Henrietta Hay's Column

Help Wanted: University President. Requires Doctor's Degree in something, preferably low level politics, with the infighting skills of Machiavelli. Ability to walk on water helpful. Must be able to handle the power-hungry, cost cutting State Lege, inept micromanagement by the Board of Regents and the deeply entrenched old boy network on campus. Good salary and housing provided. Job security low. Flac vest optional.

The recent shoot-out at the University of Colorado is a disgrace to nearly everyone concerned. Rather than a win-win solution for conflict, this one ended up as a lose-lose. It has been my impression that academic politics make the U. S. Senate look like a kindergarten, and this episode has not changed that impression.

I have written this column on paper about three times and in my head at least a dozen. The characters and the action change from day to day, from hour to hour. The only thing I started with that I expect to finish with is a quote from the Sentinel, "Albino should hang tough."

C. U. presidents, in recent years, tend to come and go fairly rapidly. Judith Albino is the 17th President. George Norlin, who was there in my days on campus, was the 5th and he served for 20 peaceful years. He was perhaps the last one with job security. I used to stroll across the campus with him occasionally when we both happened to be going in the same direction. He was a classical scholar, highly respected by everyone.

The turbulent sixties and early seventies with Vietnam and sex, drugs and rock'n'roll and ferment changed the picture forever. Scholarship no longer was required of college presidents.

They had to be financial wizards, expert managers, experienced politicians, labor relations experts and upon occasion, bullies. Most of the presidents since that time have had rocky tenures and many have left under less than happy circumstances.

Judith Albino started with several major handicaps. She was chosen under a questionable selection process and won out over Law School Dean, Gene Nichols, Leader of the Faithful Opposition. She succeeded Gordon Gee, a masterful public relations man whose chief contribution, so far as I could see, was giving Bill McCartney a 15-year coaching contract at an astronomical salary. And she took the job in a time of statewide fiscal problems and belt-tightening.

The letter demanding her resignation was signed by 78 overwhelmingly white, male, liberal Boulder deans and professors out of a faculty of over 1000. In contrast, her most vocal support came from business leaders across the state, faculty and administrators from outside Boulder, minorities and women. According to the Denver Post, "...the final confrontation wasn't Albino against the faculty...it was just the same old Boulder establishment against everybody else."

But it's more than that. It is a three-way power struggle between the Legislature, the Regents and the Boulder establishment. The Regents and the Legislators are elected, the Deans have lifetime tenure. They all want to run the University. The President is a sitting duck serving strictly at the pleasure of the Regents and open to attacks from all sides. I have no doubt that sexism and racism played some part in this power struggle, but they were not major factors. It wouldn't matter whether the President were male, female or Martian, white, black or green, he/she/it would still be in the eye of the storm with very little protection. But it is not the President who ultimately will suffer the most. It is the state of Colorado.

In a vicious, public fight like this one nobody wins. But the University is too important to the state which it serves and to those of us who remember it with great affection, to allow it to be torn apart.

Wanted: University President. Requires ability to make the Lege, the Regents and the Deans happy all at the same time. Applicants from all planets accepted.

Tough it out, Judith.