, and – I think it’s – I certainly enjoyed those students.

Was it necessary? I think the down side of it is why the students and not the faculty? Why the students and not the classified staff? Why not the community of Ellensburg? Why don’t they get somebody on the Board? And so once you start down that slippery slope – why the students and nobody else? Because there’s no way a faculty person would ever get to serve on the Board of Trustees, because you have a vested interest. Doesn’t the student have a vested interest? I think so. So sort of in a philosophical sense I don’t think it’s a good idea. Practically, it worked very well.

KB: You gave ten years to the Board. That’s a very long time. Did your sense of Board responsibility change from the day you entered to the day you left?

GC: [Laughs] Sure, because on my first day in I thought, “Why me, and what do they think they’re going to get from me in this setting?” And by the time I left, of course, I’d fallen in love with Central. I felt like it was so much a part of my life that – really, it’s a very important part of my life. I really am impressed with Central and the work that’s done here, and a great advocate for the University. So I knew very little about Central when I came to the Board, and when I left I felt like it owned a part of me, and I owned a part of it. So –

KB: What is the Board’s responsibility?

GC: Well the Board’s responsibility is to set the long-range direction of the University, so it’s up to us to be sure the University’s going some direction, and if it’s going in the wrong direction, to change that. We have some fiscal responsibility, so if – if money would be thrown away – that’s a very difficult one to do, because even the financials are reported in a very strange way. You never see – I mean, it’s – in any other setting on a Board you always have a revenue/expense report, so – there’s never such a thing in the University, and – I mean, it’s a whole different mindset than any other kind of a Board. But as a Trustee for the State of Washington, we’re looking to be sure that Central meets the needs of the citizens of Washington, and that represents the State, and that’s kind of a pretty decent responsibility.

KB: Well, you came in ’93, you left in 2003. What was the evolution of this institution?

GC: Well – and part of that is because of – I became an insider, instead of an outsider, but I think that the University’s now recognized for some of the great things it does. I think it is recognized as a center for music education, for one thing. I think the Business Department’s now well recognized. I think that it’s now seen as a viable place for good students to go to school. I – I always felt, and Ivory [Nelson, President] used to say that we didn’t get – you know, no respect, or something that guy used to say, but part of that’s our responsibility to be sure that what we present is our best side, and we’ve gotten better at that. We are – then you look at the University – Central today, some of the – we’re finally communicating with our Alumni in a positive way, and we’re reaching out to the State, and that’s part of what’s in that plan, is that we are going to be recognized in Olympia as a player in higher ed, and I think we’re doing that. So I think that the stature of the University is changed in the last ten or fifteen years, and it’s higher. But that might be just that I recognize the [inaudible], but in principle I think it is – it has evolved. People like you, and what you bring to this University, you know? It’s being recognized.

KB: Well thank you, and it’s [inaudible] is part of that equation as well.

GC: Well I – Jeri has made a huge difference.

KB: Are there any questions I forgot to ask you?

GC: I don’t know. It’s long enough, isn’t it? You don’t want to have me talk any more.

KB: Have you said all you need to say about –

GC: Oh, all I need to say, yeah.

KB: Well thank you very much for being here.

GC: Oh, you’re very welcome, and it’ll be interesting to see what you do with all this.