The Gee Years, 1990–1997

The Gee Years, 1990–1997 The Gee Years, 1990–1997 MALCOLM S. BAROWAY The Ohio State University Press Columbus Copyright © 2002 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Text design by Sans Serif Inc. Type set in Minion by Sans Serif Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992. This book is dedicated to Dr. Israel Baroway (1899–1975), my father, Professor of English at Queens College in the City of New York, a member of the origi- nal faculty at its opening in 1939; a scholar of John Milton and the Bible as Lit- erature, teaching 15 hours a week until his retirement in 1965. Contents Foreword ix 21 More on Diversity 176 Prologue xi 22 Constance 187 23 Five-Year Evaluations 194 1 The Search 1 24 Short Subjects 199 2 Vernal, Utah 8 25 The Dave and Andy Show 212 3 A Lesson in Interviewing 14 26 California 229 4 The Consultants’ Review 19 27 The NRC 235 5 Cleaning Up the University 28 Health Care 241 Area 28 29 Research and Research Parks 252 6 The Hutchinson Years 37 30 The High Street Legacy 266 7 War and the Home Front 57 31 Public Records 271 8 Elizabeth 62 32 Trustee Retreat 1996 276 9 Rebekah’s Fish Bowl 69 33 More Short Subjects 283 10 Flagship Revisited 74 34 The Philanthropists 301 11 Gee and the Governor 82 35 Crises and Condolences 314 12 The Huber Years 90 36 Gordon for Governor 318 13 Diversity and Divisiveness 106 37 Les Wexner 325 14 Sisson Begins 118 38 Brown 331 15 Firestone 124 39 Over and Out 340 16 Managing the Future 131 17 “Affirm Thy Friendship” 140 Appendix 351 18 Athletics as Pressure Cooker 146 Chronologies 358 19 More Gee and the Governor 162 About the Author 395 20 The Great Communicator 166 Index 397 Foreword Until the lions have historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter. —An African proverb Unlike others who have written the histories of Ohio State presidencies, I worked for the president. I was Ohio State’s chief public relations officer, my title, executive director of University Communications. Gordon Gee believed his communications person should know what’s going on. Not all presidents do. This gave me a singular base from which to begin this book, and a cast of characters to approach. My sincere thanks go to the many people quoted or referenced in The Gee Years who gave me their time, their memories, and their opinions. As a boss, Gordon Gee was demanding—but no more so than he was of himself. He laid out the ground rules the first time we met. I had, he told me, six months to prove myself. I must have succeeded, for I was still here when he left. As a boss, when not dealing with tragedy, he was also always light of heart and made working hard on his behalf a privilege as often as a job. As a leader, with a new order of Ohio State trustee, he shared a vision for his university. To help close the gap between reach and grasp is an adventure. This was such a time at Ohio State. This is the twelfth volume of history of The Ohio State University and, perhaps, the last to benefit from the printed archival document. Gordon Gee and his staff kept virtually and, perhaps, literally every document that entered or left the President’s Office. Thanks to Raimund Goerler, University Archivist, and Bertha Ihnat, his associate, I had the opportunity to review them all. But toward the end, came e-mail. Who knows what hard copy the future will bring? To Barbie Tootle, Gordon Gee’s special assistant, now retired, I owe a huge debt of gratitude for the day-by-day, often hour-by-hour file she maintained of agendas, briefings, and reports. To George Paulson, thank you for writing The Ohio State University College of Medicine, used liberally in the health care ix F OREWORD sections. To Mary Fisher and, later, Michelle Compston in President Kirwan’s Office, this book could not have been done without their assistance. Nor could it have been completed without the good work of Maureen Sharkey and Lucy Gandert in the Office of the Board of Trustees. My thanks to my review readers, official and otherwise, particularly Sey- mour Raiz, Joan Huber, Dick Sisson, Steve Snapp, Manuel Tzagournis, Jerry May, Herb Asher, Dick Stoddard, Barbie Tootle, Thomas Sawyer, “Chip” Elam, and John Rothney. Professor Rothney, who teaches historians how to write history, gave me a copy of Edward Hallett Carr’s What Is History? which begins with this quote: “I often thought it odd that [history] should be dull, for a great deal of it must be invention.”To my knowledge, nothing here is invention and little, I hope, is dull. Finally, my appreciation to Brit Kirwan and Ginny Trethewey for the opportunity to find a few lions, glorify the hunters, and write this book; to the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars for teaching me that fine writing sings; and to Dee, my wife and number one fan. Malcolm S. Baroway x Prologue When Ohio State President Edward H. Jennings called his staff into his office on December 1, 1989 to tell them he would be resigning, most were flabber- gasted. The man had survived two media disasters that would have destroyed a weaker leader. The first had been the firing in November 1987 of “Old 9 and 3,” Earle Bruce, Ohio State’s embattled, and sometimes underappreciated, football coach who had proceeded to circle the wagons, inspire his underdog team to victory over the hated Michigan Wolverines, sue both Ohio State and Jennings for $7.4 million, and emerge a hero to any David who had ever dreamed of settling with Goliath behind closed doors. The second had been a European vacation trip, scheduled innocently enough when both he and the woman who soon would become his wife thought their individual divorces would be safely behind them. Only his was not. Jennings’s di- vorce proceeding had been extended, the trip was not canceled, and, in a less so- phisticated time than now, the story fed the jackals for days. In both cases, a wellspring of goodwill from the faculty and his friends had risen to serve Jennings well. His presidency, to many, had been inspirational, building an institutional pride that had not been there and opening the way for selective admissions and an undergraduate student body that since has been better credentialed every year. Moreover, his rugged persona had culti- vated a sense of security. A baseball catcher in high school, he still looked as if he could block the plate to transgressors figurative and literal, and homer with the bases loaded whenever needed. In the words of the Faculty Council of the University Senate, which had come to Jennings’s aid after the Earle Bruce firing, he had done “a superb job . in fur- thering and promoting the educational, research, and service missions of Ohio State.” He also had raised some $460 million in private money in one of the largest fund-raising campaigns in the history of higher education; had weath- ered both aforementioned media storms; and, it seemed, continued to draw sus- tenance from administrative responsibility and the thrill of decision making. That was why it was such a great surprise to many people who knew him xi P ROLOGUE when Ed Jennings told his staff he would be returning to the full-time faculty, and that the press conference to announce it would be later that day. Jennings would stay on as president until August 31, presiding a day earlier at summer commencement as his final public duty. On September 1, 1990, the E. Gordon Gee administration would begin. xii 1 The Search If Ed Jennings personified the image of a leader, Gordon Gee not only did not; he made a shtick out of it. “When I get up in the morning,” he would say, “I look in the mirror and I’m so disappointed.” Then came the kicker. “And so is my wife.” And the audience, every audience, loved it. If Ed Jennings shunned the press after his Goliath and Travelgate episodes, Gordon Gee courted it. He had a remarkable ability to know what the press wanted and provide it. “All he had to do,” Denver Post editor Gil Spencer wrote the day Gee made his Ohio State announcement, “is get out of bed ...and media would follow him around like a puppy dog.” In Columbus, as it turned out, Gordon did not even have to prop up his pillow. E. Gordon Gee became the eleventh president of The Ohio State University through a closely held search process. One week after the Jennings announcement, the operation already was under way. It ended on June 26, 1990, at a special meeting of the Board of Trustees in which this forty-six-year-old lawyer with a doctorate in higher education, who had been president of two other universities, and who had spent one year clerking at the U.S. Supreme Court during Watergate and three years as a Mormon missionary in Europe, accepted the appointment. A few minutes earlier, an Ohio State King Air plane with the Gee family aboard—Gordon, his wife, Elizabeth, and his daughter, Rebekah—had been met at the university’s Don Scott Field, where, right off the bat, the new Ohio State president demonstrated an impressive talent.

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