University of Miami - Ibis Yearbook (Coral Gables, FL)

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UM? Stanford: The retirement date is May, 1981, and I have no intention of resigning before then. Ibis: Can you foresee any more buildings on this cam- pus? Stanford: Yes, I can fore- see a facility for Art, in which we are in a desper- ately poor situation. We need to tear down the present facilities and put up some decent Art Buildings. I can see a new facility for animal laboratories for the Psychology Department. Those are desperately need- ed. The School of Business Administration needs a building of its own. Those professors are housed here in the Ashe Building in cramped quarters. We have, waiting in the wings, so to speak, a bequest that will provide this building. The spot is already allocated for it. That ' s over on the canal in front of the Merrick Building. There is land in front of the West Lab Elementary School, which the University owns. We ' ve been unable to get it re- zoned for parking. I des- perately tried to reacquire the property on which the West Lab is built several years ago. Three times I went down to the Board of Education to try to get the Board to negotiate with us for the purchase on the improvements there and the return to us of land that was originally ours. We needed that for additional classroom space. I was thinking particularly of Art over there, but I lost the battle because the Board of Education was unwilling to turn down the pleas of the parents, whose children are studying there, to maintain it as a laboratory school. I can foresee additional intramural facilities. This new Lane Campus Sports and Recreation Center is the first of several units that we plan to build. We ' ve been talking recently about a North-South Center, which would be comparable to the East-West Center in Hawaii, where there is a commingling of the Asian and European cultures under federal grant. Well, where in the U.S. is there a more likely place for a North-South Center than Miami? It would be a kind of student-re- search-teaching center bringing the North and South of this hemisphere together. Ibis: Would you consider that a fulfillment of William Jennings Bryan ' s original dream? Stanford: Yes. I think we ' ve fulfilled it in many ways. 28

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nity parts of tisa illation that lained. I ' m i athletic, akthat trandbe- ] think trend to- ts themselves as consumers of an educational good? Stanford: It probably put us more on our mettle than before. There has been a great change in students in the last decade. In the late 60s and early 70s there was a challenge to authority. There seems to be a conviction that you can trace to that melancholy Dane, not Hamlet, but Kierkegaard, that is saying, Time is short. I can, how- ever, affect those decisions which, in turn, affect me, by making my views known. It ' s a kind of existential- ist posture that students and faculty are assuming, a phenomenon of this century. That was the late 60s and early 70s. Now the stud- ents, affected by consumer- ism, ask, What am I getting for the dollar I am pay- ing? Just as the ques- tions about authority forced us to rethink the University ' s structure, I think the questions about cost are making us think about the quality of the product. So I think it ' s constructive in that sense. Ibis: What is being done on a continuous basis to find out what the students think about the quality of the various departments? Stanford: I don ' t know that anything is being done as vigorously as it should be. I know that I meet with students every two weeks for breakfast. These meetings usually see someone making comments about various de- partments and I have someone making notes. The comments are then referred to the department that is being criticized or complimented. I think we need to have a somewhat more formal way of polling student opinion of the various departments. Ibis: Did you engineer integration at this Uni- versity? Stanford: No. The decision to integrate the University had been made before I got here in 1962. However, I think that I have used the authority of this office to bring blacks into the Uni- versity in greater numbers and try to carry out the dictates of Affirmative Action. It is a require- ment of the federal govern- ment to have blacks in prof- essorial, administrative, and other employee positions at UM. Ibis: Has your effort to- ward this end been success- ful? Stanford: No. We don ' t have as many blacks as we should have under the Affirmative Action Program. We ' re working on it. It has not been completely success- ful, but we ' ve made some progress. Ibis: How much longer do you think you will remain at 27

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