Dear Jimmy...

Question: What do you feel is the biggest folly of previous administrations?There are a few cardinal rules pertaining to the presidency to which most of us religiously adhere. Once one leaves a presidency, one never goes back unless invited, and one never, ever, interferes in any way, large or small. When one assumes a presidency, one never comments in any public forum about the decisions made by any of one's predecessors. And finally, one never does anything, in public or private, that could not be printed on the front page of the local newspaper.

In a chapter I have been asked to contribute to a book coming out later this year on the academic presidency, I wrote that omniscience does not summarily come when one takes office as the president of a college or university. The best way I know to avoid making more mistakes than positive decisions is to surround myself with individuals who are smarter than I am, to seek their counsel and advice, and to discuss every critical decision with my closest advisors. In the chapter referred to earlier, I call these counselors "the rabbis" for obvious reasons. Even with the best of advice from one's "rabbis," presidents, not being summarily omniscient, do from time to time make mistakes that one's successors might rue. With the appointments that have been made and that continue to be made at Trinity, we are trying to assemble the A-Team of "rabbis" to help fashion the institution's future progress.

Here at Trinity, one could point to the Life Sciences building as proof that not all decisions are borne out through the tests of time. The aesthetic beauty of the campus is apparent to all who ever set foot here. The Long Walk, the Chapel, MCEC, the Raether Library, etc. are all stunning examples of American academic architecture. How the Life Sciences building "fits" into an aesthetically sound master plan continues to escape me. On my visits to my faculty colleagues' offices in Life Sciences, I find that the building functions pedagogically rather well: the laboratories are (mostly) sufficiently equipped and organized, the seminar rooms appropriate, etc. But the building does certainly have structural issues in the mechanical organization of the heating and cooling systems, located in the least desirable places interiorly that all but defy attempts to rectify the situation. But Trinity is not alone in this regard. Nearly every college or university I know of has some remnants of that unfortunate period that began sometime around 1963 or so and that lasted until approximately 1978. (This is the same era that brought us the unsightly Pennsylvania Station in New York City that replaced the McKim, Mead, and White masterpiece, the PanAm building, and assorted other aesthetic depravities on the architectural landscape.) Our Life Sciences building looks to me as if it were some kind of stark medieval fortress, with minions ready to pour boiling oil on the enemy as the attack begins. At Washington University in Saint Louis, where we spent 16 wonderful years, a similar example was to be found in the Law School. Amidst the beautiful gothic buildings stood this angular blob of concrete: all for some reason painted a ghastly blue, and, yes, built during the same unfortunate time. It too won some sort of award. (One does wonder where the judges were trained.) And when it was torn down a short while ago, less than 40 years after it was built at a cost of millions of dollars, faculty and staff all but cheered. Mistakes are made at schools, despite our best intentions to do the right things when sitting in the president's chair.

I have told our three children for years to stay abreast of institutional histories of the schools where we have served. Reading how the future will judge their father's actions and words should be of more than casual interest to them, a point that does indeed make me pause on a daily, if not hourly, basis.