Remarks by Elvis J. Star I.U. Alumni Club of Grant County

Remarks by Elvis J. Star
I.U. Alumni Club of Grant County
Meshingomesia Country Club, Marion, Indiana
6:30 Reception
7:00 Dinner
April 12, 1967
Thank you,
Merrill--off chest,
some truth,
Very complimentary--distilled for
a Kentuckian.
After I heard the rumor that the billing tonight was "Elvis and Cole in
Davisland," I almost expected to find myself at a Mod Tea Party.
It
is
just
great for us to be here with Merrill and Josephine--after all, they brought
us to I.U.
five years ago-and also to be with the rest of you who have been
interested and courteous enough to give us an evening of your time and a
chance to become better acquainted.
brought up 3 children for us.
man--four years in
Bob Boyd, Kokomo,
Brownes--2 sons who
Dr. Rifner--Nancy Cole--and I'm an old Army
Infantry--so I feel this one--Nancy's twin--Ratlif f--a
fraternity brother of Dean Briscoe--and lots of Sigma Nus,
The I,U,
"world is so full of a number of things," I wondered as I
thought about tonight just what I would want to hear about if I were sitting
where you are.
Unless I misjudge what you are hearing and reading, you
probably particularly want to know two things:
what's going on down in
Bloomington, and the effect of the General Assembly's actions on what will go
on throughout our far-flung University during the next two years,
In answering these questions I hope I won't sound like the pilot who
responded to a passenger's query about their precise location:
about this way:
"Well, it's
We're lost, but we're making very good time,"
Quite candidly, we are having a lively time on the Bloomington campus
this year and liveliness is apt to make news,
I doubt that anyone with
ordinary good sense should expect American campuses to remain completely quiet
when the world about us is torn with debate and stirring with change.
The
"Dr. Spock generation," as the current crop of young men and women has been
-2described, reflects the anti-authoritarian philosophy of its training and
seeks its own answers to the strife and injustice and materialism it sees in
the adult world.
things,
This habit of mind is now becoming translated, among other
into a questioning of many of the regulations and requirements that
control a student's university.
I am not referring to the kind of organized disruption which took place
at Berkeley.
in
We make the mistake sometimes of interpreting one kind of action
terms of another.
Students who urge a change of regulations are not
necessarily rioters--in fact, nothing has happened on any of IU.'s
campuses
that could be described as a Berkeley-type incident and I think it
tial
that you understand that fact in viewing student actions.
student is
is
essen-
The average
sort of caught in the middle of the illogic which the very vocal
protesters urge upon him, for example, that administrators who leave students
pretty much to their own devices "don't care,"
are impersonal, look on stu-
dents as mere IBM numbers, and all that sort of thing, while administrators
who don't appear to leave students pretty much to their own devices are hateful
holdovers of the old doctrine of "in
loco parentis.,"
Well,
it's
an old, old
story for children and young people and lots of grown people to want it both
ways--and it takes a little time and experience to learn you can't have it.
This week hundreds of students have been getting a taste of politics in
a vigorous Student Government election campaign.
bright students; the platforms they support,
Most of the candidates are
as you might guess,
call for
more voice in both administrative and academic policies and further changes
in
the governance of student life,
and interest in
I happen to favor more student involvement
the University--indeed,
to the degree that such involvement is
exercised responsibly and rationally it can be an enormous asset to the student's growth and also for the institutions improvement.
this.
I am quite sure of
-3At the same time, the administration is
not being clubbed into concession
Important changes during the past five years--and before,
after concession,
I'm sure, have been preceded by thoughtful--often long--discussion,
often too
by a trial period, and usually by consideration of the experience on other
campuses.
Down through the 147 years of the University's history alterations
in rules have been, as they now are, consistently in the direction of selfdiscipline rather than regulated discipline and, I suspect, have invariably
originated with the students.
Another kind of change, which has affected the campus quite recently, is
labor union activity among the non-academic staff.
The total labor force at
all levels of government is sizable; it makes an attractive target for Union
organizations.
At Bloomington,
there has long been an elected Staff Council
and a grievance procedure which served the staff to the apparent satisfaction
of most,
But change is expectable in this sector of the University as well
as in others.
After lengthy consideration the Union agreed to a set of
Conditions For Cooperation which detailed procedures for reaching agreement
in cases of grievance and for establishing representation units.
The demon-
stration last weekend concerned one of the representation provisions basically,
but gained its
heat from agitation over paid parking--a plan devised last year
to enable us to expand parking facilities.
I won't go into this further just
now except to say that the administration has tried to be reasonable and is
acting in good faith as it faces this aspect of change on the campus.
As for what is really going on down in Bloomington, read your Alumni
Magazine thoroughly for the past eight or ten months--I'll summarize by saying
that one of the nation's finest faculties and about 25,000 of the State's and
the world's finest young people are daily going about the plain hard work of
higher education in the most challenging era of knowledge.
.
.
...............
I want to report briefly now on the budget,
If you read our statements
during the General Assembly, you know that the universities were disappointed
in
the amount of the appropriation and particularly in
the method used to
determine the needs of the various segments of higher education in Indiana.
Many agencies of State Government had great and urgent needs,
and conscientious
legislators tried very hard to make an equitable distribution among the
agencies.
Higher education as a whole received the largest dollar increase
in history, by far--yet, it also received the largest dollar cut in its
request in history.
This paradox comes about because needs are growing so
rapidly, and previous cuts have never been made up.
But even worse, were
some of the gross inequities in the distribution of the appropriation.
for I.U., it
As
will live with its appropriation plus some fee increase in
Bloomington, although faculty and staff increases in numbers and in salaries
will have to be less than we believed necessary to maintain our competitive
position; important improvements in many programs will have to be deferred;
and construction and rehabilitation of space must be limited to a few items
of very highest priority.
However, to my shock and dismay, the regional
campuses and the Medical Center, for which I thought we had presented
extremely persuasive cases, were harder hit than Bloomington, in relation to
need.
This was not deliberate.
I think the Legislature was handed a screwy
budget to start with and they never could get it
not all is gloomy.
all straightened out.
But
For instance, one forward-looking appropriation will
permit a start on a statewide telecommunications
network with which it
is
planned to link the principal Campuses of the state, and another gives us the
green light to implement the Indiana Plan for Statewide Medical Education.
There are other bright spots and some question marks, but I must hurry along.
In my remaining time I shall touch a few of the highlights of the
-5-
University scene.
The three newest administrative leaders Dean William
Harvey of the School of Law, Dean David Clark of the School of Education,
and Dean Joseph Taylor of the Indianapolis Regional Campus have been giving
the strong and progressive leadership to their programs that we hoped from
them,
The new dean of our Graduate School of Social Service, Dr. Richard
I
Lawrence, comes to us from Washington University of St. Louis in July.
anticipate only two more major appointments this year:
replacements for
Dean Ben Small at the Indianapolis Division of the School of Law and for
Dean Margaret Rufsvold of the Graduate School of Library Science,
had committees searching for these replacements--in
We have
fact, the Library Science
Dean will be announced very soon--and meanwhile acting Deans Cleon Foust and
Haynes McMullen are filling in most competently.
We are still
in
a period of intense competition for faculty.
Not
dozens but hundreds of offers have come in to our faculty, running as much
as $8,000 a year above their present salaries, and a tightly limited salary
budget makes it
difficult for department chairmen to meet these offers with-
out penalizing other members of their departments,
Nevertheless, we have
been very fortunate so far in retaining most of our key people and keeping
our faculty situation reasonably stable, and we have done some very effective
recruiting of our own,
In recent months we have been saddened by the deaths of four of our
most respected emeritus colleagues, whom some of you may have known.
Dorothee Manski, Will T. Hale,
Hugh E. Willis and, just last week,
Madame
Nobel
Laureate Hermann J. Muller, for whom this coming Sunday there will be a
memorial service in Whittenberger Auditorium,
If you haven't visited your Alma Mater recently (Place Mat) you may be
unaware that the magnificent new library at Tenth and Jordan is taking
-644
shape; the Optometry Building on Atwater Street is
under roof; and the
foundations and footings for the new graduate residence center, Carl
Eigenaann Hall, at Tenth and Union have been laid,
In Indianapolis Phase I
of the great new teaching hospital is progressing steadily.
We expect soon to get started on some other major structures on at
least five of I.U.'s campuses, but space will continue to be a major and
harassing and crippling problem throughout the University for the foreseeable
future,
Our creative and performing arts programs have been generating a gratifying amount of interest,
For example,
the British Broadcasting Company
sent a team to the campus to prepare a documentary film about our School of
Music; and the Art Department was awarded a $300,000 Carnegie grant for its
graduate program,
Professor Michael Wolff and Mr. David Brower have undertaken an
ambitious program this semester to interest and inform our University community and citizens throughout the state concerning urban problems,
the City, as it
is
called, has been a highly successful
Focus;
experiment in con-
centrating the talents and resources of the University on problems increas.
ingly vital to our nation.
Some of you may have been queried about another concern that is
manding the attention of the campus:
residential college system.
com-
the possibility of inaugurating a
The Faculty Council committee investigating
the feasibility and desirability of such a system for I.U. has solicited
opinion from student groups, the faculty, alumni and others,
of residential colleges
While the idea
may be attractive, there are many, complicated facets
to implementing the idea, and we will be watching how these are worked out
in the pilot program at Foster Quadrangle next year,
-7-
You may be interested to learn that, as a by-product of the investigation into residential colleges, student counseling came in for some general
criticism which has resulted in an imaginative, new approach:
students to counsel their fellow students.
The first
using honor
meeting of these honor-
student volunteers is taking place at the present moment--and may I say
that, if you really need reassurance about what is going on on the main
campus, such a project as this should give you quite a bit.
The exciting research which is being conducted in laboratories and
studies throughout the University would take many evenings to detail.
dramatic examples may serve for all the rest:
Two
Dr. Harris Shumacker's experi-
mental work toward total replacement of the human heart, and Dr. Leslie
Freeman's experimentation with regenerating nerve connections in severed
spines.
I might mention too that the recent grant establishing a statewide
Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke program centered around our School of
Medicine will give substantial impetus both to vital medical research and to
the broad dissemination of new medical information,
In a different area of service to society, faculty members are participating in
a wide variety of projects directed toward making opportunity
realistically available to the handicapped and disadvantaged.
Our alliance
with the Alabama Negro institution, Stillman College, has moved into a new
stage of on-the-scene experimentation with strengthening the informational
background of Negro students.
The School of Education is
conducting a
training program for 120 professional staff members for Project Head Start
programs.
Recently the U.S. Office awarded a $149,000 grant to a School of
Education team to train teachers and leadership personnel for work with
handicapped children,
which includes I.U.,
The Ford Foundation is
supporting a consortium,
to upgrade the training of Negro business students in
It
Y
n
order that they may take graduate work in Business Adminstration,
These
qnd many other projects point the way toward making more useful, productive citizens of a large segment of our nation.
One last--but to some of you not least-report:
is gaining ground steadily,
our athletic program
Lou Watson's Hurryin' Hoosiers this year joined
the swimmers and divers of Doc Counsilman and Hobie Billingsley in the Big
Ten championship ranks, as I'm sure you know,
success in recruitment.
John Pont has had remarkable
At the last report he was still batting close to
1.000 in the return of football tenders,
I truly believe we're on the way
at last and the ones who will enjoy the good times the most are those who
are the most faithful in
the bad times,
This includes many of you,
I
know,
What I have been able to report to you this evening is the merest
fraction of the fruitful, thriving activity in your University.
I hope
that I have piqued your curiosity into learning more and more about what
is going on at I.U.
Truly, you can't ever learn enough--though I'm sure
you've learned enough for one sitting.
Thank you for giving me this opportunity,
ourselves immensely.
Dorothy and I have enjoyed
Come on down to see us sometime soon,