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SRU ORAL HISTORY
"SLIPPERY ROCK UNIVERSITY IN THE SIXTIES"

INTERVIEWEE:
INTERVIEWERS:

MS. WILMA CAVILL
DR. JOSEPH RIGGS AND LEAH BROWN

12 JUNE 1991

R:

Our first question generally is how did you get here?

C:

You might be interested in the insight that occurred to me
while I was standing in line for the convocation for the
hundredth anniversary and being so thrilled to be a part
of that.

Looking around and seeing visitors back and

people here and everybody in their academic regalia.
Thinking. I'm really glad that I'm teaching at Slippery
Rock now so that I can celebrate this hundredth anniversary.
Then I started to think back and realized that of the
hundred years of Slippery Rock's existence, I had about
40 of those years.

Either in teaching or as a student here,

an undergrad, or as a citizen in New Castle when my father
was ill and we were coming over to Slippery Rock for him to
see the doctor.

We'd go past the front of the campus and

even though I was quite young. I knew about the fire in 1937.
The North Hall fire.

Came here with every intention of

becoming a health and physical education teacher in 1948
after I graduated from New Castle Senior High School.
my undergraduate work.

I did

I went back to New Castle and taught

(2)

C:

there for six years and served as cooperating teacher for the
then state teacher's college.

Dr. Weisenfluh. who had been my

ethics professor. was then President of the college.

He made

a contact with me and suggested that I might like to join the
faculty.

I wasn't sure that I wanted to do that because I

really enjoyed my public school teaching.
repeated in another year.

Then the offer was

So in 1958. I came to Slippery

Rock to begin my employment here as a member of the Health.
Physical Education and Recreation Department.

I left a junior

high school that had a faculty larger than the college.

Our

first meeting was held in the old library. now Maltby Center.
in the left hand wing. and the entire faculty sat at the library
tables.

That took care of that. There weren't that many of us.

There were less than 50 at the time. We've been here for a very
long time and have seen a lot of changes.
B:

What was it like being a student?

C:

Wonderful.

Wonderful.

Of course, that was a period of time

when girls had to be very carefully restricted.
didn't put restrictions on the men.

Now they

That was the idea that

if they locked up the women at night. then the men would go
home to their dormitories and study.

So we had restrictions.

At 8:15 we had to be into our dormitory.
Hall.

We only had one.

You had privileges based upon your class standing,

North

( 3)

C:

freshmen. sophomore. junior. senior.

Limited by your Q.P.A.

So that a freshman who had an appropriate Q.P.A. had one
ten-thirty privilege a week. which meant Monday through
Friday.

Then you were allowed out until 11:00 on Saturday

night and 10:00 on Sunday night.

If you were in the dormitory.

and they were called dormitories then and not residence halls.
you were in your room for quiet hours until 10:30.
until 11:00 you could make noise.
actually make noise.
Quiet time.

From 10:30

You could visit and talk and

Eleven o'clock. everyone in her room.

Twelve o'clock lights out.

I think today's students

would just marvel at the idea that at 12:00 people turned
their lights out and went to bed.

We had a night watchman who

patrolled the i n terior of the building.
stories about that.

There are lots of

She had a talent for always knowing when

you were out of your room inappropriately.

Of course. there

was activity after midnight o r after 11:00. too.

There are

stories told of people moving around to get safely back to
their room so that they couldn't get caught by Gummy.
Get in the room.

Breathe a sigh of relief and have Gummy

step out from behind the closet door and say. yes?
B:

Gummy was a female?

C:

Yes.
shoes .

Gumshoes.

The idea that she was very quiet .

Crepe-soled

Now that was my freshman year that the original Gummy.

that I'm aware of. worked .

She didn't return after my freshman

(4)

C:

year and they hired a lady who was also known as Soup and
Cereal because she had worked in the cafeteria in the dining
hall down in North Hall where she dished out cereal in the
morning and soup at lunch.

So she affectionately became known

as Soup and Cereal at first because she didn't wear gum-soled
shoes.

She wore heavy, hard leather.

corning through the halls.

You could hear her

She really had a difficult time.

She eventually changed that and then became known as Gummy
and worked here, I think, until the 1960's keeping order in
the dormitory.

Making sure people were doing the things that

they were supposed to do.
B:

Weren't there any rebels?

C:

Of course. I roomed with them all.

Of course, people who

needed to be out of the dormitory beyond hours.

People who

felt that during quiet hours they needed to bowl down the
hall.

I remember one occasion.

It was after 11:00.

I was sitting in my room.

My roommate was in the closet doing

something, maybe getting clothes ready for the next day.
was sitting at my desk reading.

I heard this terrible,

terrible sound and I thought that she, Janet Campbell,
otherwise known as Soupy, of course, was throwing hangers
on the floor.

That was what it sounded like.

Well, we

didn't have that much room in our closet so I couldn't
imagine.

She jumped backwards out of the closet and

I

(5)

C:

said, what are you doing?

When I turned to her and said,

what are you doing? We realized that neither of us were doing
anything.

Raced outside and someone had thrown thousands

of marbles down the upstairs hallway and they were cascading
down the steps and out on to the second floor.

And, of course.

when we went running out into the halls it was slip and slide
and roll and try to get our balance.
B:

Kind of harmless compared to later on.

C:

Much different.

R:

No panty raids?

C:

Yes.

Sure.

As a matter of fact, my first year here as a

student we were playing Westminster College in football, and
the Westminster students decided they wanted to come over
and burn a Won the Slippery Rock campus.
activity apparently back in those days.
in the form of a letter and then burn it.
of that.

That was a common
Throw gasoline down
Our people got word

Apparently some of our students had been over in New

Wilmington and sitting in Isaly's and they heard some of the
Westminster students plotting.
wasn't hard to mobilize.

So they came back and it

We had maybe 700 students in

Slippery Rock at that time.

Everybody knew everyone so

it wasn't hard to mobilize.

So on Friday night, they sent

the football team to bed .

After all. they had a major game

(6)

C:

the next day.

The rest of the men who were resident students

organized themselves to prepare to receive the folks coming
in from Westminster.
arrived.

Sure enough. the folks from Westminster

The next thing that we knew in the women's dormitory

was that the men were asking for women's clothing outside the
windows.

Please throw us down some women's clothing.

They had

caught the Westminster fellows. maybe eight or ten of them.
secured them. tied them to trees.
clothing.

They came in and begged women's

They shaved the guys' heads and the next day they

paraded them in front of the band down on the football field.
The unfortunate part of this is that some of those fellows
were predivinity students and they were serving as lay pastors
in some of the churches in the rural areas around New Wilmington.
Again all in good fun but the panty raids sort of fun. They
didn't come through the dorm for that one but were asking for
things from outside.

I think there is a picture in one of the

yearbooks about it .
R:

Were there fraternities and sororities?

C:

Not at that time.

Fraternities and sororities didn't begin at

Slippery Rock until probably around 1961 to 1963.
curious commentary.

That's a

As I recall. we'd had a major student

government meeting with a lot of representatives from a lot of
universities and colleges here at Slippery Rock.

The question

(7)

C:

came up about the need for fraternities and sororities at Slippery
Rock.

Most of the students who were attending from other colleges

and universities, not just our state system people, were members
of fraternities and sororities, and they listened to people talk
about what was available at Slippery Rock for students to do.
What kind of clubs?

What kind of activities?

Their recommenda-

tion was that we didn't need, apparently, to have fraternities
and sororities at Slippery Rock because there were so many
different kinds of activities that we had.
this.

I should mention

Intramurals, which has always been a big program here

at Slippery Rock, has a long history.

We probably have had

a higher percentage of our student body involved in intramurals
than any other college of comparable size, smaller or larger,
because our students seem to enjoy activities.

So those

intramural programs have always been essential and that was one
of the major things that they could do.

They could have teams

and participate without having to have a relationship through
a fraternity or a sorority.

There were academic related clubs.

I recall one used to be called the Open Road Club which was
sponsored by the Biology Department and there were a few biology
majors here, but the Open Road Club drew folks from all of the
majors who were interested in the out-of-doors and in nature.
They helped to take care of the nature trail which is now defunct.

( 8)

C:

It doesn't exist any longer.

They helped to make sure that all of

the different species of trees on the campus had their markings
on them so that when people were sent out to do leaf collections
by their botany class they could identify what the tree was.
They did a lot of good service projects like that but had
a lot of fun in the process. and that is just one of the many
academic related clubs that we had.

So their recommendation was

that they really didn't think we needed them.

However, we had

students who felt that there was a need for them and they wanted
them. The student referendum that was done at that time
as I recall. passed. but only with a very, very small percentage
of students voting. those people who were interested in the
fraternities and sororities.

A lot of students said. well. we're

not interested but we don't care.
fine.

If they want to have them.

So they didn't bother to vote.

ties and sororities.

I think it was around 1963.

was to be on a trial basis.
placed on them.

So we initiated fraterniOriginally it

There were certain restrictions

For example. they were expected to support all of

the University sponsored functions. such as homecoming and the
homecoming dance.

Well. we no longer have a homecoming dance.

Homecoming has really become an activity that the sororities and
fraternities seem to focus on. but to the extent that sometimes
we don't see the other clubs and activities getting involved

(9)

C:

in the homecoming parade or the displays that are done.

R:

Was drinking somewhat of a problem?

C:

Alcohol has always been a problem.

It's only a bigger one

today than it was then.
R:

Lots more folks.

C:

Lots more folks and a lot more being consumed.

The big deal.

if you talk to the folks who were in school back in those
early days. if the fellows went out and had a couple of six
packs with the four or six of them in the car why that was
a big deal. or a couple of quarts of beer. that was a big deal.
Today four or six people need a quarter keg.

That's one of

the problems that we have today. or I think that we have. and
as you know I have an interest in the drug and alcohol problem .
We have people here in this generational gap who remember that
when they were in college everybody

drank and everybody was okay

and most people were fine and they overcame the problem.

They

forget that our students today are drinking more and drinking
with a different idea in mind.

If you ask our students today why

they drink to excess. it's to get high.
To get drunk.
the idea.

Why are you drinking?

Whereas that was not. as I recall. that was not

Alcohol was a part of the social scene in those days.

I was surprised when I came to college.

I came at 17.

Many of

my friends from New Castle, who also came. had already been
drinking for a few years.

I didn't know that when I was home but

(10)
C:

I found it out when I got over here.

B:

At that time they didn't have cars.

C:

Not as many.

There were a few cars, and you're right, that's

one of the things that would keep them restricted.

Although

when I came to college in 1948 a large number of veterans
were here.

As a matter of fact, where Patterson Hall is now

there was a trailer camp, a trailer park for the veterans and
their families because many of the married veterans had children.
So there were trailers parked in there and a lot of those fellows
worked at Cooper-Bessemer or at ARMCO or at Pullman Standard and
went to school here on the G. I. Bill.

So those folks all had

cars.
B:

They were a different kind of non-traditional student.

C:

Oh, indeed.

It contributed, I think, a great deal to the quality

of the social scene and the academic scene.
interested in their education.

These folks were very

These were folks who prior to

World War II probably would have been denied access to higher education and now because of their service in the military and
because of the G. I. Bill, they now had that privilege of going to
school.

It was a different scene there than what we found

later on in the Vietnam era where the students were using college
to provide deferments to avoid service.

Therefore, they were

( 11 )

C:

not necessarily as committed to the academic work at the
University as those earlier veterans were.

They were a

great addition to Slippery Rock campus.
B:

Tell us about the kind of instruction and the things that
you learned and the curriculum at that time.

What do you

think of it looking back on it?
C:

The curriculum for the Health, Physical Education and
Recreation major was, of course. pretty well designed and
designated.

We had approximately a 60 hour liberal arts

or general education program which required, and there was very
little choice. Writing, literature, psychology, sociology,
history, geography.

All the traditional liberal arts program.

I think I got an excellent education.

I think that that liberal

tradition was very well in place at Slippery Rock.

We had two

semesters of the history of civilization required.

We had

United States history required.
government required.

We had American national

We had economic geography required.

All

of the things that you could possibly need in the liberal tradition were there.

Then beyond that you had professional

education which was the teacher education.

The student teaching

experience in education psychology and then the specialized program which was your professional program.
health, physical education and recreation.

For me it was in
I was able to take

enough course work to become a history minor, and most people did

( 12)
C:

have a minor of some sort.
ground.

We had a very strong science back-

I had general chemistry and chemistry of nutrition.

had anatomy and physiology.

I had botany and zoology.

I

We had

enough work in all of those courses that a few additional
classes and you could qualify for a minor.

When I finished

my education here, my certificate was not only to teach
and supervise health and physical education, K through 12,
but also to teach history in the secondary grades.
didn't require that many extra courses.

It

Dr. Duncan, who came

during my tenure here as a student, had a large influence on
those history courses because he taught a great many of them.
I've told Dr. Aebersold so many times when we go up to the third
floor of Old Main to meet with him that it was a lot easier to
get up to Dr. Duncan's history class that was in the same place
that the president's office is now.

A lot easier back in those

days to go up those three flights of stairs.

It's curious

knowing that we've just come through this change of liberal
studies program.

I'm not really sure how I feel about it

because I don't know that it's solved any of the problems that
we thought we had.

I'm not sure what the problems were that we

thought we had in liberal studies with our general education
program.

I'm in favor of a core, and what we got back in those

days was a very large
these things.

established core.

You will take all of

I don't think there were very many doubts in

( 13)

C:

anyone's mind about what Slippery Rock was graduating.

They

knew exactly what their educational program had been.
B:

Solid.

C:

Very.

I would say, having had the privilege of working with so

many folks who came from different kinds of backgrounds to teach
at Slippery Rock and who were not necessarily in education colleges but who came from the liberal arts college and became
teachers, that I think the education that I received at Slippery
Rock was every bit as solid as what folks were receiving at some
of the fine liberal arts colleges.
B:

Do you remember any other professors besides Dr. Duncan that
were particularly memorable?

C:

Dr. Weisenfluh, who I mentioned, had been my philosophy and
ethics professor.

He was a fine teacher.

Miss Pletz was

freshman physical education specialist and she had been here
for a while and was here for a great many years after I left.
Mr. Eiler who was my gymnastics coach and coach of the soccer
team.

Ford Hess who was the anatomy teacher.

A lot of the

men who were teaching here at the time . Archie Dodds, who was
head of the health and physical education program. A lot of
them were men who had been in the military service and then
either returned to Slippery Rock or had come here out of the

( 14)

C:

military to continue their professional work.

Morrison Brown

taught English and English literature and he, I believe, still
lives in Indiana.

I was at a banquet a year ago with AAUW

(American Association of University Women) and I met his wife
and daughter.
R:

Indiana, Pennsylvania?

C:

Indiana, PA, yes.

Harold Wieand who taught American National

Government. I had him for introduction to economics, I believe.
Dr. Book taught history.

I believe he did the sociology.

If

I looked at a yearbook it wouldn't be hard to remember all the
people that we had.
interested.

They were good folks and they were very

Martha Gault taught here.

to appreciation of art teacher.
teacher.

She was my introduction

Gladys Arnold was the music

They were wonderful folks.

They really loved Slippery

Rock and loved the students who were here because they gave of
themselves so much.

There was never any question about being

able to go and talk to somebody about a need in the class.
course, Maree McKay was the registrar.

Of

Maree McKay as the

registrar ruled the college with an iron hand.

I can recall

sitting at lunch, because some of the faculty and staff ate
in the dining hall which is now the staff center, the University
Club, sitting there knowing that we had registered collectively
for 21 and 20 hours and knew that we were not supposed to do
that and had gotten away with it or about a week and a half.

(15 )

C:

Every time Miss McKay walked by. we just sort of buried ourselves
in our soup or our salad.
tall to me.

She was very tall.

She seemed very

I don't really know how tall she was but she seemed

to be at least six feet tall when she appeared at the side of
the table and asked for Miss Hudacek and Miss Cavill.
speak to me in my office following lunch.

You will

It was. oh. darn.

because you knew you were going to have to drop a class to get
back to the recommended number of hours and credits as opposed to
today where you can take those extra hours if you have recommendaTwenty hours was just far too many. Miss Harner was the

tions.

Dean of Women.

Lois Harner.

She came my first year and then she

was here for a long time afterwards.
R:

She checked students down at North Hall?

C:

Not personally.
the hallway.

Although on occasion she might be down in

Mrs. Tomb was our assistant dean but they had upper

class students who had the responsibility at the desk.

We signed

in and signed out anytime we left the dormitory in the evening
with an indication of where we were going and what time we left.
We had to sign back in and. of course. they were there at checkin time including Gummy. to see if any of us happened to smell of
alcohol.
time.

As far as I know that was immediate expulsion at that

I don't know of anyone who got caught and I. therefore.

don't know of anyone who was expelled. but I know that that was

( 16)

C:

the concern and the fear.

R:

Classroom attendance.

C:

I think there was that expectation that you were here at school

Was it just plumb mandatory?

and you should be in class.
attendance policy.

I know that still governs my

I do expect you to show up.

On the

other hand. we understand the reasons why people don't.
recall skiing.

I can

One day, there was an old water tower up behind

Rhoads Hall, and we'd had a wonderful snowfall and we had, like
our common hour, we had a 10:00 hour on Tuesdays when no classes
met.

We had full university assemblies at that time in the old

chapel.

Occasionally there wasn't anything to do.

a full assembly, you were expected to be there, too.

If there was
But. if

there wasn't anything to do. you were free during that hour of
time.

So we had checked out some ski equipment, and it was one

of my first experiences in skiing.

It was take the skis off

and trudge up the hill and put the skis on and hope you didn't
kill yourself on your way down.
it.

I

tower.

I was just so enthralled with

just kept skiing down that hill.

Down from the water

Down to where Rhoads is and then across the road

toward North Hall with Old Main in full view.

I was skiing

and skiing and skiing and all of a sudden I thought. oh,
wonder what time it is?

I looked at my watch.

I was missing

my history class and I could see my professor standing in the
window.

He probably could see me skiing down the hill but

( 17 )

C:

no repercussions from that kind of an absence.

The same problem

then that we have today with athletic teams and the fact that
the University schedules their program and then takes the
students away.
team.
in.

I had the privilege of being on the gymnastic

It was the only varsity team that women could participate
It was an exhibition team, so starting sometime in November

and following through until March, we were going out to the
public schools in the area of Ohio and Pennsylvania to do these
wonderful gymnastic exhibitions.
that Slippery Rock ever did.

It was one of the best things

It was a wonderful public relations

arm because that team was so good.

There was so much skill there

and the high school students would fall in love, the girls with
these magnificent bodies of the men and the young guys with all
the girls who were in their leotards and providing all kinds of
wonderful activities.

It was a way for people to learn about

Slippery Rock who previously didn't know about us.
took us out of class and away we went.

But they

Of course, that con-

tinues to be a problem today as we have students who are
obliged to miss because the University is using their services
in some other way.

Sometimes, I think, that some of our

colleagues forget that someone has made a decision that those
activities are very important and significant to the University
and that we need to give some thought and consideration to the

( 18)

C:

fact that those absences are a little different than the
youngster who sleeps in or chooses just to blow off a class.

R:

Of course. there was debate and dance and glee clubs.

We

have a lot of stuff on the road.
C:

Exactly.
body.

Over the years, we always had a very active student

That's always been one of the things that I believed.

I've heard people talk about the apathy of Slippery Rock students.
I think I've learned that it's more because they are so involved
in what they are interested in that they may not be necessarily
interested in what we would like them to be interested in.

But

we still have them very active and very involved, doing a wide
variety of things.

Our students who leave this campus to go

out and carry the Slippery Rock story do such a wonderful job.
They are such good ambassadors.

They really are great.

I'm reminded of something else as we talk.

This is from way

back in the dark ages when I was a student at Slippery Rock.
I mentioned the veterans who were here.
beginning of the Korean War.

I was also here at the

That was a sad time because then

many of those veterans who had seen and survived combat were
being called back.

We had to my knowledge at that time the

first of those men who was killed.
ten days later he was killed.

He arrived in Korea and

He had been in the Air Force and

had survived bombing raids during World War II.
Clawson.

He was an upperclassman at the time.

That was Paul
Paul was called

( 19 )
C:

back.

I think he was a senior when he was recalled.

Then we

began to see some of our young men leaving because of the draft.
Because of the demand for that police action in Korea.

It was a

sad time. As a youngster growing up during World War II, yes, I
knew friends and I had an older brother and sister who had friends
who were into the service, but when you were of the age during
that period of time it was a different experience.
B:

So you came back to Slippery Rock on the faculty?

C:

Yes.

B:

Tell us about those experiences.

C:

At the time I was teaching in New Castle.
when I was in college.

I had been a gymnast

There's not a great demand for gymnasts

after you graduate, in spite of the fact that I was able to
continue teaching gymnastics.

One of the things that happened

to me in my teaching was that I became more of an aquatic specialist.

I began to focus on that, working with the Red Cross,

devising some new programs and new techniques.

Also served as

a supervisor for student teachers from Slippery Rock which
allowed me to keep my contacts over here and to know what was
going on with the professional programs.
invited me to join the faculty,
States had been here.

When Dr. Weisenfluh

it was shortly after Middle

Sounds familiar?

And Middle States

had said, my goodness, you have so many people student teaching
in health and physical education, and you don't have any supervi-

(20)

C:

sors in that field.
to do that.

We really think you should have some people

That was one of the reasons I was invited to join.

Bob Smiley, who was already on the faculty, and I were assigned
to supervise all of the student teachers that were in health
and physical education that Slippery Rock sent out.
Erie to south of Pittsburgh.

It was quite a task.

to that. I was hired as an aquatic specialist.

That was from
In addition

Then, of course.

with everything else that had to be taught, I taught physical
activities to the freshmen majors and I taught health and I
taught what we called the service classes to the non-majors which
made for a very full teaching level.

Obviously, many years pre-

collective bargaining! I had probably 27, 28 contact hours.
clock hours. that I taught.

Then on top of that, Bob and I had to

go out and travel and visit these student teachers.
B:

So there was no limit on the number of hours? Whatever they told
you to do, you did?

C:

Whatever was needed.

There were four women who taught activities

when I came back here to teach.
There was a dance specialist.

I was the aquatic specialist.
Marie Wheaton was here as an

activity specialist and Nancy Barthelemy as an activity
specialist.

Then we had Mary Margaret Heffernan who had been

here when I was an undergraduate, who was still here as the
health person.
lot of students.

We didn't have that many people and we had a
So, therefore, they expanded the assignments

(21 )

C:

until they were covered, unlike where we are today.

I had been

here for approximately two weeks and really busy.

Very busy.

I got a call to report to the President's office.

Because I

knew Dr. Weisenfluh and admired and respected him so much, it
was not one of those oh, oh, what did I do wrong.
oh, okay. I'm a new faculty member here.
me.

It was just

He wants to talk to

So I went over, and Dr. Weisenfluh was a very soft spoken

man, and he began to talk to me about gymnastics.

Eventually

in the conversation, it appeared to me that he was asking me
if I thought I might like to coach.
any desire to coach.

Never had.

Well, no. I didn't have

Didn't want to.

We talked

for a while and he became a little more insistent and it
suddenly dawned on me.
bulb goes on.

You know, the little electric light

He wasn't asking. he was telling me that I

was going to be assigned to coach the women's gymnastics team.
And I really had no choice in the matter.

This was an

assignment from the President. So we corrected our understanding
of that and I accepted the responsibility and went off to coach
gymnastics.
time.

Wally Rose was the men's gymnastics coach at the

As I had said earlier, gymnastics was an exhibition sport.

We took our people out and toured.

We continued to do that, but

we began to change some the activities into the Olympic activities. such as the uneven parallel bars and the balance beam, in
addition to the other things that we were doing.

By the next

(22)

C:

year, we had begun to look at gymnastics as a competitive sport.
Now one of the problems with that was that there weren't a lot
of schools around us who had gymnastic teams.
they didn't have women.

They only had men.

Pitt did, but
Kent State had both

men and women, and it was a result probably of their relationship
to the Sokols or the Turners that they had the team over there.
So we began a competitive team.

My first experience with the

women in competition was at West Chester at an invitational meet
where there were West Chester, East Stroudsburg, Slippery Rock,
Trenton state, Montclair State from New Jersey.
time we had ever competed.

Of course, we won.

expect? We were Slippery Rock.
wonderful gymnasts.

We had some fine gymnasts.

Some

Looking for places where we could go to have

Each year I would go back to Dr. Weisenfluh, at

first, and say, do I have to coach next year?
Cavill.

What would you

We came back and continued with the possibil-

ity for competition.
competition.

It was the first

I'd say, yes, sir.

coach next year?

He'd say, yes, Miss

Then I would return.

Yes, Miss Cavill.

Yes, sir.

Do I have to

After about five

years of that I went to him and I said, do I have to coach?

He

said, no, Miss Cavill, you do not have to coach gymnastics.
I said, oh, thank you.
sport.

He said, but you will have to do another

Well, there weren't any other sports because we really

didn't have that many varsity sports for women.
of intramurals but not the varsity sports.

We had a lot

We had developed

( 23)

C:

a field hockey team and a basketball team.
all right.

So I thought. well.

So we started the women's swimming team.

We put

out a notice that Slippery Rock is going to establish a women's
varsity swim team.
to a meeting.
meeting.

Any woman student who is interested. come

So we had this group of students and I had a

We talked about the possibilities and we shared what

our experience was in varsity swimming.
club?

Had they swum for a

Had they swum for a Y.W.C.A.? Had they done country club

swimming?

At the end we took all the years of experience that

the people had and we divided it by the number of people who
were there to see what the average was and we came up a negative
number.

We were really starting from scratch.

I coached swimming

for 13 years. every year asking at the end of the season to
whoever happened to be president at the time. do I have to coach
next year?
Yes. sir.

The answer always came back. yes. Miss Cavill.
Finally in 1976. Dr. Watrel said. no. you really

don't have to coach.
didn't happen.

I waited for the other shoe to fall and it

He said. you know. you will have to pick up an

extra class because of your release time.

Well. you see the

first 13 years that I coached. I coached without any compensation.
Without any release time.

We weren't paid to coach.

no release time from our teaching schedule.

We had

That coaching was

added to that schedule that I have already described.

In 1971.

when collective bargaining came in. it's the first time that the

( 24)

C:

coaches, generally. had any kind of compensation and it came in
the form of release time.

So that I had quarter release time

both semesters because my sport was both semesters.

When he

said, remember now, you'll have to pick up another class. I was
pleased to say, I think I can handle that.

That would be

another section of first aid, a course that I was already
preparing for to teach in two other sections, as opposed to
ten hours of practice time a week.
of preparation.

Probably another five hours

Four practices and four meets.

of our own scheduling.

We did all

We had to make the contacts with the

coaches of the other schools in order to get the schedule.
contacted the buses.

We

We made all the preparations ourselves.

We had a director of athletics but they didn't do that for us.
B:

Because it was a women's sport?

C:

Probably because they did men's basketball and football and not
necessarily just because it was a women's sport.

There were

many of the men teaching so called less visible or minor sports
that also had to do the same things that we did.

But certainly

there were no women who were getting that kind of assistance
for a long time.

Actually by the time I was through coaching.

we had an associate athletic director.
first one.

Pat Zimmerman was the

She was there to help us with our scheduling and

with getting buses and with things like that.

Coaching was a

lot of extra work on top of an already very busy teaching

( 25)

C:

schedule.

Of the 18 years that I coached. only five of them

were with release time.

So I was very pleased when I was no

longer obliged to coach.
didn't want to coach.
I

I had a good time coaching.

just

I believe that coaching is teaching. but

just didn't want to coach.

With good times.

I

I had some marvelous athletes.

There were problems.

I coached long enough

to see what was happening when we began to get sports into the
high school.

We began to see with some of the women some

of the problems that we'd always known existed with some of the
star athletes. the boys in high school who always thought
that they were privileged because they were stars.

I coached

long enough to see that phenomenon begin to occur with the
girls coming from the high school.

We are talking about Title

IX which said. if you've got boys' sports. you've got to have
girls' sports.

Men's sports, women's sports.

We were pleased

to be able to have the new warmups that Millie would save for
us in the equipment room to go with us to the swim meets.
I was getting students coming in from the high schools who
wanted two practice suits and a swimsuit for the meet.

We

didn't have that kind of money committed to sports at Slippery
Rock.

Any kind of sport at Slippery Rock.

of course.

Limited resources,

Of course, they continued to be limited, but I think

we're doing a little better job now because we're also able to
raise money from the sports in the summertime.

Laurel Dagnon

( 26)

C:

does these and they bring in money for scholarships and additional
money for the athletic programs.

We didn ' t even have the capacity

to do those things in those days.

There's no doubt the focus was

on the men's football and men's basketball.
about it.

There was no doubt

We went through a period of time here even in the early

1980's. I had a sabbatical in 1980 - 81.

I thought I'd been very

clever and avoided appointment and election to any committees
during the year that I was on sabbatical.
will be an easier year.

When I come back it

Faculty Council forgot to elect in the

spring, so they elected in the fall and one of the positions they
were electing to, I think, Leah, you were a part of this, was
Athletic Council which was sort of new to Slippery Rock at that
time.

I can recall being lobbied at the Faculty Council meeting.

I think, Mrs. Brown, you were a part of that lobbying group.
Certainly, Dr. McKeag and Dr. Knierim and Dr. Zimmerman and
Dr. Griffiths all put on their best efforts to lobby me to go
for election to the Athletic Council.

I didn't realize what

was going on. I doubt that you did either.

It was just one of

those things that somebody thought Wilma ought to do.
a new President, Dr. Reinhard.

There was

And what was happening was,

there was talk about visible sports and less visible

sports and

money going to support the visible sports which would detract from
the less visible sports.

This debate was about to begin, and I

think that the Athletic Council at that time was significant in

( 27)

C:

pointing out to Dr. Reinhard that that was a grievous error.
That as far as students were concerned, major, minor, visible,
less visible, whatever the activity that the student is involved
in, whether it's drama or music or sport, it's as significant to
them as the sport that they would call a visible sport, football.
basketball, and wrestling at the time.

It was unfair to handicap

those other sports in order to encourage these sports for the
limited possibility of greater exposure and greater success.

We

were a Division II school. It would be nice to have the kind of
money that television brings in, but in order to do that you have
to be involved in winning regional, district and larger contests.
We were sort of making a suggestion that we would handicap a large
number of our students to support a very small number of students
in an athletic program.

I can recall the meeting when Dr.

Reinhard met with the Athletic Council and he accepted the
arguments that were made that said, this is not a good idea.
Whatever you do, you are already committing additional moneys. For
example, we have a Sports Information Director.

That Sports

Information Director is charged primarily with public information
about the major sports.
addition.

So we are already supporting those, in

A lot of our coaches, if they want publicity. they

have to do it themselves.

If they want stories done, they still

have to do it themselves.

I wouldn't want to have to do that.

didn't like doing it when I was coaching.

I

I wouldn ' t want to have

{28)

C:

to do it now when I think that coaching has become more complex
with recruitment and the year round programs that they have
going on here.

He accepted all those arguments and agreed

that he would not initiate this visible, less visible sports
program.

It felt like a great victory to those of us who

had been coaching in the so called less visible or minor sports.
I was already out of coaching by then, but it was still a thing
that I was very much interested in. It's curious to note that
within the semester, Indiana University of Pennsylvania did
initiate support for a visible, less visible sports program,
and received a great deal of negative notoriety as a result of
that, because the faculty responded in the same way that the
Athletic Council at Slippery Rock had responded, saying
that's not fair and that's not right.

The press carried a lot

of those stories from IUP and it got to be broader than sport.
It got into summer school and a lot of other things. But it was
the kind of thing that Slippery Rock was therefore protected
from as a result of people looking and thinking and dealing
with the President who was willing to listen.

I think I know

that there are a lot of folks who would say that they were
surprised that Dr. Reinhard listened, because he was such a
strong president and was interested many times in doing things
the way he thought that they ought to be done regardless of
what other people might advise.

In this instance, he listened.

I think he was well rewarded for it.

( 29)

R:

Were you AAUP before?

C:

No.

I was a member of PSEA

and NEA.

teacher coming from the public schools.

Typical public school
That was our professional

affiliation in addition to the state association and the
American Association of Health. Physical Education. Recreation
and Dance.

So that when the question came up for collective

bargaining and APSCUF wished to be the bargaining agent. the
next question was an agent with an affiliation.
know. won across the state with PSEA and NEA.

That. as you
That lasted for

about five years. then ended because we didn't believe that
PSEA was providing the additional services that we felt needed
to be provided that we were paying for.

So we went through a

period of time of independence until we then affiliated with
AAUP and the AFT.

That was some kind of a coup at that time.

to bring together the prestigious professional association of
AAUP with the politically powerful AFT who had an affiliation
with the AFL-CIO.

I believe that what is now the state

system. APSCUF. was the first of the various bargaining agents
around the country to be able to get that alliance done.
Subsequently. we've discovered that the AAUP was not able to
provide the services either. and so we are currently now just
affiliated with AFT.

Collective bargaining was an interesting

experience. I think. here. For so many of us coming from the
public schools there was that attitude that you didn't join a

(30)

C:

union.

Let's face it, we were professionals.

Yet we had all

taught under circumstances where we had seen people treated less
well than they should have been treated.

We saw good young

faculty disappear because somebody didn't like the way they parted
their hair or the way they dressed or because some managmentappointed chair saw that new young faculty as a threat to their
position of power.

I sincerely believe as a very strong unionist

that when management or the administration does what they ought to
do in terms of treating their workers properly, fairly, equitably,
there is no need for collective bargaining.

Collective

bargaining gives those workers the strength they need to be able
to deal with the inequities that inevitably seem to appear when
management and administration make mistakes or don't pay attention
to the fairness of the treatment of their employees.

At that

time I recognized that, and was very happy to see collective
bargaining come after I understood a little bit more about it.
Then I got involved in the leadership of the union. But I had not
previously been involved.

I had been involved in the leadership

of the faculty having served on the Faculty Council, but not
through APSCUF or AAUP, and somehow ended up being elected
secretary to the Faculty Council the same year I was elected
secretary of APSCUF.

Tony Pagano was chairperson of the Faculty

Council and Irv Kuhr was the president of APSCUF.
first president.

He was our

My memory of all of that is that we were so

( 31)

C:

unaccustomed to collective bargaining or unionism that none
of us really knew how to behave. including the administration.
I can remember at Faculty Council meetings a question would be
asked.

Dr. Watrel would stand up to respond to it and his

administrative aide, Vicky Fox. would tug at him and say,
you can't say that. that's Meet and Discuss.
sit down and not say anything.
upset.

Then he would

Then faculty would get very

Irv. who I don't think had ever been seen by anybody

on this campus as a militant. began to sound like a militant
in his position as APSCUF president.

He'd be obliged to say

things like. well, if you can't talk to us then we'll grieve
it.

Everyone would go. oh my goodness.

When either Irv's

term ended or when it was changed, he served for a year. the
faculty instead of re - electing what they perceived to be a
militant attitude. elected Don Voss. and I
as a much milder person.

think Don was perceived

That was the year. I guess. that I

recall being secretary of APSCUF.

So I was in the Meet and

Discuss meetings and I was in the executive committee meetings.
Now we're a year into collective bargaining.
to be a little stronger than

Now they wanted Don

what he seemed to be to some folks.

So we got to the end of Don's term and during that year when I
served as secretary. Lou Razzano. who had been our delegate. moved
to administration.
level.

So suddenly I was a delegate at the state

I was really getting involved in the union and because the

( 32)
C:

president hadn't gone to the Delegate Assemblies. I may be off
a year here because it seems to me that maybe I was

a delegate

when Irv was president, it might have been in 1972 or 1973. I
would come back and give reports at the faculty meetings about
what was going on at the state level.

I was really into this

business and enjoying it, and we were learning so much about
what was happening at the other schools that the next thing I
knew, in the spring of 1974, somebody nominated me to run for
president of APSCUF. At the same time John Don Wink from the
Art Department, who had

also been a delegate, was nominated.

I

thought that was great. I thought he would make a good president
of APSCUF and I

didn't care if he won.

Apparently Don told folks

the same thing that he thought I'd be okay and he didn't care.
It was years later that we seemed to discover that Dick Hunkler
and Bob Aebersold had something to do with those nominations.
The conclusion was reached that what they wanted was a reasonable
bastard to be president of APSCUF. Someone who would bring a
meld of the militancy of Irv and the quiet, gentleness of Don
Voss.

I won and was subsequently re-elected and I served four

years as the reasonable president of the union.

It was an

interesting time.
8:

Those dates?

C:

1974 to 1978.

The first year was really interesting for me

because I was doing something in a role that I had never

(33)

C:

truly played before, but I had such good experiences at the
state Legislative Assembly.

Pat Johnson had been the

president the first year I was there.

Bob Winters followed

and they were very different in their style, and I had
learned some techniques to handle large group meetings and
found that we had a lot of information to share back here
at Slippery Rock. So most of our faculty meetings were very
large and there was always a lot of information.

As a matter of

fact, around 1975 was the first effort at retrenchment.

One of

the first things that happened was Dr. Watrel called me to his
office to tell me that they had been ordered to retrench 5%, and
he said we don't need to do this because we are fiscally sound,
but I have been ordered to reduce faculty by 5%.

Of course, the

first move was to call Harrisburg and ask if the state people
knew that this was happening.

I was maybe the third or fourth

call. So as soon as APSCUF learned that the then SCUD [State College and University Directors] board had issued this 5% reduction,
they went to work to see what they could do and they got an
injunction to stop it because the SCUD board had acted illegally.
So that first threat of retrenchment got handled immediately
by the union, and had we not had collective bargaining we would
have reduced staff by
R:

A lot of folks.

5 %.
0

•

( 34)

C:

That's right.
tions.

That's right and that was across the 14 institu-

As Dr. Watrel said, we were fiscally sound, we had no

reason to reduce, except the order had come from the board. So it
wasn't hard for our faculty then to very quickly see the value
of having a state union who could act on their behalf.
B:

It seems to me that there was one crisis after another during
your tenure?

C:

That's how it looks to me too when I look back.
was one of them.

Retrenchment

The PSEA conflict occurred then, and then we

had some local problems.

We had a President who was, I think,

learning, as all of the presidents at the 14 institutions were
learning to deal with collective bargaining.

I sincerely

believe in those first two years that Dr. Watrel was having
a better way of handling and dealing with collective bargaining
and with the faculty.

We worked more directly with him.

Leah,

you were chairperson of the promotions committee at that time.
I can recall many times when I would bring information to the
promotions committee that we had talked with the President and
he had agreed to certain things.

We were trying to establish

guidelines and then they would get into a meeting and it would
fall apart.

Generally, that meeting was with the then Vice-

president of Academic Affairs.
B:

That was Jim Roberts.

C:

Yes. And the original agreement would fall apart, and then Leah

( 35)

C:

would come to me and say, what happened?
this all squared away.

We thought we had

Then I would march upstairs to Dr.

Watrel and I would say, I thought we had agreed to this and this,
and he would say, yes.
in the meeting.
can't tell them.
them.

I would say, that's not what's happening

He would say, go tell them.
You tell them.

I would say, I

Then he would go and tell

We got what faculty really were interested in, if I

recall correctly.

Then there was an effort to apparently, I'm

sorry to say, to undermine the President's relationship to the
faculty.

When we worked more directly with him, and he discovered

that the faculty were not the monsters that he had been told
they were, and we were finding out that he was not the inept
administrator that we had been told that he was, then we began
to make some real progress.

There was a statewide effort to

establish promotion guidelines, but we made some real progress
locally here because of the relationship that was slowly
developing with the President.

That culminated, as everybody

knows, in the conflict between Jim Roberts and Al Watrel when
Al decided to remove Jim as his Vice-president for Academic
Affairs and offered him either the opportunity to go on
sabbatical or to be returned to the faculty.

What Jim Roberts

did was phone Harrisburg and tell them that he had been fired.
And there had been so many things going on with the Auditor
General's office, nothing that was proven to be wrong, but

( 36)

C:

questions that had been raised and reports that had disappeared
in the Auditor General's office. to where there were folks
in Harrisburg who thought that maybe Al was not as competent as
he truly was.

Questions. allegations and inferences that caused

John Pittinger (Secretary of Education) to tell Shapp. and Shapp
picked up the phone and fired Watrel.

Then. I think looking back.

made a very serious error in putting in the other person who was
part of the controversy. naming him as Acting President.

Our

understanding at that time. with the searches that had gone on at
the other colleges. was that if a person was given the privilege
of becoming the Acting President. then they would not be a
candidate.

If they wanted to be a candidate. they could not

have the obviously preferred position of being the Acting
President.

Jim (Roberts) accepted the Acting Presidency and then

applied for the Presidency.

That was a year of terrible turmoil

with a lot of problems here at the University.
being charged with ridiculous things.
going on.

With people

With investigations

I can recall finally sitting in the Trustees' meeting

when a deputy attorney general announced to the Trustees
and anyone else who was in the room that the Justice Department's
investigation had been completed and there was no evidence of
wrongdoing by Al Watrel.

And that it was her advice to this

college that we stop the negative publicity because everything
that came out reiterated all of the allegations and the inferences

(37)

C:

and really cost us in that period of time in student enrollment.
And she said we had to stop this negative publicity, that
we were having a detrimental effect that would have a long lasting
effect on the University and that there was nothing, no proof,
that he had done anything wrong.
guilty of was bad judgement.

The only thing he may have been

I don't know that there was a

single person sitting in that room who could have claimed that
they had never been guilty of bad judgement. nor anyone at the
University for that matter. At that very meeting Dr. Roberts
announced that he had called in the State Police to investigate
the theater department which was non-existent, it was a
program within the communication department, for misuse of funds.
Of course, that hit the papers that night and made the headlines,
as opposed to the fact that Watrel was found innocent of all
charges.
publicity.

So we went through another period of time of negative
Of course, the fact that one of the theater professors

was on the search committee, probably had nothing to do with
that investigation, but there was. of course, nothing found.
At that time, I think the cash that may have been available at
the theater department or at the shows might have accumulated $20.
Students got in free of charge.
faculty at the time.

I don't think we were charging

There was an occasional $1 fee. And what

was happening with that money was that it was regarded as petty
cash. and sometimes when they needed something, like a couple

(38)

C:

of screws or bolts to hold a set together. they went down and
bought them.

Hardly a misuse of funds.

It was a bad period

of time. and it continued on until the summer of 1977 when the
promotion list came out.

In that year we had been struggling

to try to get a fair search for a president. The search process
was tampered with.

Some faculty felt one way.

Some faculty

felt another way. and then. as always occurs. the

large majority

of faculty weren't sure what they believed or how they felt until
that promotion list came out.

That was sufficient to send a night

letter to Governor Shapp with about

85% of , the faculty's signa -

tures on it saying. you cannot name Jim Roberts to the Presidency.
With that. Governor Shapp scrapped the search. assigned Dr. Larry
Park from Mansfield to be the Interim President at Slippery Rock
until such time as Dr. Park and the people in Harrisburg agreed
that Slippery Rock was ready to run a search.
went out in
started.

July.

The promotion list

Dr. Park didn't arrive until just before school

His two years here. I think. marked a real high point

and turning point for Slippery Rock University.

He. again. was a

man who had trouble as a new president at Mansfield dealing with
collective bargaining. but those folks at Mansfield did their job.
They taught him how to be a president when there was collective
bargaining. because I don't know that when he came here that he
made any mistakes.

He was so geared in to working with the union

leadership. working with the faculty and understanding the col-

( 39)

C:

lective bargaining agreement that to my knowledge

during the one

year when I was President (of APSCUF) and the following year when
Bob Macoskey was President, I don't think that man made any major
mistakes.
B:

Of course, he wasn't a candidate for President.

C:

Of course not.

B:

Before we leave it, explain what you mean about the promotion
list.

C:

In 1977, the promotion list, which was supposed to be a process
which would have been established in 1975, that our faculty knew
and which we assumed our administration knew. required certain
things to be done.

When the promotion list was issued, it was

very clear that there were people promoted who did not meet the
generally accepted requirements for promotion.
promoted who had not even applied for promotion.
even gone through the process.

There were people
They had not

It was seen, I believe, by

the faculty as a payoff for support for Jim Roberts' candidacy
for the presidency.

It was one of the curious things that I

was called to Harrisburg by John Pittinger (Secretary of Education)

In 1975, Dr. Roberts had been out of school with heart

surgery, I believe in

1974 or 1975, part of that school year.

was called by Pittinger into a meeting where the so-called question was raised about the then 1975 promotion list because Jim
Roberts had claimed that Watrel had changed Dr. Roberts' recom-

I

(40)

C:

mendations for promotion. I sat and listened to this charge and I
had already been called to Dr. Roberts' farm for him to tell me
this had happened.

There many things that happened when I was

President that worked out okay because I kept my mouth shut and
listened very hard and then tried to ask a couple of questions
that helped to resolve issues and when Dr. Roberts spoke to me
about this promotions list. I wasn't that swift.
terrible that these things had happened.

It sounded to me

So I asked him if he

could give me evidence of the original list and the

change list.

Well. I never heard anything more from him. but it obviously was
a thing that he used as he talked about why Dr. Watrel ought not
be President. So John Pittinger said to me. how do you feel about
this?

By this time. I was a little more experienced. the P resi-

dent of APSCUF and much more knowledgeable about the promotion
process.

He said. don't you think that that is strange and wrong

for him to have done that? I said at that time. no. our process at
Slippery Rock is that the candidates for promotion apply through
their departments to the college-wide promotion committee.

The

recommendation from the college-wide promotion committee goes
straight to the President.

He makes the promotions.

Now today.

our President chooses to involve his vice-presidents and deans in
the process.

He still makes

the final decision.

In 1975. Dr.

Watrel was not involving the deans and his vice-president in his
decision.

The vice-president might take it upon himself to

( 41)

C:

present a list. but the process had changed with this new procedure that we had in place. So when they asked me in 1976.
didn't I think it was wrong?

The answer was that the President

had the full authority to promote. if he chooses to promote.

He

also denies promotion. There was this long pause with the Seccretary of Education. John Pittinger. and his deputy secretary.
Dave Hornfeck. and there was this long pause because they were
both very much concerned about this fact that Dr. Watrel had not
followed Jim Roberts' recommendations.

I got through saying what

I had to say about the process here. and they looked at one
another in this long pause and then looked at me and said. she's
right.

The President has the full authority.

They had been

co-opted into believing that there was something wrong with the
fact that Dr. Watrel had made his own promotion list.

About a

year later. Dr. Roberts made his own promotion list. but he
violated virtually every rule in the book.

Turning down. re-

fusing. denying promotion. to one of the persons who this University has felt has made some of the greatest contributions.
Robert Macoskey.

Jim Roberts denied him promotion while promoting

lots of other people. many of whom hadn't even followed the usual
process.

That upset faculty sufficiently to send their night

letter to the governor.

That stopped that nonsense right there.

It was two years before Dr. Parks said we were ready to do another
search.

Jim Roberts was a candidate the second time.

He even

( 42)

C:

, probably was considered a finalist.

But the two real candidates

that we had were Herb Reinhard from Florida and Dr. Kraus who
came from either North or South Dakota and was Chancellor of
Higher Ed. out there.

I think the faculty here were perhaps

evenly split on which of those two persons they thought would
make the better president.

I think that Harrisburg. well I

won't say I think this. this is what I was told in Harrisburg.
that they thought that Slippery Rock was in such an uproar. and
we weren't. really.
all of this.

We were very quiet and very calm through

But they perceived that we needed a very strong

person to be president and Dr. Kraus and Dr. Reinhard
very different people.

were two

Dr. Kraus was a very quiet. soft-spoken

man. and Dr. Reinhard was a very articulate and vigorous kind of
individual.

Someone described him to me in Harrisburg as sort of

like a street fighter.

They thought that was what we needed to

bring us out of our doldrums of having been through these very
serious problems and so we got hurt.

Herb F. Period. Reinhard.

As we look back at that period of time. there were several
wrongs that were corrected.

One. we got a search stopped

that might have produced an inappropriate president for the
institution.

We had two years with Dr. Park that. I think.

were very good years.

Dr. Macoskey was subsequently promoted

as most of the faculty thought that he ought to be.

Of course.

all you have to do is look at what he's done as a full professor

(43)

C:

to know that that promotion was more than deserved at that time
when you consider his ALTER project.

We haven't mentioned his

Futures class which was a real innovative thing that he was
doing at that time.

So we went through a period of calm.

It

might also be interesting to note here that Dr. Roberts was
returned to his position as Vice-president of Academic Affairs
during Dr. Park's first year.

Then Dr. Park removed him and

this time the removal stayed.

He returned him to the faculty. and

interestingly enough. to a department of his own where he became
his own chair. You must remember that faculty had the right to say
who would be admitted to their department. Therefore. rather than
subject him to the questionable experience

of being voted in or

out of a department. he was established as his own department.
It's also interesting to note that

at that time Dr. Bob Aebersold

became the Acting Vice-president of Academic Affairs. subsequently
becoming in a nationwide search the Vice-president of Academic
Affairs. ultimately to be named as the Acting President and then
after a nationwide search. becoming President of the University.
All the players were very interesting at that time.

Bob

Aebersold was. I believe. on sabbatical leave during 1976 and 1977
when all the upheaval was taking place around here.

He really

was. aside from his competencies. he was also a person who was
not involved in the controversy on either side.

So his appoint-

ment as Acting Vice-president was probably a very smart move by

(44)

C:

Dr. Park at that time.

Carol Matteson was identified as the

person who might serve Dr. Park well as an administrative
assistant, and so she moved into that position.

Dr. Park brought

with him Steve Hulbert as Vice-president for Administration and
Fiscal Affairs.

Then Carol became a very significant person, I

think, in those couple of years because she had a special feeling
for the University, for the College then.

She had been a

graduate and she had been teaching here for some time.

She had

a sense of where things were and what was going on at the
University, sufficient that when Dr. Reinhard came, I believe,
he was advised perhaps by Dr. Park, perhaps by Dr. Macoskey,
to retain Carol as his administrative assistant for that first
year, the transition year. It was felt she might be able to
provide pretty fine assistance to him as he became familiar with
Slippery Rock State College.

It is curious to note that later

on Carol herself got involved in some controversy.

She had

originally started her teaching in the Physical Education Department and then decided because she was a businesswoman to pursue
retraining under our Educational Services Trust Program in
business.

She earned an M.B.A. and was in the process of working

toward a doctorate at Pitt in business, and in the meantime, had
been assigned to the Marketing and Management Department to teach
marketing and management courses.

Here

she is a businesswoman in

her own right, an M.B.A. and well on her way toward her doctorate

( 45)

C:

and it was time to elect chairpeople.

The department had a hard

time with the idea of a woman becoming their chair.

It created

some very serious conflict personally for Carol and a lot of conflict around the campus, particularly from the women's view that
these men were simply rejecting the idea that it should be possible for this woman to be chair.

One of the statements that was

made was that one of the reasons they didn't think she would
be good for them to be a chairperson is that she had such
a close working relationship with the administration, which many
of us found to be rather amusing.

I mean everyone wants a

chairperson who can't get along well with the president and
vice-president.

Right?

limited resources.

You're talking about allocations and

It would be nice to have a chairperson who has

a good working relationship with the administration .
department, Management and Marketing, didn ' t

see it that way.

ended up with Carol taking a leave of absence.
traught.

But that
It

She was very dis-

Many of us were, over the way she was treated.

She

asked for a leave of absence, and management granted her that.
Although we lost her services for those two years, she went to
Maine and had some marvelous experiences

up there in management

and marketing, and curiously enough never returned to Slippery
Rock because she was named Dean of Management
Bloomsburg University.
R:

I had forgotten that.

and Marketing at

(46)

B:

The Management and Marketing supposed excuse that they didn't want
a chair allied with the president, that was cover-up probably for
some other real reasons.

C:

Sure.

Surely.

Carol finished up her doctorate that summer.

There were many people who were claiming that she was not
sufficiently qualified even to be in the department, even
though many of those people there at that time did not have
their doctorates and had less experience in the business
world than she had.

They were, of course, looking at health

and physical education as her background and saying, well,
she's not a business person.
B:

And she's a woman.

C:

Oh, yes.

But she was.

I think that had a lot to do with it.

Probably

if you bothered to check now, you'd find that a large number
of grievances that the University is still managing or are
working with come from an individual in that department.
One of the things that was pointed out to us about a year
ago concerns the grievances that are filed at Slippery Rock, that
get to the filing stage.

A lot of our grievances are worked out

by dealing directly with the person who can resolve the problem,
the dean, the vice-president, the president.

A lot of our

things don't even get to the paper filing stage.
our past practice.

That's been

That's a mark, I think, of the collegiality

that exists at Slippery Rock between the union and the

(47 )
C:

management.
at it.

It's not because just that it happens.

Of the grievances that do get filed,

We work

a large percentage

of the grievances filed are by two or three people.

It

suggests that we have some folks that have serious problems.
That they can't seem to take no for an answer.
B:

This is their hobby.

C:

Yes.

I

It has become their avocation to file grievances.

recently heard that one of our faculty members has decided
to file a grievance based on gender discrimination for failure
to promote to full professor.

I don't know what kind of

an argument he will be able to make specifically, but when you
look at the fact that 85% of the full professors are male and 15%
of them are female, I think you'd have a hard time suggesting
gender discrimination.

R:

Bad figures.

C:

Yes.

B:

How about the composition of the promotion committees?

I don't think the statistics are going to be very helpful.
Is

that overwhelmingly male or female?
C:

Matter of fact I think that's interesting because I

think

as with most of our committees, you run, you get elected.
you want to run, there's not going to be too much conflict
because those jobs take a lot of time and everybody knows
that.

It's really a matter of saying to people, won't you

please serve on the promotion committee.

It will be good

If

(48)

C:

for the University and it will be good for you. if you would
do this. Then people say. okay. put my name in.

Curiously

enough. I think. if you look back you'd see a balance of
male. female on the promotion committee.

Of course. the

attitude of the promotion committee has evolved.

It has

to be really bad for the promotion committee of faculty not
to support your application.

You either have to be ineligible

for legal reasons or there has to be some major flaw before
they would fail to support. because the union sees their
responsibility as supporting faculty in achieving promotion.
I don't know that anybody who is grieving is going to have
an easy time of it in that sense.

The President still

retains the final authority to grant promotions based on his
professional judgement.

It is very hard to challenge

professional judgement.
R:

But the whole procedure is wonderfully professional. it seems to
me. for promotion particularly. and sabbaticals

C:

I think so.

as well.

I think there has been an effort to try to do that.

I think we can improve upon it.
that we could do.

I think there

For example. the fact that Dr. Aebersold has

included the deans in the promotion process.
official process.

are lots of things

That's not in our

That's because he has chosen to do that.

If

we got a new president tomorrow. that president could decide to
eliminate the deans and the vice-presidents and handle the

(49)

C:

responsibility himself.

If we are going to have the deans in-

valved. I for one would perhaps like to see the deans involved
more in an advocacy position and make it a part of the established
process. the written procedure.

That allows a faculty member to

work with a dean so that a dean is in the position to be able
to say. here are things you really need to do before I'm able
to support you.

Then once you had the dean's support. you

ought to be able to plan. hopefully. to be promoted.
R:

There are some cases where that is happening informally.

Where

the dean is keeping track of their resume and the stuff that
they are putting in print and all that kind of thing.
C:

Right.

One of the things that has changed is that APSCUF has

insisted that when a person is recommended for promotion and
not promoted, that management talk to them about what they need
to do to correct their deficiencies.

In the past. if you weren't

recommended by the University committee. the University committee
talked with the candidate telling them where they thought the
deficiencies were.

If the person is recommended, it's not up

to the University committee to say. you're deficient here.
They recommended.

No.

So. therefore. we've asked management and

Dr. Aebersold has agreed, and so therefore. unsuccessful candidates have the opportunity to meet with the Vice-president and

(50)

C:

their dean in order to discuss what their needs are to improve
their deficiencies.

I think we are slowly improving upon it

but I tbink we could probably even do a better job.
R:

Thank you very much.

C:

I'm more than willing to come back.
My goodness.

very much.

There are so many things.

I look at your list here and we haven't talked about