Title
Darrell Peck interview (Buena Vista College professor), conducted by Sue Brinkman
Subject
Buena Vista College -- Oral histories
Oral histories -- Iowa -- Storm Lake
College teachers -- Iowa -- Storm Lake
Ingeborg Stolee Lecture
Peck, Darrell J.
Description
Darrell Peck was born in Oakland, Iowa on December 11, 1931, and received his college education at Hastings College, Hastings, Nebraska. Peck taught English from 1961-1965, when he left to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska. He returned to BV in 1967, where his teaching career at BV totaled 35 years. He died May 26, 2018 in Storm Lake, Iowa.
Peck taught during the 1960s, and during that era, BV recruited students from Chicago and the East Coast, and that, in addition to student protests against Vietnam, lent the campus an interesting flavor. In contrast, he notes the different atmosphere in the 1980s. He concludes the interview, discussing a particularly vexing administrator. Listeners will note that the interview ends abruptly.
Notes:
Scroll down to see the transcript. Numbers that appear in brackets show the timestamp of the conversation. To access the audio recording, click the arrow under the photograph to start.
To the best of the transcriptionist’s ability, this is a faithful rendition of the conversation. If inaccuracies are detected, please contact the BVU Archives by emailing archives@bvu.edu.
Peck taught during the 1960s, and during that era, BV recruited students from Chicago and the East Coast, and that, in addition to student protests against Vietnam, lent the campus an interesting flavor. In contrast, he notes the different atmosphere in the 1980s. He concludes the interview, discussing a particularly vexing administrator. Listeners will note that the interview ends abruptly.
Notes:
Scroll down to see the transcript. Numbers that appear in brackets show the timestamp of the conversation. To access the audio recording, click the arrow under the photograph to start.
To the best of the transcriptionist’s ability, this is a faithful rendition of the conversation. If inaccuracies are detected, please contact the BVU Archives by emailing archives@bvu.edu.
Publisher
Buena Vista University
Date
June 6, 1985
Format
audio/mpeg
Language
English
Type
Sound
Identifier
http://bvuarchives.bvu.edu/Audio/OralHistories/DarrellPeck.mp3
Interviewer
Sue Brinkman
Interviewee
Darrell Peck
Transcription
Peck Darrell 1985.mp3
SB = SB:
DP = DP:
SB: [00:00:00] This is an interview conducted on June 6, 1985 by SB: with DP: , professor of English at Buena Vista College. [Recorder turns off, then restarts.] When did you first come to Buena Vista?
DP: [00:00:11] [unintelligible]
SB: [00:00:13] Yeah, I did.
DP: [00:00:13] The summer of 1961, and I was here for four years and left in the summer of 1965 after summer school and went to the University of Nebraska to work on my PhD. And also I was on the staff during a two-year period. Came back in 1967 and have been here ever since.
SB: [00:00:36] What was student life like in the '60s when you first came here?
DP: [00:00:40] Well, when I first came, it was very quiet. There were only about 420 students on campus. Only five buildings. The Dixon-Eilers, though without the chapel, the center section of Swope, the north end of White, the old library which was Fracker Library, Smith, and Edson Hall. Those were the only buildings on campus.
SB: [00:01:12] Was there any activism on campus by the students, protesting the war or-- ?
DP: [00:01:16] Not-- not in their early years. I think, in fact, it started probably when I-- after I left in '65. Oh, there was some discussion of it among students and talk about it but-- it-- the activism really didn't start until probably 1965, in the fall of '65.
SB: [00:01:39] Do you see any activism in the students now?
DP: [00:01:43] Not to the same degree, partly because of the makeup of the population of students. At the time-- Well, the East Coast states did not have enough campuses to absorb all of the students who wanted to go to school. So we started recruiting on the East Coast and in the Chicago area and during from about 19-- Well, I guess it started in 1964, up through the early '70s. We had anywhere from three hundred to 450 students from the Illinois--Chicago--East Coast area. New Jersey, New York, some from Pennsylvania and some from the New England states.
SB: [00:02:30] Do you think they added a certain flavor to the school?
DP: [00:02:32] Oh, they definitely added [laughs] flavor to this school. It was good for everybody concerned because our own students from this area of the state had preconceived ideas about what the urban students were like, and the urban students came out here with all kinds of misconceptions about the whole area, the people, everything else. In fact, I think some of them came out here expecting you had to fight Indians to get to the campus. in fact, some of them said that. [both laugh].
SB: [00:03:07] Have students changed-- What are they interested in today?
DP: [00:03:13] Right now, I think they're interested in getting a job. The occupation emphasis which starts in-- I guess, elementary grades now, has had a definite bearing on their attitude about what they're supposed to be doing when they come to college. Which in my estimation is rather a mundane approach to things.
SB: [00:03:37] Have you noticed a change in your role as advisor-- over the years?
DP: [00:03:45] Well, to some extent a lot of it now entails a great deal of occupational advising-- means by which they can go about finding a job, what kinds of jobs that are available to them, those kinds of things. In fact, I do a great deal of work on resumes with students and letters of applications and things of that kind, I guess, because they think I can edit their work-- and since I teach English writing. And I have many of them in Comp 200, where we do some of that work. And so they just come back, and so I do a lot of that.
SB: [00:04:25] Does anyone stand out in your memory, a student or faculty member as outstanding or particularly memorable?
DP: [00:04:34] Lots of 'em. [slight laugh]
DP: [00:04:37] [unintelligible] [both laugh]
SB: [00:04:42] Well, I don't know.
DP: [00:04:43] Well, there was a group of students from the East Coast--about seven of them--who when they were here, were probably the biggest renegades this campus had ever experienced, and four of them, all got kicked out of school at the end of the first semester of their junior year, because they were caught helping the girls on the third floor of Swope pull a case of beer up by a rope to the third floor. Well-- I thought it was interesting because they-- They were average to better-than-average students. And they were-- they took the attitude that, all right, they could kick us out of school, but they [BV] gave them the right to come back after one semester, and they all came to my office before they left, and they said, "You watch. We'll come back to this place, and I'm going to graduate from it," and they all did, and they're all doing very well.
SB: [00:05:40] [laughs] That's funny. As an English professor you've read some good writings, I assume. Is there anybody that-- you've had as a student that you could think would make it as a professional writer?
DP: [00:05:56] Well, I don't know any that have-- in the area of fiction. I think-- I would have to say that one that probably has worked hardest at it and probably has the best chance if she continues to work at it is Anne Harrington, who just graduated. She has the spark. She has the drive. She has the creativity, the intelligence, her perceptions of things, I think, will put her in good stead to become a writer. Another one that we have in school now who is doing a lot of writing is Rhenea-- Rhenea Sabel, who has written several short stories and is now plotting out a book. And she too because of her drive and her self-discipline might make it.
SB: [00:06:52] Why did you decide to be field marshal for so many years--[correcting herself]--faculty marshal?
DP: [00:06:57] I didn't decide to be faculty [laughs] marshal. It was a job that was given to me by the administration, and I haven't been able to get rid of it. [both laugh]
SB: [00:07:07] [laughs] Can't pass on that-- that cross.
DP: [00:07:10] This is my 11th year. And I tried to get somebody else-- them to get somebody else to do it. They haven't succeeded.
SB: [00:07:20] Has tradition fallen off at BV? Or have new traditions begun?
DP: [00:07:26] Well, I think our whole approach to commencement and baccalaureate has developed more tradition than we've ever had in that area. Certainly we've had graduations in the past. We used to have four a year. We'd have one in the spring, had one at the end of summer, had one at the end of the first semester-- no three. And so, we had three a year-- three formal commencements. And now we put it all into one big fling, and the traditions surrounding the baccalaureate service, for instance, the high church Presbyterian-- Scottish Presbyterian high church ceremony-- is very traditional, which we've never-- we even used to have at all.
SB: [00:08:10] Have you noted any changes in athletics as your role as faculty representative to the Iowa Conference?
DP: [00:08:18] Many changes. We-- at the time I became faculty representative 20 years ago, or for a total of 20 years-- They-- We belonged to the NAIA national, collegiate organization. At that time we were allowed to give athletic scholarships, and so we had, I think, it was a total of 30 full-tuition scholarships to give, only to men athletes, and all sports that we had, because we didn't have a women's program as such, when I became faculty rep. And then we went to the NCAA which-- Division 3--which does not allow academic scholarships or any other kind of-- [correcting himself] they allow academic, not athletic, scholarships and the money that they get comes from their need package from the government forms and that's all they can get. And if they get more, why then, we get in trouble.
SB: [00:09:23] In that-- back to academics-- How did the Stolee Lecture originate?
DP: [00:09:29] Well, Miss Stolee started that herself as a Sigma Tau Delta lecture, which was an English fraternity that was on campus and. She originated the thing, because she felt that it would be a good public kind of presentation that the fraternities sponsor. But it started out by faculty members giving the lecture in the first ten years of the-- that lecture series. They were always faculty members who gave a lecture in their area of expertise or an area of interest that they researched. Well, at that point we-- Dr. Adkins and I, decided that maybe we were infringing too much upon the faculty, and then we started going outside and bringing a variety of different kinds of speakers and performers. Women who represented the women's movement, blacks who represented black writers, foreign writers, and [unintelligible] from Algeria. And I can't think-- a couple of other African countries. And so it's just expanded over the years. And I might add the attendance has expanded as well.
SB: [00:10:40] That's surprising. [laughs] [Recorder stops and restarts with Peck speaking]
DP: [00:10:45] Through a cycle of years and, of course, you know all this because you've been here, too. But the college has changed. And I might make a-- boy-- I'll just talk. I thought about it, so I think I know-- is it on? Oh. I was the first professor hired by Wendell Halverson after he became president of the college. It was kind of an interesting situation, because I was singing in a-- in a choir in Estherville Presbyterian Church, and he was the guest speaker. And when I was leaving the church after everyone else was gone because I had to go back and take my robe off and everything, why the minister introduced me to him and told him what I did, and Wendell asked me if I would be interested in teaching in college. Well, of course, it was the thing I was aiming for anyway. And at that point he asked me to come down for an interview-- he set the time, the date and everything and I came down and before I left a week later, I had a job at Buena Vista College-- Well, I think in a way, Wendell was kind of proud of that because I guess I've been here a long time, was with him all the time that he was here. When I came, as I pointed out before, the college was a very small and very provincial institution. There were some very good, dedicated people on the faculty-- Dr. Sampson, Dr. Hirsch, people who I became very fond of and were very helpful to me in getting me started in my professional career in college teaching.
DP: [00:12:21] The college in the years that I have been here has changed-- I consider thr-- Completely three different times. From the time that I arrived on a very small college, with very few facilities. And then the expansion of the first time-- the Halverson years of the growth of the facilities-- buildings and all of that during that process, and then at the same time, the change in the student body. Because of the influx of the Eastern students and the uproars, at times, that was going on on campus because of that. But it was also the Vietnam War years. And that's really one of the reasons those students were on campus was to avoid getting drafted. Well, consequently some of them weren't too serious about what they were doing. And I might add they came from families that had the money to pay the tuition and to keep them out of the army. And that's exactly what they were doing. And so they were they were very chaotic years, but in some ways they were also a lot of fun, because [laughs] you never got bored when they were on campus. And then conversely, there were some of those students that were excellent students. And their perspective of the world was much different than the students from northwest Iowa, which added a very rich mixture to the classroom. And that-- those were, in many respects when I came back to Buena Vista in '67 because I'd been on a huge university campus for two years and the-- well, the demonstrations were brutal. I mean, they were violent. And I happened-- Because during that time the leader of the Students for a Democratic Society was an English major, and he was one of my student teachers that I was supervising. So I was often right in the thick of it because of that association. Well-- you know, since coming back to Buena Vista, it was a different experience, but in-- Because of the difference in sizes, it was still. here, too. But in-- different--because of size, a different tenor(?) of it, I guess.
DP: [00:14:35] Then, when President Halverson left-- And, well, first Fred Brown came as academic dean, and the changes started, I think, again, and academic changes, the program changes-- all those things with his coming one year and Keith [Briscoe, the new president] coming the next. And then what I feel changed drastically was the quality of the faculty, and to a large extent the quality of the students who-- was better. And more things begin to happen from a professional point of view that was very satisfying for me. And then, now of course, we've just been through the third phase. And that is the new building and more facilities. And all of that, which, I think, has created a different attitude in some of the students as well. And so it's been an interesting 22-year tenure because of the growth of the institution, the different perspectives of what we can do in program academics, and, I think, in other things as well.
SB: [00:15:47] Does this make the students more loyal to BV than they were before, you think?
DP: [00:15:52] I'm not sure I'm going to have to wait to answer that question for time. Because some of those students who were here in the late 60s and 70s are very loyal to the institution.
SB: [00:16:09] [unintelligible] [ laughs]
DP: [00:16:09] I think they're coming to that. Because those people now are getting financially secure enough that I think that they will be able to contribute financially to the institution. And some of them in the-- Career Day are loyal to the institution simply because they want to come back and take part in it. And you know with 40-some in the last three years, each year, they've covered quite a few people. And there are some who haven't been able to come who really want to come. So I-- there is a loyalty on the part of many of the alums to the college. [Recorder stops, restarts]
SB: [00:16:53] Who's the most controversial figure you've encountered in your BV days?
DP: [00:17:01] John Williams, who was the academic dean of the institution for seven years. In fact, he was the man who rehired me in 1967, when I came back to Buena Vista College. John had some good points about him. He was a hard worker. He was a very disciplined individual. He was very organized, sometimes too organized. He was a disciplinarian. Not necessarily of the students, but of the faculty. We were constantly being checked up on whether or not we were in class, and if we had a night class, if we were there, and if we met the full time that we were supposed to meet. He-- Perhaps his major problem was a lack of understanding of human nature, and then a means by which to deal with that human nature. And he would say things that I don't think he meant to be slams or a negative statement, but they came out that way simply because I don't think he realized what he was doing. It was a very chaotic seven years. Because some people looked at it as though we were working under a Gestapo state. And others of them, I guess, got along with him by bending and doing whatever they had to do to get along with him. There were a lot of confrontations until, I guess, he finally realized that he had to leave when the faculty, almost "in toto", were ready to walk out.
DP: [00:19:12] It was a-- I won't give you any examples of some of the things that he did but-- well, maybe I will. One that always has stood out in my mind was I gave the Stolee Lecture one year, and I did it on Bernard Malamud, who at that time, was an up-and-coming young, contemporary, American writer. And I had done a tremendous amount of research. And I-- I thought I had done a very good job giving the lecture. When I got done, I asked if there were any questions, and John Williams raised his hand, and I said, "Yes, Dr. Williams," and he said,"Did you do all that research yourself or did you hire somebody to do it?" [both laugh] Well, what do you say? I had just given an hour-and-a-half lecture that I had worked very hard to put together, and some of the old-- older [laughs throughout the sentence] faculty were-- in the audience-- were absolutely aghast. And Les Williams, who was in the philosophy department, and later was the acting president after Dr. Halverson left, was so shocked. [laughs] He tried to-- He knew that I didn't know how to respond to it, and he tried to cover it up, and it just got worse. [laughs] But that stands out in my mind. And of course, too, the other thing is his poking his face in the little square windows of the classrooms at night when you're teaching your night class. I'll never forget it, because you never knew when it was going to happen. And those are kind of funny things, but they're also, I think, an indication of the chaos that reigned around here.
SB = SB:
DP = DP:
SB: [00:00:00] This is an interview conducted on June 6, 1985 by SB: with DP: , professor of English at Buena Vista College. [Recorder turns off, then restarts.] When did you first come to Buena Vista?
DP: [00:00:11] [unintelligible]
SB: [00:00:13] Yeah, I did.
DP: [00:00:13] The summer of 1961, and I was here for four years and left in the summer of 1965 after summer school and went to the University of Nebraska to work on my PhD. And also I was on the staff during a two-year period. Came back in 1967 and have been here ever since.
SB: [00:00:36] What was student life like in the '60s when you first came here?
DP: [00:00:40] Well, when I first came, it was very quiet. There were only about 420 students on campus. Only five buildings. The Dixon-Eilers, though without the chapel, the center section of Swope, the north end of White, the old library which was Fracker Library, Smith, and Edson Hall. Those were the only buildings on campus.
SB: [00:01:12] Was there any activism on campus by the students, protesting the war or-- ?
DP: [00:01:16] Not-- not in their early years. I think, in fact, it started probably when I-- after I left in '65. Oh, there was some discussion of it among students and talk about it but-- it-- the activism really didn't start until probably 1965, in the fall of '65.
SB: [00:01:39] Do you see any activism in the students now?
DP: [00:01:43] Not to the same degree, partly because of the makeup of the population of students. At the time-- Well, the East Coast states did not have enough campuses to absorb all of the students who wanted to go to school. So we started recruiting on the East Coast and in the Chicago area and during from about 19-- Well, I guess it started in 1964, up through the early '70s. We had anywhere from three hundred to 450 students from the Illinois--Chicago--East Coast area. New Jersey, New York, some from Pennsylvania and some from the New England states.
SB: [00:02:30] Do you think they added a certain flavor to the school?
DP: [00:02:32] Oh, they definitely added [laughs] flavor to this school. It was good for everybody concerned because our own students from this area of the state had preconceived ideas about what the urban students were like, and the urban students came out here with all kinds of misconceptions about the whole area, the people, everything else. In fact, I think some of them came out here expecting you had to fight Indians to get to the campus. in fact, some of them said that. [both laugh].
SB: [00:03:07] Have students changed-- What are they interested in today?
DP: [00:03:13] Right now, I think they're interested in getting a job. The occupation emphasis which starts in-- I guess, elementary grades now, has had a definite bearing on their attitude about what they're supposed to be doing when they come to college. Which in my estimation is rather a mundane approach to things.
SB: [00:03:37] Have you noticed a change in your role as advisor-- over the years?
DP: [00:03:45] Well, to some extent a lot of it now entails a great deal of occupational advising-- means by which they can go about finding a job, what kinds of jobs that are available to them, those kinds of things. In fact, I do a great deal of work on resumes with students and letters of applications and things of that kind, I guess, because they think I can edit their work-- and since I teach English writing. And I have many of them in Comp 200, where we do some of that work. And so they just come back, and so I do a lot of that.
SB: [00:04:25] Does anyone stand out in your memory, a student or faculty member as outstanding or particularly memorable?
DP: [00:04:34] Lots of 'em. [slight laugh]
DP: [00:04:37] [unintelligible] [both laugh]
SB: [00:04:42] Well, I don't know.
DP: [00:04:43] Well, there was a group of students from the East Coast--about seven of them--who when they were here, were probably the biggest renegades this campus had ever experienced, and four of them, all got kicked out of school at the end of the first semester of their junior year, because they were caught helping the girls on the third floor of Swope pull a case of beer up by a rope to the third floor. Well-- I thought it was interesting because they-- They were average to better-than-average students. And they were-- they took the attitude that, all right, they could kick us out of school, but they [BV] gave them the right to come back after one semester, and they all came to my office before they left, and they said, "You watch. We'll come back to this place, and I'm going to graduate from it," and they all did, and they're all doing very well.
SB: [00:05:40] [laughs] That's funny. As an English professor you've read some good writings, I assume. Is there anybody that-- you've had as a student that you could think would make it as a professional writer?
DP: [00:05:56] Well, I don't know any that have-- in the area of fiction. I think-- I would have to say that one that probably has worked hardest at it and probably has the best chance if she continues to work at it is Anne Harrington, who just graduated. She has the spark. She has the drive. She has the creativity, the intelligence, her perceptions of things, I think, will put her in good stead to become a writer. Another one that we have in school now who is doing a lot of writing is Rhenea-- Rhenea Sabel, who has written several short stories and is now plotting out a book. And she too because of her drive and her self-discipline might make it.
SB: [00:06:52] Why did you decide to be field marshal for so many years--[correcting herself]--faculty marshal?
DP: [00:06:57] I didn't decide to be faculty [laughs] marshal. It was a job that was given to me by the administration, and I haven't been able to get rid of it. [both laugh]
SB: [00:07:07] [laughs] Can't pass on that-- that cross.
DP: [00:07:10] This is my 11th year. And I tried to get somebody else-- them to get somebody else to do it. They haven't succeeded.
SB: [00:07:20] Has tradition fallen off at BV? Or have new traditions begun?
DP: [00:07:26] Well, I think our whole approach to commencement and baccalaureate has developed more tradition than we've ever had in that area. Certainly we've had graduations in the past. We used to have four a year. We'd have one in the spring, had one at the end of summer, had one at the end of the first semester-- no three. And so, we had three a year-- three formal commencements. And now we put it all into one big fling, and the traditions surrounding the baccalaureate service, for instance, the high church Presbyterian-- Scottish Presbyterian high church ceremony-- is very traditional, which we've never-- we even used to have at all.
SB: [00:08:10] Have you noted any changes in athletics as your role as faculty representative to the Iowa Conference?
DP: [00:08:18] Many changes. We-- at the time I became faculty representative 20 years ago, or for a total of 20 years-- They-- We belonged to the NAIA national, collegiate organization. At that time we were allowed to give athletic scholarships, and so we had, I think, it was a total of 30 full-tuition scholarships to give, only to men athletes, and all sports that we had, because we didn't have a women's program as such, when I became faculty rep. And then we went to the NCAA which-- Division 3--which does not allow academic scholarships or any other kind of-- [correcting himself] they allow academic, not athletic, scholarships and the money that they get comes from their need package from the government forms and that's all they can get. And if they get more, why then, we get in trouble.
SB: [00:09:23] In that-- back to academics-- How did the Stolee Lecture originate?
DP: [00:09:29] Well, Miss Stolee started that herself as a Sigma Tau Delta lecture, which was an English fraternity that was on campus and. She originated the thing, because she felt that it would be a good public kind of presentation that the fraternities sponsor. But it started out by faculty members giving the lecture in the first ten years of the-- that lecture series. They were always faculty members who gave a lecture in their area of expertise or an area of interest that they researched. Well, at that point we-- Dr. Adkins and I, decided that maybe we were infringing too much upon the faculty, and then we started going outside and bringing a variety of different kinds of speakers and performers. Women who represented the women's movement, blacks who represented black writers, foreign writers, and [unintelligible] from Algeria. And I can't think-- a couple of other African countries. And so it's just expanded over the years. And I might add the attendance has expanded as well.
SB: [00:10:40] That's surprising. [laughs] [Recorder stops and restarts with Peck speaking]
DP: [00:10:45] Through a cycle of years and, of course, you know all this because you've been here, too. But the college has changed. And I might make a-- boy-- I'll just talk. I thought about it, so I think I know-- is it on? Oh. I was the first professor hired by Wendell Halverson after he became president of the college. It was kind of an interesting situation, because I was singing in a-- in a choir in Estherville Presbyterian Church, and he was the guest speaker. And when I was leaving the church after everyone else was gone because I had to go back and take my robe off and everything, why the minister introduced me to him and told him what I did, and Wendell asked me if I would be interested in teaching in college. Well, of course, it was the thing I was aiming for anyway. And at that point he asked me to come down for an interview-- he set the time, the date and everything and I came down and before I left a week later, I had a job at Buena Vista College-- Well, I think in a way, Wendell was kind of proud of that because I guess I've been here a long time, was with him all the time that he was here. When I came, as I pointed out before, the college was a very small and very provincial institution. There were some very good, dedicated people on the faculty-- Dr. Sampson, Dr. Hirsch, people who I became very fond of and were very helpful to me in getting me started in my professional career in college teaching.
DP: [00:12:21] The college in the years that I have been here has changed-- I consider thr-- Completely three different times. From the time that I arrived on a very small college, with very few facilities. And then the expansion of the first time-- the Halverson years of the growth of the facilities-- buildings and all of that during that process, and then at the same time, the change in the student body. Because of the influx of the Eastern students and the uproars, at times, that was going on on campus because of that. But it was also the Vietnam War years. And that's really one of the reasons those students were on campus was to avoid getting drafted. Well, consequently some of them weren't too serious about what they were doing. And I might add they came from families that had the money to pay the tuition and to keep them out of the army. And that's exactly what they were doing. And so they were they were very chaotic years, but in some ways they were also a lot of fun, because [laughs] you never got bored when they were on campus. And then conversely, there were some of those students that were excellent students. And their perspective of the world was much different than the students from northwest Iowa, which added a very rich mixture to the classroom. And that-- those were, in many respects when I came back to Buena Vista in '67 because I'd been on a huge university campus for two years and the-- well, the demonstrations were brutal. I mean, they were violent. And I happened-- Because during that time the leader of the Students for a Democratic Society was an English major, and he was one of my student teachers that I was supervising. So I was often right in the thick of it because of that association. Well-- you know, since coming back to Buena Vista, it was a different experience, but in-- Because of the difference in sizes, it was still. here, too. But in-- different--because of size, a different tenor(?) of it, I guess.
DP: [00:14:35] Then, when President Halverson left-- And, well, first Fred Brown came as academic dean, and the changes started, I think, again, and academic changes, the program changes-- all those things with his coming one year and Keith [Briscoe, the new president] coming the next. And then what I feel changed drastically was the quality of the faculty, and to a large extent the quality of the students who-- was better. And more things begin to happen from a professional point of view that was very satisfying for me. And then, now of course, we've just been through the third phase. And that is the new building and more facilities. And all of that, which, I think, has created a different attitude in some of the students as well. And so it's been an interesting 22-year tenure because of the growth of the institution, the different perspectives of what we can do in program academics, and, I think, in other things as well.
SB: [00:15:47] Does this make the students more loyal to BV than they were before, you think?
DP: [00:15:52] I'm not sure I'm going to have to wait to answer that question for time. Because some of those students who were here in the late 60s and 70s are very loyal to the institution.
SB: [00:16:09] [unintelligible] [ laughs]
DP: [00:16:09] I think they're coming to that. Because those people now are getting financially secure enough that I think that they will be able to contribute financially to the institution. And some of them in the-- Career Day are loyal to the institution simply because they want to come back and take part in it. And you know with 40-some in the last three years, each year, they've covered quite a few people. And there are some who haven't been able to come who really want to come. So I-- there is a loyalty on the part of many of the alums to the college. [Recorder stops, restarts]
SB: [00:16:53] Who's the most controversial figure you've encountered in your BV days?
DP: [00:17:01] John Williams, who was the academic dean of the institution for seven years. In fact, he was the man who rehired me in 1967, when I came back to Buena Vista College. John had some good points about him. He was a hard worker. He was a very disciplined individual. He was very organized, sometimes too organized. He was a disciplinarian. Not necessarily of the students, but of the faculty. We were constantly being checked up on whether or not we were in class, and if we had a night class, if we were there, and if we met the full time that we were supposed to meet. He-- Perhaps his major problem was a lack of understanding of human nature, and then a means by which to deal with that human nature. And he would say things that I don't think he meant to be slams or a negative statement, but they came out that way simply because I don't think he realized what he was doing. It was a very chaotic seven years. Because some people looked at it as though we were working under a Gestapo state. And others of them, I guess, got along with him by bending and doing whatever they had to do to get along with him. There were a lot of confrontations until, I guess, he finally realized that he had to leave when the faculty, almost "in toto", were ready to walk out.
DP: [00:19:12] It was a-- I won't give you any examples of some of the things that he did but-- well, maybe I will. One that always has stood out in my mind was I gave the Stolee Lecture one year, and I did it on Bernard Malamud, who at that time, was an up-and-coming young, contemporary, American writer. And I had done a tremendous amount of research. And I-- I thought I had done a very good job giving the lecture. When I got done, I asked if there were any questions, and John Williams raised his hand, and I said, "Yes, Dr. Williams," and he said,"Did you do all that research yourself or did you hire somebody to do it?" [both laugh] Well, what do you say? I had just given an hour-and-a-half lecture that I had worked very hard to put together, and some of the old-- older [laughs throughout the sentence] faculty were-- in the audience-- were absolutely aghast. And Les Williams, who was in the philosophy department, and later was the acting president after Dr. Halverson left, was so shocked. [laughs] He tried to-- He knew that I didn't know how to respond to it, and he tried to cover it up, and it just got worse. [laughs] But that stands out in my mind. And of course, too, the other thing is his poking his face in the little square windows of the classrooms at night when you're teaching your night class. I'll never forget it, because you never knew when it was going to happen. And those are kind of funny things, but they're also, I think, an indication of the chaos that reigned around here.
Original Format
audio cassette
Duration
0:21:15
Bit Rate/Frequency
80 kbps
Time Summary
00:00:36 - Campus in the 1960s ;
00:01:43 - BV recruited students from Chicago and the East Coast ;
00:03:07 - How students have changed ;
00:04:43 - Memorable students ;
00:06:52 - Faculty marshal ;
00:07:20 - Traditions ;
00:08:18 - NAIA to NCAA ;
00:09:23 - Stolee Lecture ;
00:12:21 - Three eras of change at BV ;
00:16:53 - A controversial administrator
00:01:43 - BV recruited students from Chicago and the East Coast ;
00:03:07 - How students have changed ;
00:04:43 - Memorable students ;
00:06:52 - Faculty marshal ;
00:07:20 - Traditions ;
00:08:18 - NAIA to NCAA ;
00:09:23 - Stolee Lecture ;
00:12:21 - Three eras of change at BV ;
00:16:53 - A controversial administrator