University of Pittsburgh - Owl Yearbook (Pittsburgh, PA)

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existence of this place. I want my relationship with the students to be a close as possible. Mv attention necessarily is divided by all of these responsibilities but I can’t begin to do my job adequately unless I have a close sense of student attitudes, aspirations and needs. OWL: The records of Pitt’s athletic teams has been weak and unimpressive in the past few years. Do you see any changes in the athletic program or do you have any plans for resolving these problems? POSVAR: Yes. I do. The major intercollegiate teams of the University are in a phase of building, and building in a healthy way, I think. We are developing a concept here of good athletics with good academic abilities. There are some athletes who can’t get admitted to Pitt. If they did come here, they would not be able to pass the program and that wouldn’t be fair to them. But we are building our athletic teams and we do intend to compete favorably on the national scene. I think you will see a marked improvement in our football performance next year. We also have improved hopes for wrestling, swimming and basketball. One of the brightest prospects is track. I would like to lav special stress upon the role of student support in successful athletic programs. A student who does not attend the game has no right to criticize the performance of the team. Student support shouldn’t wane when the team is losing. During the past football season, our team was badly defeated by certain great football powers, but I didn’t see the players quit except at moments in one or two of our worst games. I have never been associated with a school—even a school with winning records— in which I have seen a team with greater persistence and spirit than our young football team showed this past year. They deserve all the support the students can give them. OWL: Many of the coaches put much of the blame on the trimester system and shortness of time for a student to be here. Therefore, they feel students do not want to go out for sports. The coaches can’t get good teams as a result. They also place the blame on the high academic standards. They are trying to get them lowered officially or unofficially through the admissions office. POSVAK: This is not what the coaches or the Director of Athletics have told me. They are free to come here at any time to express their points of view. I have heard unqualified support for our academic standards from our coaching staff and the coaches have told me they want the standards to remain. I make this point emphatically. Lowering academic standards does not produce better athletic teams in football or in any sport. We are talking about a few players a year who can’t l e admitted. It is possible to find equally good players who are good students; our coaches are doing this. OWL: Why is the alumni endowment so small? POSVAR: Let me correct a matter of terminology here. No distinction has been made between the endowment made by alumni and that made by other private sources. The endowment of this University is approaching 90 million dollars. A major portion has been contributed by Pittsburgh citizens who have had some direct or indirect connection with the University. However, it is generally recognized that the alumni spirit and support have not been good. One of the variety of reasons for this is the rapid change that has taken place in the University in the past two decades. We intend to work hard to develop stronger alumni spirit. The place to begin is with our future alumni, our students. OWL: The recent changes in the selective service system will have a great impact on education. Does Pitt plan to take a stand on the issue? 8

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the out-of-state student come from also is important. Not much is added to the cosmopolitan flavor by getting students from easter Ohio or southern New York. We stand to gain a great deal more by bringing students from Texas, California and foreign countries, and, even more important, black students from ghetto neighborhoods. Now I think we tend to overlook one vital element in the cosmopolitan character of the University. and that is faculty. If the faculty comes from a variety of institutions—as ours does—then the learning experience will l e much more cosmopolitan. We have a very low percentage of Pittsburgh Ph.D’s on our faculty; our ‘‘inbreeding ratio” is very low. So, I would say that in balance, among major American universities we arc comparatively heterogeneous and are getting more so. Last summer, we had a faculty turnover of only eight or nine percent which is one of the lowest— perhaps the lowest—of any large university in the United States. That is a very optimistic indicator. In general, let me stress that this university is now on a threshold of a decade of vigorous growth. OWL; How do you view the role of the regional campuses? POSY A R: To Ixj justified, our regional campuses must be an integral part of the University. They are going to be brought up to the full academic standards of the main campus and they will serve as geographically dispersed locations for different kinds of programs. OWL; There has been some talk that the campuses will be used as undergraduate schools and that the Oakland campus will become a graduate school. POSVAR: You mean exclusively, no. They will remain undergraduate schools. They will permit us to expand our graduate programs in Oakland, but we expect that the numerical majority of students on the Oakland campus will always be undergraduates. OWL; The Chancellor of a University has many diverse roles. How do you view your relationship with the undergraduates? What is your role? POSVAR: I have a number of what you might call constituencies. A position like this is more similar to an office in government than it is to an office in a business corporation. Our publics include, of course, the community, the state legislators, the Governor and the trustees—the final authority in the University. But the faculty also is a public: they are the essential means to the accomplishment of all of our missions. Above all, the students are a public. They are the reason for the 7

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POSVAR: By September, unforeseen circumstances may alter the draft situation. We can speak only in generalities now. There is an impasse between the Congress and the White House over random selection versus selection on the basis of age beginning with the higher age groups. The latter would put the load on graduate students and people with baccalaureate degrees. The military itself has said it would prefer a random selection by year groups. If the White House sees fit to install this procedure, the blow to graduate programs would be alleviated considerably. If it doesn't, the blow would be heavy indeed. We have lieen told that there is virtually no chance that the White House will alter its policy of drafing the oldest first. I feel that this situation is bad for everyone. It is bad for the armed forces; the draftees are older than they want. It is bad for the public because the system is inequitable. It is bad for higher education because it could stunt graduate enrollment. I therefore hope it will be bad politically for those who arc to blame. OWL; With all the occurrences at Columbia and Berkeley, do you think this massive student protest could take place here? What would your stance be? POSVAR: Let me answer this in general terms because the character of student activism is rapidly changing. First, I believe that the phenomenon of large-scale student interest in public affairs—the students’ desire to influence policies that affect their lives as students and citizens—is a healthy and encouraging contemporary development. The present generation of students will have to face awesome responsibilities when it assumes command of society, and I have growing confidence in its ability to meet those responsibilities with honesty and courage. Turning to the particular question of student campus protests, I feel these protests have taken such a variety of forms that it is difficult to make sweeping conclusions. I can say this much: various forms of public expression, protest, debate, demonstration and peaceful picketing are a normal part of the scene in a free and open University. At the same time, we must realize that physical obstruction of university activities or interference with the right of others to meet with persons of their choice or to study is not consistent with the political values of western society. To many, the “rule of law” may sound like a trite phrase, but it happens to be the cornerstone of all the civil lib- erties, minority rights, and democatic institutions that have been carefully nurtured and developed through 3,000 years of human progress. The man who places his own beliefs above the rule of law may or may not be right in his own moral sense, but he clears the way for the advent of totalitarians who make precisely the same argument as he does to justify their actions: “What I do is right because it is what I believe.” OWL: Is our involvement in the Civil Bights movement as shown by our housing of the Poor Peoples March indicative of a new turn in Pitt’s role in this national question? POSVAR: Yes, but only as one simple illustration of our concern with the needs of future society. Housing the poor crusaders was a sincere gesture of good will on our part. But it was only that—a gesture not an answer. We are entering into a period of racial and social disturbance in which the University, as an American institution, must play a leading and creative role in seeking permanent solutions. The outcome is by no means clear, but this nation has an opportunity during the coming generation to be the first in human history to eliminate racial discord at its social, political, and economic roots. OWL: With a relatively low number of Negroes enrolled at Pitt, are you planning to try to increase this ratio and what procedure will you use? POSVAR: The contribution of the University must l e a two levels. One is a program, on which we are now embarking, to correct the gross imbalance in enrollment and employment of persons from racial minorities. On the other level we must serve society at large by attacking these problems at the frontiers of research in the social sciences, the health professions, technology, educational methodology, and economic and political innovation. The role for which the Chancellor is preparing the University is an aggressive one. In the next ten to twenty years, Pitt will, with good planning, be extremely involved in the social and intellectual problems of the society which surrounds it. Yet. circumstances will show how adept the Chancellor is at directing a University which demands his talents not only in long range planning, but also in the handling of tomorrow and the next day. 9