Hello. This is a group of three A. S. U. Former administrators that have
come to talk a little bit and leave a little bit of oral history about the
growth of a issue And what happened during our tenure here at A. S. U. So
I'm gonna introduce myself. I'm Brent Brown. I've been on the faculty of a
issue since 1972
and I retired as a professor in the school of public affairs and I served
12 years as the vice president of institutional advancement here at A. S.
U. And to my right is frank Saxton who joined us in the 70's and has held
various positions at A. S. U. Which we will talk a little bit more about.
And in fact he is still a a teacher at the university and in the school
of public affairs and still teaches a class. And then across from me is
Russ nelson who is the former president of Arizona State University during
the period of extreme growth is the way to describe it. So we'd like to
kind of just have a general roundhouse discussion and see if we can't
leave a little bit of history on the tapes so that future generations can
roll those tapes and learn a little bit more about A S. U. When we become
were already the biggest university in the country but maybe even more
growth in the future. So I'm gonna start it off by telling just a little
bit about about my history and then I'd ask each one of you to do the same.
I came to the university, I was here as a student And I received my
master's degree from here in 1968.
And then I went on and got my PhD from the University of Illinois And I
came back as a young assistant professor started in 1972.
And one of the first things I worked on was
the possibility of separating out from the department of Political Science
, the public administration program. I was young. And then until you heard
and uh, I didn't have a, a lot of knowledge about how the university
worked, but we were successful and if I, if we hadn't have been, I would
have been a, a one or two year person at this university. But instead it
worked out And three of us John Hall, Larry Mankin and myself. We started
the School of Public Affairs. It was then called the Center for Public
Administration, but it was separated from the Department of Political
Science in that year and then I went on to serve as the first director of
that. And then I served for some time serving down and under the governor
of Arizona governor, Raul Castro, I was the head of the Office of Economic
Planning and Development. Then I came back to the university and started
as a, has kind of a lobbyist for the university. And eventually Russ
nelson chose me to be the vice president of University Relations and that
started us on a, on a road that we had lots of problems and lots of
opportunities. And I think we, we did a reasonable job of attacking those
problems and making the university move forward. So Russ, Why don't you
tell us a little bit about your tenure here at Arizona State University?
Well, I'm Russ nelson and I came here from the University of colorado in
july On July 1 19 81
to become president following the departure of john Suada. And
it's, it was an amazing experience to move here from the University of
colorado, which is a relatively mature institution
and to come into a school in the ferment as I would characterize the
development of the, of Arizona State University large
under housed under parked uh,
and with
major opportunities to develop into a great university that needed to be
exploited and I spent nine years, nine years, eight years as president of
the university and had a glorious time here. Okay, frank, I'm, I'm Frank's
Acton and I came to Arizona in 1970 and at that time the governor, Jack
Williams was looking for a a budget person and I had finished four years,
my last assignment in the military as the control of the army and I had
some experience in money matters. So he took me out as a special assistant
and I helped him in getting these grants that were very prevalent then
from Washington demonstration grants and other kinds of grants that
carried uh, money with them And it was a very exciting time which I watch
I enjoyed. Well Governor Jack Williams left office after he had been
governor for eight years. I had served with a little over 3.5 years and I
wondered what I would do with myself. I want to keep active. So I picked
up the G. I. Bill and went back to school. And the first person I saw was
Brett Brown. Yes. So I could get some advice on how I would start
schooling in public administration, which was the discipline in which I
was interested. And Brett Brown guided me into the classes that I should
take it at the same time. So that he said I would have a little income. He
made me his teaching assistants
and he was a pretty good boss because he let me teach a little bit as well
his classes. And that was a very, very enjoyable association that I had.
Well then Brett Brown left to go to the Governor's office as he mentioned.
And that left vacant. The teaching of governmental budgeting. And I was
there and I had been his assistant. So I moved into that by default. And
I've been teaching ever since. I never never lost sight of it. But in
addition to teaching, which I have taught the entire type since Brett left
to go to the President's office. I have had other assignments. As a matter
of fact, you gave me some rather difficult assignments as I recall, which
were challenges and we went through those in good shape I think. And the
thing about which I'm very very proud and I thought about it only recently
during these interviews that Although I bid at the university in our
faculty four 26 years now doing odd jobs that have been assigned to me. I
have have been and continue to teach a minimum of one class a semester and
I haven't broken that record as since I came to the university, things
have changed in teaching. The students are more sophisticated that
requires the professor too be a little bit more innovative And uh I think
some of the major changes I might mention.
Students don't learn very much from lectures. So I if I have lectures I'd
keep the ver very short uh Students read the textbook but they have a
short term memory of what they read and giving them an examination is only
a spot in time knowledge so we don't do that anymore. We take the
literature and create case studies and then the the student has to solve
the case study. But the sound of case study, the student must be well
versed with the text from which the material has come. But also the big
changes that I have seen kidnapped uh teaching also of course. Now we have
the internet at all the electronic equipment and the students up. Are you
using these new devices and I think they're much more knowledgeable, much
more self sufficient, much more innovative in what they do. It's been it's
been a great run to watch the happenings in teaching, particularly in the
last 26 years. I'm gonna tell one little story Frank about when you first
we first met and you came out and wanted to know about the public
administration program. And During our conversation I learned that you
were a three star general and that was a little bit intimidating and I was
a little worried because during my tenure at the University of Illinois, I
had been an anti war protester and uh I was worried that you and I might
not be compatible in in our in our belief systems, but as I learned as
time went on, you you were a certainly in addition to the faculty at A. S
. U. And taught me so many things. But you recommended that you take my
class in budgeting not knowing that you had served under McNamara who was
the head of the Defense Department at that time. And he was trying to
institute a P. P. B. S. System in the military and you were in charge of
that. So you knew more about that whole budgeting system than I would ever
know. And it didn't take me long to understand that not only should you be
my teaching assistant but you should be teaching the class which you have
done for many years so successfully. But I was a little bit intimidated
when I found out that you were a three star general and I was a young
professor whose claim to fame had been in protest at the university of
Illinois for that particular war. I don't know that I've ever admitted
that to you, but it's been long enough now that I can lay it out on the
table that I was, I was worried that we might not be compatible. But over
the years we've remained very good friends Brett, we never discussed the
war. The war that was going on then was the war in Vietnam. We never
discussed it. Otherwise I would have revealed that I was against it was
rotten war, the wrong place, fighting the wrong people. And it's
interesting that in recent years now President Lyndon johnson agreed it
was allows his war, but he didn't know how to get out of it because there
was no, there was no exit plan. I would have been less intimidated if I'd
have known that frank at that time. I'm gonna tell Russ something that I
ran across just the other day as I was going through some of my papers and
I had written it on a yellow pad when you and I first met and I had three
things written on there that this university would have to take care of to
maintain our our position in the community and to advance ourselves And
one was we would have to do something about a campus at A. S. U. West at
West. We didn't have a campus then. And I'd like you both to talk about
that because you were involved in it. I think you were commissioned to do
a study frank and I'll tell a little bit about kind of how that came about
and you can add to it to rust. And secondly, I said that we had to do
something about pro football and Sun Devil stadium. And then the third
thing was we had to make sure that we got more mexican americans on campus
and did something in that regards. So I'd like to have you discussed the A.
S. U. West and then we'll come back to the others. And the fourth thing
that intervened is kind of tied in with the stadium was the problems we
had in the athletic department over those intervening years. But as I
remember it Russ and you can help me fill in the gaps that ASU West had
been on the agenda for some time. There had been a failed effort under
President Durham and it had left a bitter taste in a lot of the
legislator's minds and in the community and there was a lot of pressure to
do something about that. And so we had kind of circled around and hadn't
really committed ourselves and we're we're exploring and doing some things
and I got a phone call from stan turley. I was then the lobbyist for the
university and
president turley at that time, he was the president of the Senate and he
needed a very crucial vote from Lela Alston in order to move some budget
matter forward. I think it was on the sales tax increase in the sales tax.
And Leila told him that he wouldn't have a vote until he did something
about a west campus. And so he phoned me and said, I'm ready to go on it.
If you guys can commit. He says I will commit and we'll get this process
started. And I came back and talked to you and you convened some other
vice presidents and we had a little meeting in the office and the way I
remember it, I laid it out and one of the other vice president says, well
yeah, I think maybe we ought to get a committee together and study this
and maybe come up with some kind of a recommendation.
And I said no you don't understand, we have about one hour to make this
decision and it's either go or no go. And so we all sat there a little bit
stunned but to Russ's credit and I give him credit for this. He eventually
said go. And I picked up the phone and that was the birth of a S. U. West
and I don't know that I've ever told that story publicly before. But
that's the birth of A S. U. West and before events cooled down stan turley
and doug Todd and others had written that there will be an ASU West campus
into the statutes
and then we had to go get the border regions to approve everything. But it
was already a fait accompli by the time that process went through now,
maybe I've forgotten some things for us. But well there had been an
appropriation once before that was never spent right and only a portion of
it was spent for some planning. But then it had been dropped. It came at a
very inopportune time for the university and that money was reverted. And
so this was actually the second time that the issue had come in recent
years. Too aggressive attention by the university and the legislature.
And I thought that the most difficult aspect of the k of the of the
situation was getting the region's onboard because there were varied
opinions about the wisdom of creating another campus for the university in
the central city of Arizona. And I think we probably took some steps in
working with the legislature that preceded the actions of the regions. And
I seem to recall having been called into the wood shed a time or two on
that in the course of it. But at the at the end of the year, the
legislature had approved the concept of a university and had appropriated
some money and created some parameters for the development of west campus.
And it's at that point that we set to work in a serious way now frank, I
know you did a study on the issue West. Could you tell us a little bit
about that? Yeah. My study was, I forget who, who asked me to do it. I
don't know whether rusted or you did. But anyway, my study was a
demographic study mainly. And it revealed that so many people were
traveling from the west side to the main campus to go to school the debt
that make any sense because the group that lived there was so large at the
west side that it did deserve some kind of a teaching institution. I think
that was my, my contribution. Uh and then in addition to the demographic
involved, I talked to the leaders in on the west side and they favored it
and we're prepared to testify before the legislature have to pursue it.
And and that worked very good. one of the lessons I learned in this hole,
the problem was to develop a constituency to front for you because those
of us seeking money or seeking a new organization. Uh, I don't think it's
very far really with the legislature unless there empathetic to the
problem. So the trick we found was to get a constituency of prominent
names, you know, like Jack Feaster, Salt River project Marvin Andrews. Uh
City manager, people who had status and they they would carry the day for
you.
Well one thing that that Russ always did was even though I was pushing the
envelope across the desk quite frequently, he always stood behind me with
the border regions because it didn't take us long to learn that the
region's weren't always going to see the way that A s you should do it
because there weren't any issue regions on the border regions at the time.
And so we were always kind of pushing the envelope a little bit and
trying to get some things done. And I know issue west was one of those
that had to be done in a way that if we had waited for regions approval,
it may never have happened the way things were going. And as we can see
now it was it's a good thing because the West Valley has grown by leaps
and bounds and we now have a S. U. East that was born somewhat the same in
a in a move like that. But I think another thing that that future
historians will be interested in and future students is to talk a little
bit about pro football in Sun Devil Stadium. It created a lot of commotion
on a campus because we were one of the few campuses in the country that
that housed professional team and it was not easy. It was not an easy walk
to get there. There was a lot of upheavals and a lot of commotions and
the way I remember it is that in the past there had been an effort to use
Sun Devil Stadium for pro football, preseason games that they used to have
going around and there were a couple of Big brother games played in the
stadium and that kind of opened the door a little bit and that was done
under pressure from Burton Barr who wanted to see pro football in Sun
Devil Stadium. And President nelson's predecessor, President Suada was
under some tremendous, tremendous pressure to to make that happen. And
both frank kush and fred miller did not want to see pro football in Sun
Devil Stadium. Well, shortly thereafter, when governor babbitt was elected
governor, he commissioned a pro football ah commission and they came up
with a recommendation to, to use Sun Devil Stadium. So I knew that the
pressure was going to be really intense to, to do something about pro
football and Sun Devil Stadium. So Russia pointed me to be the contact
person. And when the ST louis cardinals came looking, I was a contact
person and uh, we went through a whole series of negotiations
and I think most people in the community were surprised because they
didn't think the cardinals were very serious and they thought they were
just using us as kind of a
method to get a better deal at ST Louis. And so a lot of people were
supposed to be involved in the negotiations but they kind of dropped by
the wayside. And remember the border regions kind of were involved. But
then they kind of dropped out and the athletic department was kind of
involved. But the process moved forward and we negotiated a contract. And
lo and behold the cardinals. One friday afternoon when the border regions
were moving meeting over here, they dropped the bombshell that they were
coming,
No contract had been signed
and
it was quite something to drop into your lap Russ. And I apologize for
that because I had something to do with that. But that was the way it
happened. And suddenly there was a lot of negotiating that needed to be
done wasn't part of the unbelief in the reality of a team coming, caused
by the fact that two other teams had indicated interest and we had
negotiated with them. We're people had negotiated on the behalf of the
university with them. And then at the last minute they went somewhere else.
So we were the bogey in that case. And having been stung a time or two
before you take less seriously the next one that comes along as we did
this one. And because the negotiations are so clandestine, it's very hard
for everybody to be fully informed until it happens and you're never ready
when it does happen. And I think it was a bit of a bombshell.
And I will say this for Russ, even though I I was a culprit in in signing
the letter saying they could use Sun Devil Stadium. I think I at least
tried to protect rust from the onslaught of the community because I knew
there was never enough time to get the regions to approve it. It just
would not have happened. And so I did take it upon myself. I was the vice
president and I had the authority to sign contracts and I did. I signed
the letter that said they could use some level stadium. I think that the
two regions who were most directly involved in the discussions were
understanding as well. Yes, they were and Jack Feaster and Herman Herman
Chanin in particular
played a role in making it easier to get the regions to understand of what
had been going on in the background. But I did indicate to rust that I
could be the sacrificial lamb that you know, you can always get rid of the
vice presidents and say that darn brand just went a little too far.
But the cardinals are here, They played here for Some 20, some years.
They've moved on to the West Valley next year. But
although some people continually when they find out that I had anything to
do with bringing the cardinals here, they, they sometimes say some unkind
remarks but for whatever the cardinals are here and they are pro football
team in the valley and they did leave our stadium much improved. We did at
least benefit from that regards and frank. I know that you entered the
athletic department with a lot of problems over there. And uh it was after
your tenure there that we had the Super Bowl. But I remember you at least
being supportive of my efforts to do something in that regards. But can
you talk a little bit about the problems that you faced when you went over
as the head of the athletic department? Right. As a matter of fact Russ
played a very prominent role in the whole thing. We were under five
violations, n. c. a. violations. Men's track, women's strike, basketball,
baseball one other and I recall you
said that I think that was your special assistant at that time. You said
why don't you go down Maybe six months or so and find out what is going on
? So I did. And then I report to you that in my view the problem was a
cultural thing that the coaches had more authority than they should have.
They didn't have oversight. And their interest was to win games. And
yeah and given leeway they would flip over into a violation. And so I
think the next question you asked is uh
what do we do to change the culture? And I said, well with the present
team in place, I doubt that there is anything we can do by the way you had
appointed me assistant director to dictate bureau. So I would have some
authority when I went down to talk to the cultures otherwise they would
not have listened to me at all. Well what I reported back to you that I
didn't think with the president administration there was much hope of
change you immediately and promptly fired the athletic director, Dick dan
Bureau. And I'm I was very naive and I said, well Russ is gonna take us a
year to recruit a suitable athletic director. But I said no, we're not
having been warning you the athletic director. So we did it in the day and
I did overwhelm the solution to the problem to me was easy from my
military experience. There was only one way to solve the problem that has
fired the coaches, which I did. How many did you let go
let go for? And I think I had a big argument with you because you thought
well you did let the baseball coach Jim bronco. And he was one of the
violators and I protect the gym rock because I didn't think that was a
legitimate breach. And I might mention it because that's come up
historically. Several times
we put an advertisement in the state press and ethic in the city newspaper
that we needed somebody to clean up the ball diamond. Baseball diamond
after practices and the games
and jim brock said, well gee my team is there were looking for jobs, why
don't we do it? We're there anyway. So we gave them the contract.
Well the N. C. A. A. Said uh we were in violation pain amateur athletes
really to play ball. And they really slapped us Pretty hard on that one.
Ah So but I I thought jim brock had acted wisely. He had done the right
thing. And from my perspective and his perspective there was no violation.
So we never did fire jim brock. Although there was a lot of pressure to
do so to make it equitable among those that we had fired.
I don't know if either one of you remember during the Nordle controversy
it was it was a pretty intense that was where one of the athletes in the
baseball pre program had been prescribed in Nordle as a as a drug that
they used. And so it made the front pages above the fold and and we all
got called called down to the Arizona Republic Editorial room and uh I'm
pretty sure you were there Russ. I know I know you were. And and frank, I
think you maybe not. Maybe it was a member of the group but they had talk
to me separately anyway, we were down there and of course they were laying
some pretty heavy artillery on us. And and so one of the questions they
ask is when are you gonna start paying as much attention? two academics as
you do athletics and I was kind of primed for that question and I was glad
that they ask it. And my response is we're going to pay as much attention
to academics when you have the same number of reporters covering academics
that you do athletics. And I think the ratio was something like 12-1
because they had two newspapers then and they had two full staffs on the
Phoenix Gazette and Arizona Republic's covering athletics. They had one
person to cover all three universities in academics. Uh Not that that
carried the day, but I did feel better. That's understandable.
The the interesting thing is that that was a legitimate drug that was
being used and it fit the needs of certain people. And we did uh an
exhaustive examination in the records of the medical program here about
how many students were receiving the drug and what it was doing for them
and so on. And I was convinced at the end of that with the report that the
use was in fact legitimate. And it turned out that one of the people who
had promoted the use of Nardo in certain cases was a psychiatrist who was
a friend of mine and he paid me a visit at one point and he said, well,
this is a troubling and difficult thing. But he said that the use of the
drug is legitimate as long as the case requires it. And he had looked at
some of the records and he said he hadn't found any cases that that were
inappropriate and that on the pro prohibited was not on the prohibited
list list. But the, the interesting thing to me was that the bulk of the
students getting it, we're not in the athletic department. Unfortunately,
the above the story folds, you know, carries the day the,
the story that is true, never made it onto the front pages of the
newspaper is a tough time. I guess that's understandable given the
economics of the business. And the fact that the nard all story was, it
took several months before we had all the data. Yeah. And it's not a story
at that point, I've I've learned to accept that That was a tough one frank.
Anything else in the athletic department that
certainly the Weinhauer case.
We had no difficulty in the firing because I think we were very gracious
after the firing, we took care of the families. We took care of continued
salary for six months and gave them opportunities to find another job and
picked up the tab on employment agencies. We, and then we continue the
health insurance for one year to protect the families. I think that was
handled well, costs a little bit of money, but we did have the money. We
were running a surplus at the athletic department at the time. So we had
no problem on money. Uh, The old Lee Aberration was one hour who did not
want to be fired by the way, he was a good coach, but he was violated the
regulations
and he came up with that quirk that everybody else had one year contract
and we were terminated at the end of the contract year so people would
complete the year. But he had been given by Dick Damn Bureau five
consecutive one year contract. So in effect he had a five year contract
illegal from our standpoint both by the giver and the taker. But a good
case in a court of law. So we settled for $1 million. Yeah frank. One
thing I think you did over there that I'm aware of and I think that it's
it's helped the program over there in athletics to this day is to separate
out the enforcement of the N. C. A. A. Rules and regulations from from the
coaches and made a separate entity in the department of Athletics. Did you
not
into the area of some kind of a control device over the coaches as some
oversight which we did not have before? Well I'm I'm not sure but I don't
think A. S. U. Has run into as difficult time as they had During that
10ure. I think that that was helpful into the future of athletics at a. S
. U. So hopefully that contribution will remain there and we will keep out
of trouble over in the athletic department for years to come anyway. That
was a real contribution. Another thing Russ that that I think was
accomplished very much during your tenure, was to move the research agenda
forward at the university and I think you ought to at least tell us a
little bit about that and how important you thought that was for the
institution.
Yeah, I would start by saying that the Board of Regents approved, I think
one month before I arrived, a new mission statement for the university
that said it was to become a major research university.
But in reality, we did not have many of the implements for becoming a
major research university and that required us to do a lot of things. And
among the things that we worked on were protocols for animal care, which
is a very mundane thing, but absolutely essential. If you're going to
compete for federal contracts, we didn't have protocols in the institution
for
human ah
subjects that were approved and consistent with the requirements for
getting a large grants for that sort of work. We didn't really have
research facilities in very many places in the university and we had not
emphasized over the years the way that must be done to become a research
university, that people had to be productive participants in the research
process and had to be active in publication and the like. And so a lot of
the infrastructure of the university required mending or creation in order
to meet the requirements and we spent a lot of time working on those
things,
we also needed a lot of facilities.
And while we didn't fulfill all of the needs for research facilities, we
made some progress in that area that began moving us in that direction.
And I think the deans were encouraged very strongly to recruit in a way
that would bring in people who would be research active from universities
that had reputations themselves for research activity. That would give us
a boost in building that kind of capability in the university.
As I recall, we did achieve class one status just about the time you
departed. I think it was actually published about a year after I left. But
yes, we did achieve it. You did achieve it.
And that was the epitome, somewhere along the line. I never found the
documentation. There was some kind of an agreement or understanding that
the USA would be the research institution and A S you would be a teaching
institution. Well, doesn't that go back to the original charter? We were a
normal school and they were the state university. And I think the revised
mission statement for the university, that the regions for this university
, that the region's approved just before I arrived here said that we
should now become a major research university. And so we had a verbal
charter from the regions. It was actually written down and there were
certain areas identified as being areas of emphasis within the university
and that was the impetus, I believe for beginning to move the university
in that direction. There wasn't a lot of money that came with it from the
legislature, but research universities get a lot of their money from gifts
and from grants.
And so we began to become more active in fundraising with the appointment
of Lonnie Ostrom as a fundraiser. We had, we had had fundraisers before we
had raised some money, but it was always project oriented and we began to
, I have fundraising aimed at institutional development. And the first
general fundraising campaign came in the centennial year and raised $125
million dollars roughly. And the success of the subsequent campaigns, I
think is partly the result of the work that Lonnie did in creating an
organization and an approach that would lend itself towards a major
fundraising in the university
Russ. I know you didn't ever want to be known as, uh, as the athletic
president, but you're still the only president that's taken a issue to a
Rose Bowl victory, that accomplishment. Athletic, but they have been twice.
Yes, I know
also, both of you are very much involved in the creation of the university
club. And I think that that's an additional thing that made the campus a
more traditional campus where people could gather. And it's certainly have
that if you have any comments on that, I know you were both heavily
involved in that we didn't have a faculty club and we needed something, uh
, we, we couldn't call the club, the university club of faculty club
because it's on the government's soil and it has to serve everybody. So it
became a university club. It, in effect, it is a faculty club because
students don't want to pay the initiation fee and a monthly fee to join.
So in effect, we have a faculty club. The genesis of the club is
interesting and Lonnie Ostrom had a big part of it and I remember he would
come around and he came around to me several times. Uh, we need $1000. So
I would fork over $1000 and that's how he got the money to start this club.
Now, we were given a building, a beautiful facade. It's all it was. And
what we had to do after we got the building was to tear out everything
inside. It was a skeleton. It had been used as a warehouse, but it was a
very well built structure. It was, it just had not been kept up to date.
Right? And the structure itself was sound and lent itself well to being
rebuilt. Right? The money we had to donate, it was all by donation was the
interior structure, tearing it all down and then building it. I think it's
a beautiful club now. And uh, one of the most beautiful pieces is that
circular staircase leading up to the second floor from the first floor and
I was so impressed with that, that I hosted a wedding once on the
condition that the bride would have this flowing gown coming down the
circular staircase.
I wanna can I just comment on that building a little step further because
it had been used by the College of Fine Arts for a number of years and it
was in deplorable condition, not because of the College of Fine Arts, they
had begged to use it simply because it was available. And it was only
after people began to go through it a bit and look at it for what it might
become that uh, you all persuaded me we should take it away from the fine
arts people which they didn't like. But they ended up with a nice new
building and it, it seemed like a treasure once we got into it and found
that it was a solid building and that it was able to be rehabilitated and
it has proven to be an excellent building I think for the purpose. Well,
it's a credit to both of your legacies. That's for sure. I do want to
comment just a little bit on the third thing I had written on my notebook
when I talked to you first Russ and that was to get more mexican american
students on the campus and I think you need to take a lot of credit for
that started a lot of programs started the base for, for getting more
mexican americans on campus. The regions were helpful. We did bring on
board frank had Algo who was an assistant vice president and he started
the graduation ceremony for the mexican american students That Channel
eight has televised every year. I don't know if they still do that, but
they did for a number of years and you can't discount the effect that that
had on the community of people watching that and seeing them go through
graduation ceremony and graduate. The mother daughter program was
particularly effective as well. And Betty Asher was an important figure in
getting that program established and I understand it's still flourishing.
So those things were very helpful. And the last statistics I just saw the
mexican american students were way up and remember the plan that you
commissioned and then approved. It was called action Now
action. Now I imagine Brent had something to do with that. Well I think we
all did. A lot of people participated in that and tried to move it forward
and we did have a deal or to cut in the legislature. That's how we got the
downtown center started was getting a mexican american program on campus.
And Alfredo gutierrez helped us get the downtown center up and started.
So it was a help of a lot of people to get these programs up and going and
now there's gonna be a university downtown but it had to start and then it
started under your your tenure. So you know, I think there's one other
thing I want to comment about Brent, it's on a different topic, but frank
, you've had a frank talk at some length about the, uh, about his role in
the athletic department. But he spent At least two years as vice president
for, uh, financial affairs and business affairs and really rewrote that
department as well and laid the groundwork for bringing in someone as a
more permanent officer and corrected a large number of problems that
needed work. I can tell a specific story that relates to Channel eight.
The vice president before frank's Acton was taking all of the interest
money that people contributed to channel eight and using it elsewhere,
which may have been illegal. But it was happening and there were a lot of
complaints about that and especially I happened to be over this area.
Channel eight and there was a lot of of unrest in that regards and frank
when he took over and took office. one of the first things he did it say
if they raise the money, they get the interest and it it's solved a lot of
problems in alumni had the same problem. If you remember frank channel
Eight, some of the other places and you made my job a lot easier. And it
was not a decision that took a long time. If you know anything about
frank's Acton, it was immediate. He said, well we shouldn't be doing that.
And that was the end of the discussion.
So you made my job a lot easier. You made Russell's job a lot easier. And
you've lived until you're 93 Frank. I I it didn't take too much out of you
I guess.
Okay. We're nearing about the hour that we were allotted anymore. Final
comments that we want to leave for posterity. No, I want to go back to
Russ for a moment. You know, when I look back you presided over so many
things, the period of growth. Remember a study? I made a demographic study.
I started with Durham and then uh plotted the demographics and it came to
nelson and it's a great big hump. And then on from there. Yeah. And that
was a challenge because I remember trying to get money out of the
legislature to fund this. And the legislature would say, well let's see if
the growth is permanent and then come back and talk to us. And that was
typical of what the legislature can understand their rationale, but it
didn't make our job tough. I can name off a number of things that the rest
presided over a. S. U. West, the downtown center, the old asylum that we
got back from from down the state. And that's part of the campus. He
presided over a all of the problems in the athletic department that
included included a Super bowl on campus, which no other president has
ever had to deal with the United States. And those were probably as an
exciting a time as any university in the country with the growth and
everything else that was going on new campuses bringing up and new growth
and in a major metropolitan area. It was probably a a very prime time to
be the president. I couldn't have found a more exciting place for us. An
interesting ride.
Well, I think we could very well say that you brought the university to
maturity.
No, I think frank that we had the opportunity to get it started on the
road to maturity,
a different, a different kind of university. I think it was mature at what
it was and we were given the challenge of getting it started to become
what it could be, which is and it was a different reality that the
region's laid out for us and I don't think that happens overnight. I had
eight years to work on it, Laddie worked on it 12 years we're not there
yet and I'm sure that that will be continuing, will continue to be a major
focus of the university to bring itself into a different level of work and
recognition.
Well, it was interesting for all of us to have played a small part in that
process and on behalf of everybody that will read this in the future or
listen to it. I thank you for being here. Thank you Brent, not that I was
appointed the moderator, but well you've doneit