University of Massachusetts Amherst - Index Yearbook (Amherst, MA)

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Lance Didn't Balance When President jimmy Carter chose his close friend Bert Lance to act as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget KOMBJ in Washington last january, most Americans believed that they had just another good ole boy to add to their list of officials with southern accents in the Capital. Well, as it turned out, this ole boy wasn't so good and innocent after all. Reports by the news media and official investiga- tions suggested possible wrong-doings in Lance's freewheeling financial affairs. The controversy was sparked by the May 23rd issue of Time Magazine con- taining the first public accounting of Lance's debts. More reports followed in the Washington Post, The New York Times, and Newsweek Magazine. The media claimed that Lance was abusing his position as part owner of the Na- tional Bank of Georgia CNBGD. They ac- cused him of unethical conduct in ob- taining personal loans in his financial interests. These discoveries lead to offi- cial inquiries by the Senate Govern- mental Affairs Committee headed by Senator Abraham Ribicoff on july 15. The committee concluded that it was satisfied with Lance's testimony, saying that he had done nothing improper . A report by the Comptroller of the Currency and Lance's close friend, john G. Hieman, also endorsed Lance, Turmoil: Tifiaiaeem An Act Of Perfidy On the basis of a near unanimous recommendation of a faculty search committee, I was offered the position of Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost in late August of 1976. Al- though a group of dissident faculty sought to overturn this recommenda- tion the University Board of Trustees approved my appointment, and I as- sumed my duties on October 15, 1976. Fourteen months later, on january 10, 1978,the Chancellor, for political rea- sons, asked for my resignation. The fol- lowing day, when, as a matter of princi- ple, I refused to step aside voluntarily, I was summarily dismissed. This ended the shortest tenure of any academic of- ficer on this or any other campus. For whatever lessons it holds for the future, it may be useful to examine, in sum- mary form, the web of factors that led to my demise. I came to the Provosts Office at a time when the University was adrift. Because the political elements in the faculty were in constant internecene warfare with the President's Office over jurisdictional matters, little sustained attention had been given to the task of modernizing the University at a time when societal changes were beginning to have a profound influence on the future of higher education throughout the nation. Few faculty understood that the phenomenal growth in enrollment and University budgets during the 19605 and early 1970s had come to an end, and would not return again during the remainder of this century. More- over, despite studies by the Carnegie Commission and others, few faculty were prepared to face the reality that permanent secular shifts in the eco- nomic system, from a predominately goods producing to a service economy, presented a challenge to the University to meet the emerging societal demand for more specialized career education, particularly at the undergraduate and the Masters levels, While vociferously denying that these charges were inevi- table, some faculty failed to recognize the need to revitalize a moribund liber- al arts which, through lack of clarity and definition, had not only given up its traditional claims at the center of the educational process, but was increas- ingly at odds with changing academic values. The faculty also remained blind I to the imaginative ways in which cur- ricular and degree requirements at all levels could be tailored to appeal to the students broad intellectual interests as well as to their quest for specialized career education. Knowledge for its own sake may be an admirable goal, but it is one which few individuals practice exclusively, including those faculty who urged such views on their stu- dents. I accepted the Provost's position with the clear understanding that my primary tasks would be to improve aca- demic organization and management fin a University notorious for poor managementj, and to provide the ad- ministrative leadership necessary to modernize the University and equip it to meet the new societal conditions which would affect its operation for the remainder of this century. The first step was to begin a process of long-range planning which would guide the alloca- tion of fiscal resources in the future, determine the relative importance of academic programs and, in general, provide for the maintenance and en- hancement of scholarly excellence de- spite diminished budgets. My initial analysis ofthe academic budget led me to the inescapable conclusion that the budget was not rationally distributed among academic programs, that there were no clear empirical guidelines for the allocation of academic resources, and that there was considerable mis- mangement of budgets at the School and Department levels. All this was compounded by data management and accounting systems appallingly inad-

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Student Senate Speaker Brian DeLima was made a scapegoat I when he was found guilty by the Student judiciary on two charges fggff from his abuse of the senate phones to make seventy-three long- , T distance phone calls worth 5313 to his home state Hawaii. The charges were: misrepresenting the senate without prior consent of that group, and fradulently obtaining telephone ser- vice through unauthorized charging tothe account of another. On the witness stand DeLima was asked if he had prior con- sent for use of the phones for personal calls. At no time was the use of phones frowned upon, DeLima stated. ln fact it was sanctioned. Delima arranged to pay for the calls from his intersession salary as Senate Speaker. ooo DQIDim?QlOO0i?.EQlmSi,iEl-i OOOEEQESOOO UKAK re if .xx Q 'u N . REWEVWISEQ Protests were prevalent on campus this past spring. On the left students are shown prior to their April 8th occupation of Chancellor Bromery's office in Whit- more. ln all seventy-five students were in- volved with the seventeen hour takeover in protest of University housing policies. One of the other major groups of pro- testers was the faculty, shown here before their May 3rd picket of Whitmore. The faculty was protesting that they had not yet received the two and a half percent pay increase granted by the state to all state employees. The faculty protests did not end with the march on campus, how- ever, but continued into the month of june, when they did not release student's grades till the administration met their demands. - S W ll MOP Ufvltiss 4 M me ADMmH5TFlif Q' JN A ibrtrtgtlgfrixii If 1 Tami F l-My S li tbl? l f. Q aol'-axle lllfmul 23

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even though he had followed unsafe and unsound financial practices . This judgment referred to Lance's ac- tivities as President of the Calhoun First National Bank CCFNBI from 1972 to 1975 and his other activities up until the time of his nomination for the OMB. Meanwhile, President Carter was so convinced that the American Public would accept Lance's credibility, that he interrupted a vacation at Camp Da- vid to fly to Washington to praise Lance at a televised news conference: Bert, I'm proud of you. Unfortunately, Carter's standard of ethics for choosing government offi- cials was tainted because new issues surfacedg issues he wouldn't want to claim. For example, during the time that Lance was President of the Calhoun First National Bank, officers and their families were allowed to overdraw checking accounts in substantial amounts for considerable periods of time. Lance defended himself with the claim that overdrafts were common among country banks. The Senate Committee and the press did not think so and kept digging, even though White House Press Secretary lody Powell kept issuing statements in de- fense of Lance. The evidence against Lance mount- ed. The day before he was appointed 000 TgDCQSjQl-vigil-CQllTl.l-,OOO equate for a large University. The maldistribution of the budget, and the lack of allocative standards, meant that some departments had more funds and faculty than they could justify while others had inadequate re- sources and faculty to meet the student demand for their courses. Student in- terests had been shamelessly ignored. While faulty allocative decisions in- ured largely to the disadvantage of the professional schools, Arts and Sciences departments were also affected. It was my attempt to bring more preci- sion to the allocative process that brought me afoul of a small, but politi- cally active, group of faculty in Arts and Sciences who opposed budget reallo- cation and long-range planning even if prospective students in other depart- ments were denied access to programs for which they were qualified. This group of approximately 250 faculty, out of a total faculty of 1300, in a mob-like meeting in April of 1977, voted no con- fidence in my administration and sub- sequently asked that I be dismissed. While few of the faculty had read the reallocative decisions embodied in my long-range plans, they apparently ob- jected on the grounds that the pro- posed reallocation of approximately forty positions tout of 13005 would somehow destroy the Arts and Sci- ences at the University. There were also some who objected to the plan because the faculty had not been for- mally consulted before the plan was implemented. Despite the fact that then President Robert Wood attended the meeting to explain that he had or- dered the preparation and immediate implementation of the Plan, some fac- ulty felt that I should have ignored his directive. They were also quite willing to overlook the fact that each depart- ment had submitted to me a proposed long-range plan for their units which I used in developing the campus long- range plan. The call for my dismissal by a minor- ity of the Arts and Sciences faculty was quickly taken up by the Secretary of the Faculty Senate and his cohorts. A meeting of the full faculty was called by the Rules Committee of the Senate to consider another resolution of censure which took exception to my long- range plan and falsely accused me of violating governace procedures. This resolution was passed by essentially the same minority that voted in the earlier Arts and Sciences meeting. What was of considerable significance, however, was that this group of faculty had now come to accept the notion that my reallocation of resources to meet changing student needs was necessary, and they passed a companion resolu- tion to that effect. The only difference was that they thought the Faculty Sen- ate should devise the long-range plan rather than the Provost. They com- pletely ignored the fact that, by prior Trustee decision, long-range planning was the primary responsibility of the Administration. Despite all these efforts by a minority of the faculty to remove me, the Board of Trustees refused, at its june 1977 meeting, to accede to their wishes. However, it was decided to hold the planning process in abeyance until planning assumptions for all three cam- puses had been developed by the President's Office, and approved by the Board. These assumptions would form the basis for further review of campus plans with full participation by students, faculty, and administration. Several Board members chastised the faculty for its long standing opposition to the planning process, and the Board generally made it clear that the process would go foward. One Board member also indicated that he had received re- ports from other faculty that the attacks on me were racially motivated. This is an issue I will return to later. Despite the fact that I had received virtually no support from the campus Chancellor during my spring travail, I felt the Board of Trustees had given its sanction to the long-range planning process, and that this was a basis for continuing my efforts to modernize the academic sector of the University. Subsequent events were to prove me wrong. A few weeks after the june Board meeting, President Robert Wood resigned, thus altering the politi- cal conditions under which I operated. The primary obstacle to the continu- ation of my efforts was the Chancellor's gradually unfolding decision to be a candidate to succeed Robert Wood as President. Over several months, it be- came clear that I would not have the Chancellor's support if such support interfered at all with his presidential ambitions. Consequently, my position in the administration continued to de- teriorate throughout the fall. The aca-