00:00:03Tamara: When did you come to Virginia Tech?
00:00:06Thomas: October of 1988.
00:00:08Tamara: And I think I have the places you've been before but I thought I'd just review to make sure.
00:00:13Thomas: Sure
00:00:15Tamara: I have that you were the seven years vice chancellor at the University of Denver.
00:00:20Thomas: Correct.
00:00:22Tamara: Was that right before you came here?
00:00:24Thomas: Yes.
00:00:25Tamara: And that you were Dean of Student Services University of Florida from '73 to '81
00:00:31Thomas: Correct.
00:00:33Tamara: Associate Dean of Students at Iowa State University '68 to '73.
00:00:36Thomas: Mm-hmm.
00:00:37Tamara: And director of orientation at Michigan State University, from '64 to '68.
00:00:43Thomas: Mm-hmm.
00:00:44Tamara: And that you're originally from Marshalltown, Iowa.
00:00:46Thomas: Correct. Well done.
00:00:49Tamara: Did you teach at all when you were here?
00:00:50 Thomas: Yes I was a full professor. I taught in the undergraduate program an honors seminar, an ethics in the fall, and I taught in the graduate program in the College of Student Affairs area.
00:01:05Tamara: Interesting. So, I guess I wanted to ask just a little bit more about your job you're going to at American University in Washington D.C. as a Vice President of Student Services. I was going to ask if your job is similar to the one you're leaving here, if there's different challenges.
00:01:28Thomas: Well it's similar in some respects. It's private, it was founded by an act of Congress in 1893. It has eleven thousand five hundred students, so it's half the size of [Virginia] Tech. 25 percent of undergraduates are foreign students, over 130 nations. It's a very diverse campus, it's urban. It's located in the Northwest part of the district. Its bedroom is Washington D.C.. It has a major public service component that is its mission. It's a very different kind of university than anywhere I've ever worked before. It has a national student body, an international student body. So yes, I'll be doing some of the same things but in a very different setting.
00:02:13Tamara: A lot of different kinds of stresses?
00:02:15Thomas: I would assume so.
00:02:17Tamara: It's got the culture there.
00:02:18Thomas: Oh yeah, I have not gotten into it. We have more graduate students than undergraduate students, which is a real difference.
00:02:23Tamara: Yeah, it's a big change. Do you think you would have stayed if the financial climate was different?
00:02:31 Thomas: I don't know, that's a good question. A lot of people have asked me that. I move every six or seven years, I'm a circus kid. My family were circus people.
00:02:38Tamara: Really?
00:02:40Thomas: Yeah, they were Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. And I like to move around. I think I had done my work. I think in these jobs, and others would disagree with me and that's fine, to stay fresh and to stay energetic you need to move. I think you need to move in student affairs, it's like coaching. You can only do so much and then you get stale. Students demand and should have sharp, caring, alert people who are here. And I think you get used to doing things, it's a little bit like a tenured faculty who pulls the yellowed notes out. At some point, you need to refresh and renew, and it's a stressful way of life. I'm going to my third vice presidency at American [University]. Questions people have said, do you really want to do this again? Well it's my way of life. I enjoy working with students. Where I'm going is a very very different place from where I've been, but that's the way I've always worked. So probably not. It was probably time for me to go.
00:03:56Tamara: Is it kind of a burn out job?
00:03:58Thomas: Oh no question. And I'm fifty-five and this is it, I'm probably not going to do this again.
00:04:08Tamara: What did your family do in the circus?
00:04:11Thomas: My mother's brother was responsible for the tents, the big top, the menagerie tent, the cook tent. And getting that up every day and pulling it down every day. And I traveled with them when I was twelve years old.
00:04:25Tamara: Was your mother involved too?
00:04:27Thomas: Only peripherally, but we were circus people because we grew up like that. As nomads.
00:04:33Tamara: So you moved around?
00:04:34Thomas: Yeah.
00:04:35Tamara: And did you help?
00:04:37Thomas: Well at twelve years old you can't really help that much, but you're caught up in the culture in the milieu of the circus.
00:04:45Tamara: That must have been exciting.
00:04:48Thomas: It was. It was in the late '40s and '50s and circusing was in its zenith then. So it was a neat part of my life. It's been a major part of life. In work, my late father used to say, if you've been in the circus, you've never left one. What you do is a circus in itself.
00:05:05Tamara: Was your father involved in the circus?
00:05:06Thomas: He was involved for a while but went back to the family farm in Iowa. He just helped my uncle, in a management point of view. Primarily in getting the circus up and running every day and getting it back on the train and moving it to the next city.
00:05:24Tamara: Did you ever have any interest in performing in the circus?
00:05:25Thomas: No no, I have no talent.
00:05:29Tamara: What was the family farm like?
00:05:32Thomas: Well I was born and raised on an Iowa farm. It was part of my gradnparent's heritage, they homestead in the 1800s and we were raised there. My brother and I. It's been part of my life, my work ethic, my values come from a rural environment. That's why Virginia Tech has been so important to me.
00:05:54Tamara: What kind of farm was it?
00:05:56Thomas: We had sectional land. We raised cattle, we raised hogs, primarily corn and soybeans. It was a working farm.
00:06:07Tamara: Could you say what was your essential nature of your job at [Virginia] Tech as vice president of Student Affairs?
00:06:14Thomas: In the time I served from 1988 to 1995, I had responsibility for virtually all of the out of classroom activity at the university that encompassed campus life.
00:06:20Tamara: And what were your priorities in your job?
00:06:23Thomas: Those were initially by Jim McComas who brought me here. And there were three in number. Number one was to make Virginia Tech a more friendly campus, a place that people would feel warm and comfortable and appreciated. Secondly, to help diversify the campus, to increase the number of women, persons of color, to embrace third world peoples and people who would often be in a category of forgotten folk. And then finally, to improve student life facilities. And we were in the midst of a lot of renovation and remodeling and rebuilding projects, and that continued through the time, in fact it continues as I leave the university, it's ongoing. I had areas reporting to me were military affairs which includes the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets, the university counseling center, the university health center. University unions and student activities, which encompassed Squires and G. Burke Johnston Student Center. Recreational sports, the Department of Residential Education and dining programs, and the office of the Dean of Students, that's the area specifically that I had oversight.
00:07:56Tamara: Was there something behind this emphasis on the concern for students and the quality of life on campus? Was this in response to something?
00:08:06Thomas: I think it was primarily Jim McComas. Jim had been president of the University of Toledo before he arrived at Virginia Tech, he'd been president of Mississippi State. He was, as Paul Torgerson said on Jim's death in February 1994, probably the most student oriented president that you'll ever find. And I would agree. That's what attracted me to Virginia Tech initially, was Jim McComas. He cared deeply about students, and so I think we were a high priority in that administration because of his priorities.
00:08:42Tamara: Was there a sense that your predecessor Sandra Sullivan had lost touch with students?
00:08:49Thomas: Well… I think it would not be good to comment directly about that. I think Sandra got caught up in the last few months of her administration when the university was undergoing tremendous turmoil. The National Collegiate Athletic Association had placed Virginia Tech on probation for infractions in basketball and football. Dr. Lavery, who was the president, was involved in some internal management difficulties that revolved around a land sale. And Sandra was swept up in all of that. I knew Sandra long before I came to Virginia Tech, she was a very competent professional, but I think the climate was much different. I think anyone here in that particular time had undergone some of the difficulties. Clearly, the student press, the Collegiate Times, would suggest that she had lost touch. I find that a little hard to believe, knowing her as I do. Her management style and mine were very much different, as you would have any two people are different. Certainly we had a lot of healing to do when we first arrived and that took about a year to put all that in perspective.
00:09:54Tamara: How did you approach that healing?
00:09:58Thomas: Well the staff that she had put together were very good staff, felt wounded, they felt as though they needed someone to come in and pull them together. I wanted an internal study group to take a look at the organization of the division of student affairs, to see how people were feeling about themselves. Clearly I started to meet with as many people as I could meet with. Deans in the colleges, I wanted to tie together the academic and the student affairs area. Jim decided after about a year that I should report to the provost, which I thought was a good decision. Never regretted that. I worked for Jim Perry for a year, then I worked for Fred Carlisle until he stepped down as head provost in January 1995. I think that tied together the student and academic affairs areas. For too long, student affairs had been the pentage, and I think by putting it in with the provost office it became a part of the academic enterprise and the academic experience. So we were able to do an awful lot because of the organization structure.
00:11:10Tamara: Now who did you report to before you reported to the provost?
00:11:13Thomas: John Perry, who was the acting provost, when I first came here, Jim asked me to work for him.
00:11:19Tamara: So the person you reported to, that didn't change--you said that there was a change.
00:11:27Thomas: Well, when I came here Jim had not decided whether we reported directly to him or the provost.
00:11:32Tamara: I see.
00:11:34Thomas: It became obvious after a few months here, I came in October, the academic year was already underway by about a month and a half. That for operational reasons it'd be more appropriate to report to that office. And that turned out just fine.
00:11:48Tamara: In what way did the staff feel wounded?
00:11:51Thomas: Oh I think after a while, anytime you're in a divisive situation when people are always put upon when things aren't going as well as they are, people tend to look over their shoulders. And I think they really felt they weren't being recognized for all they were doing for students. It was a very problem centered environment at that time. I think we tried to turn that around by pulling together and finding out and exploring the things we had been doing for students. The other piece of that is Squires Student Center was closed in May of 1988 for renovation, only to open some three years later. So there wasn't a real living room of the campus for students, because Squires functions were scattered all over the campus. I think the physical dimension of having services fragmented all over the campus, the investigation of the NCAA, new administration coming in, with just a lot of change and change is very hard for people to handle. Particularly in higher education.
00:12:57Tamara: I just want to pick up from that term you used "living room of the campus", is that how you view Squires?
00:13:03Thomas: Yes, I do. I think it has exceeded all of my expectations. When we first reopened it, because we had been without for three years, it was hard for students to get used to using it again. Because we had a whole generation of students who never had a student center. Literally came through here without having a place. Now today in July of 199--well in the normal academic year, there's probably eight to ten thousand students, maybe the same student in the building five times, but it's well used. I think it's the finest student center, clearly on the East Coast of the United States. It's a gorgeous place.
00:13:40Tamara: I noticed in the student center there's the Black Cultural Center, the Perspective Gallery, were you involved in getting those?
00:13:52Thomas: Quite honestly, no. That all had been the history of Squires. Squires had gone through its third renovation. It was built in 1937, it was renovated in '60, again in '68, and then totally renovated in '88. All the things were there with the exception of Black Cultural Center which was new. It had been on the program to be on the third floor, I insisted it be on the first floor to give more visibility to African American students and to the visitors to the campus. The ability of the architect at the time, Warren Kark Chief University Architect, opened up the old building, the facade of the old building and to expose the original 1937 facility. It was a tremendous stroke of genius because it was a driving card to alumni who could come back and say gee that/s where i used to come when I was here. It has proven to be just that way, with the addition of the second student center which was an idea by a student incidentally in 1982 who suggested to Dr. Sullivan that there ought to be a place for students to gather in the academic sector of the campus because there wasn't any place. And [Virginia] Tech in its earlier years built academic buildings without any lounge space. So G.B.J. named after G. Burke Johnston, a former dean of arts and sciences, just became a wonderful venue. I hope Virginia Tech will build another one of those because they're very very successful. Allow students and faculty to sit and have a cup of coffee and talk. It's a tremendous gathering place for students between classes and I'm very very proud of that facility.
00:15:29Tamara: Another one maybe in another part of campus?
00:15:31Thomas: I think there ought to be one over somewhere around Litton Reaves, Cochrane, because there's a lot of student traffic and as the campus moves from the upper quad over to where all their residence halls are, there will be a shift of students. I think they're going to need something like that. And I know Dr. Ridenhour, the Executive vice president, has suggested that would be an appropriate thing to do in the future years.
00:15:57Tamara: Do you recall the name of the student who made that suggestion?
00:15:59Thomas: No I don't. I know it was a female student and I saw that in fact in some materials in your archives here that I went to.
00:16:05Tamara: I'll have to track that down.
00:16:07Thomas: It's a wonderful wonderful case of what a student can do to turn a place around.
00:16:13Tamara: I'd like to talk a little bit around those different goals you mentioned. What did you do to create a friendlier and more supportive atmosphere with your students?
00:16:26Thomas: Well, I took Jim's lead and everywhere out on campus, he would speak to everybody. Literally everybody. I also wrote a column, first of all weekly in the CT commentary which I did at the request of the editor at the time, Scott Hoffman. Eventually ended meeting once a month because they had space needs for other issues. But that kept me in touch with students and I tried to go to as many student events as I could. I tried to get to know students by their first name, often I would take issues like, I really have a hard time with students wearing walkmans between class. And the Drillfield, it was always a place where students for some reason would always look down. So I wrote a column one time, "Why do you look down, what's down there?" Your feet? Dimes, nickels, you can't see people. You can't look people in the eye if you're always looking down. I got more responses to that column than any column I wrote either before or after. After people would come up to me and say, you know, you were right, and it got to be campus conversation. I mean it wasn't overwhelming, but it was kind of neat. So I'm real proud of that. This has always been a friendly place, but it has this history of very male, very military, and very disciplined and I think we've loosened folks up a little. I think we accomplished that.
00:17:54Tamara: To loosen the people up, the students a bit, was trying to get more dialogue going?
00:18:02Thomas: I think more dialogue, I think talking to students on a first name basis, having an open door policy, Jim McComas would talk to forty-five hundred residence hall students in the first six months he was in office. We regularly met with students on their turf, we attended student's events, we were available to students. It was just a matter of how you work with students. And we tried to soften the bureaucracy so students would feel more comfortable. The whole expressed check-in program that Mary Thompson, University Bursar runs now was Jim McComas idea so that you wouldn't have to stand in line after line after line at the beginning of each semester. So I think it was having a campus become more student friendly.
00:18:38Tamara: I think a term I saw somewhere was personalizing education.
00:18:42Thomas: Personalizing education, yes.
00:18:45Tamara: There's been a lot of discussion about affirmative action in the courts and the media lately, and I wondered what your thoughts are about affirmative action.
00:18:56Thomas: Well I am a White male, I'm fifty-five years of age. I've been in the realm of higher education since 1962. I have very very strong views on affirmative action, I think it ought to be the law of the land. I think we had mixed results here, a lot of it had to do with the budget reductions and the fact that we're not able to hire as many people as we wanted to. I think clearly, Virginia Tech continues to enroll, 58 percent male, 42 percent female, there's simply not enough women on campus. That bothers me. We were never able to improve the number of women enrolling here. There are a lot of reasons for that. The name of the place "Tech" gives off the wrong impression. Our strengths are in engineering and the sciences and those disciplines that recruit and that have primarily mostly men in them. I think Paul Torgerson's decision to appoint Peggy Meszaros as provost was a landmark decision. He hired a competent woman. But we lost ground. We don't have as many Black faculty and staff, I think maybe there were thirty-three out of a faculty of fifteen hundred, it's tough to recruit because you have no basis, large basis of African American communities. It's a tough place to recruit a single woman who may have interest in meeting other people, it's just a small town. There aren't a lot of social opportunities. That doesn't mean you ought not to try. I think Fred Carslike was absolutely outstanding in his ability to write a letter of affirmative action, hold people accountable, department heads. I think we've lost some ground, I hope [Virginia] Tech will pick that up. As a major land-grant university in its mission of teaching and researching and service, I think it has an awful lot to do in terms of making a strong statement to the commonwealth. That women and persons of color, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, people who are disadvantaged in so many ways, do have a place at this university. That's the way the world is. There are more women on this planet than men. I hope a day will come when a woman will be president of this university. Clearly there are qualified women. I hope that when Dr. Cross' two-and-a-half year term as my successor is up, should he choose not to continue, that they would consider revisiting the position hiring a woman or person of color. I just think it's important and necessary not to suggest that us as White males aren't important or necessary. But we've been in power for a long time, women and others have not. So I have very strong feelings about that.
00:21:43Tamara: In working with your goals of diversity, have you found that certain groups of students needed special attention or assistance or accommodation?
00:21:55Thomas: Well Jim McComas targeted African Americans and within reason. We had about 4 to 5 percent African American students on this campus. I think the State of Virginia has 6.5 million people living in-state, with 20 percent of those people of color. We don't even come close to that. I think African Americans here have had a revolving door problem, where they just have not may have done as well. Now, for those that sustain and graduate, their grade point averages are probably better than their White counterparts. But the problem is for a lot of them, it's a very cold climate. There isn't a large Black community here. It's just a place where Black folk just had a lot of trouble making it, unless you know you can come out of a predominantly white high school or have damn strong assertive skills. Think the same thing for women. This can be a chilling environment for women. I think you need to do whatever you can when those things are called to your attention to strike that very hard. I would imagine that the Asian American community by sheer numbers will continue to do well here. They attract, they get a lot of those folks who come out of Northern Virginia. There's a large Asian community in Northern Virginia. Many of them are second generation college students, unlike the African American students are usually first generation. I know there's a stereotype that all Asians are good at math and science and so forth and I don't want to enable that. But clearly the Asian community has grown here without any attention from the university at all. It wasn't until about three years ago that the Asian students came to me and said we too want to have an Asian American Student Association that we really started paying attention to that.
00:23:51Tamara: So how did you try to help these groups?
00:23:55Thomas: Well, there have been a lot of things done for Black students. There's an academic enrichment program under the direction of Beuvoir Scott, which is a provost office. One of the real stalwarts in all this is no longer in the provost office, Joyce Williams Greene, moved over to become chair of Black Studies. I think the development of the Black Studies program was an important decision to make. In 1989 Jim, I, and Fred, and others had a conversation with Black students, there was a lot of Black student concern on the campus and the area 7 section of the Core curriculum was established under that. Black Studies was established out of that, moving the Black Cultural Center to the first floor was established out of that. So the student concern and activism at that time brought us to where we are now. I think the athletic program with the establishment of the athletic advising area under Jerry Riah has had a lot to do with the success of our Black student athletes. Many have gone on to graduate and persist and do other things. But still, there's still too many separate communities on this campus, as there is on any campus. People tend to go with folk they feel comfortable with. I have no problem with that. I do think here that there is a real willingness, and I said this publicly whenI was getting ready to leave the university, there are more friendships between Black, Asian, Caucasian, there's more interracial dating. I think the climate has improved dramatically. But there's still a lot of work to be done.
00:25:42Tamara: Were you involved or instrumental in getting the women's center?
00:25:47Thomas: I was involved, I certainly wasn't instrumental. Fred Carsile had higher to deserve that credit. I think I supported that, in fact I moved a position out of the Dean of Students Office a Sexual Assault Education Coordinator which reported to the dean to the Women's Center. That was a contribution along with five thousand dollars, a small amount of money, in support. Very necessary, very important, and I think over a long run will have a major impact on campus.
00:26:16Tamara: Was there any conflict between the faculty's perception of students and that of the Office of Student Affairs as you strove through the goals of diversity?
00:26:27Thomas: Oh sure. I think that's still there, I would hope not as much when we came here. Clearly I think there is a stereotypic attitude on the part of some faculty that students of color come ill-prepared, particularly when some of them come from the inner-city high schools where they may not have the resources of the teaching staff to learn. The fact of the matter is that Joyce Williams Greene did a retention study and pointed out how there needed to be more support for those students. Beverly Watford over in the college of engineering. Her appointment by Paul Torgersen when he was Dean to the minority engineering program has been a world of difference. As we graduate Black students, we're beginning to have a Black Student Alumni Association. Or Black Alumni Association. And as these people become successful they will pay back in great number in dollars and support to the university. I think half the faculty here are going to turn over by the end of the decade. The new faculty coming in are clearly going to be I think more responsive simply because most of the faculty came in the '60s, the entire Civil Rights Movement the entire access of higher education of persons of color really came about in the '70s and '80s. A lot of attitudes needed to be changed. We changed some, not all. I think it's better, is it where it should be? No.
00:27:54Tamara: So, in your job in this position between the academic faculty and the students, how did you approach it?
00:28:08Thomas: I think there was a nurturing going on. I think there was a sharing of information, faculty here want and should have information on students. Where they're from, what are the demographics of students. I find faculty here to be very very helpful. The number of faculty referrals to our counseling center, to our health center, proportionate to our student body is the highest I've ever seen of anywhere I've been. I've worked now for seven schools. Very impressed with the caring of the faculty. When you have a university this large, this diverse, this comprehensive, this complex, you're going to have people who care, and a smaller group of folks who don't care. I think the downside of research university is that those people aren't in the classroom, they're doing research. And they tend not to worry nor care a lot about students. I don't think that's the norm here. There are exceptions to that, but I think the main [Virginia] Tech faculty care.
00:28:59Tamara: Were there any problems with students pushed beyond their capabilities? That a student might be pushed along and find him or herself in a position where they really weren't prepared?
00:29:15Thomas: Well this is a very stressful place. There is a certain attitude in Virginia, for example: University of Virginia the attitude is, if you are admitted, you will graduate. At [Virginia] Tech, it's easy to get in and hard to leave. Hard to graduate. I think the exact higher standards here on enrollment that probably UVA has, UVA is probably one of the most selective public schools in America. As we have had continuing difficulties with enrollment, particularly out-of-state enrollment, some of the faculty believe we have perhaps dug too deep into our waiting list. I have not found that. I have found students here to be pretty capable, but it is a stressful place to be. I do think students' grades drop. They take courses and compete with each other, the number of students in distress for this size campus is pretty high. A lot of counseling, a lot of medical support, fortunately we had a very good success record on suicides. One year we had a lot here, most of them off campus, but there are so many safety nets on campus, the residence halls in organized student activities, to catch students that were in trouble that I think we were able to intercept those before it became a problem. I'm increasingly concerned about the number of students who come to us on prozac, which is an antidepressant drug. I think that's a fact of society. I have a friend who's in a private school on the West Coast and half of his freshmen are on prozac. And that's a real concern for me. I think there's too much drinking here. I think alcohol and substance abuse is a major problem, a lot of that is because there isn't a lot to do in Blacksburg. But another piece of that is that's a way of life for a lot of kids. They come here with well developed drug habits and alcohol and other drugs and that continues.
00:31:11Tamara: Well one of the things I wanted to ask you is to talk about your work here about alcohol abuse, what you've done.
00:31:19Thomas: Well that happens to be an area of interest, professional and scholarly interest. I co-found a national organization when I was Dean of Students at the University of Florida called Bacchus. This last year was a watershed year. We began with a lot of problems at the West Virginia, Virginia Tech football game. We had a lot of students arrested. It was an evening game, it was on national television. It's a pretty liberal community, there's a lot of tolerance here for drinking too much. So what we did was put together a task force to take a look at how we could essentially tighten down the hatches a little. The real problem here is recidivist behavior. We were simply slapping the wrist of first-time offenders. The second time they came around we slapped their wrist again, and this next year on the campus they will take some measures such as removing students from residence halls that are on repeater behavior. Putting them through program similar to a drunk driving course where they examine their own behavior, but until Blacksburg has more opportunities for students to have some recreation, indeed when the new student health and fitness center is up that will take the edge off. But when you consider how many of our students come from urban areas they're used to [scooping] the malls and having places to go, and they come down here and there's a paucity of things to do, it's not unusual if the drinking becomes a focal point. A lot of it is the cultural milieu of Blacksburg in Southwest Virginia. A lot of it has to do with the paucity of activities. Well a lot of it has to do with simply with an unwillingness of part of students faculty and staff to challenge people's behaviors, and when they get out of line to be sure the sanctions are there, to remind them if they do it again they will no longer be able to be in this community. I think that's real important.
00:33:14Tamara: In your job did you try and address those problems of a paucity?
00:33:21Thomas: Well I think the rebuilding of Squires answered that, GBJ answered that, clearly the planing of the new rec center they break ground on that next spring, answered that. I think tightening down the regulations answered that. I was able to find a donor who gave us some money to take care of people who wanted to get essentially dried out. That grew to double the amount of money my last year here, but he's a recovering alcoholic millionaire, really successful. I think collectively we did a lot, but it just goes hand and hand. Drinking and going to school are pretty synonymous. We simply had to try to find ways to put drinking in its place here, and not make it the focal point of everything.
00:34:09Tamara: What will that new rec center offer?
00:34:12Thomas: It will be 105,000 [non ascendable] square feet, it will have additional swimming pools, it will have gymnasiums, it will have aerobic fitness rooms, it will have weight lifting area, it will have an elevated track, it will have a laboratory where you can check your body fat. It will also house the student health center and the counseling center.
00:34:37Tamara: Are there professional staff living in the dorms to address the problems of drugs and alcohol abuse? I saw that cited as a solution a couple years back.
00:34:48Thomas: Yes.
00:34:49Tamara: So did that actually happen?
00:34:50Thomas: When I got here, we had no live-in professional staff. We've had a long history of using upper class students as head residents and RAs. So we hired five area coordinators, master's degree people usually in college student affairs who could be in the halls on a 24 hour basis, develop programs and activities, and be there to supervise the RAs and head residents. I think the additional folk in the halls really changed the campus climate. [Virginia] Tech has the eleventh largest housing program in America, we have a large freshman class. We have a lot of young adults that are developing, I think that added a dimension to caring, supporting, and nurturing that wasn't there previously.
00:35:39Tamara: I read somewhere, I guess it was a New York Times article from February 1995, of you saying that alcohol is the number one problem--the alcohol problem worsening among women in particular.
00:35:54Thomas: I think women particularly on this campus that is predominantly male buy into too many male drinking patterns. I think binge drinking, drinking to excess, is the real issue. It's become quote "cool" unquote. Until women are given the rightful place until they're recognized as others, I think a lot of them for reasons of their own lack of self esteem will buy into those male drinking patterns. I also think that the pressures here to drink are very very very strong, I think it's hard of Virginia Tech to say no. I think the increasing numbers students that say no. It's basically women adopting male drinking patterns, and being told it's okay. Women generally in society are chastised for public drunkenness, men are never. Because there's such a male dominated culture here, I just think women feel comfortable.
00:36:56Tamara: Do you think the students see drug and alcohol abuse as a problem?
00:37:00Thomas: Oh yes. I think even the most insidious drinker will say that's an issue. Probably the highlight, it's not a highlight, it's one of those things that will always remain with me is when we lost a student in October of 1990, Wayne Parsons who went out and drank, essentially 32 oz. of tequila and died. He lived in East Eggleston, went to an off campus party with his friends, they stood there and watched him drink himself to death. His folks live up in Appomattox, he was their only child. I go up every fall, I will continue to do that if my job permits me to do so. He's buried under an oak tree on the farm. It's the most sobering reminder of how tragic alcohol can be in a person's life. And I'm an ACOA, I'm an adult child of an alcoholic. My mother was an alcoholic so I've lived with it all my adult life, I've worked with it my entire career. It's a tragic sort of scenario. I'd like to say it's getting better, I'm not sure it is.
00:38:09Tamara: Has this alcohol problem been a major Town Gown problem?
00:38:15Thomas: It was a major issue about four years ago when we had over 130 students arrested at a block party up at Stone Gate. I took initiative because it was not handled well by a lot of people to go to the town and say, let's put together a task force, and we came out of that with tremendous cooperation from the then police chief Don Carey with Ron Seacrest the Town Manager, with [something] University. To a block party ordinance which virtually did away with them, and now really requires a lot of planning before it happens. I think it's helped, a lot of students don't like it because it puts more sanctions around the issue than it ought to be. But I think it's really helpful. I felt really good about the Town Gown relationships in Blacksburg, they're among the most positive I've ever worked with.
00:39:09Tamara: I have another question on that, but I just wanted to ask you a little bit more about the stress level at [Virginia] Tech. You said that once a student is here, the stress is higher here than other places because..?
00:39:26Thomas: Well… Yeah I think it's self induced. If you take a look at the number of students who come here to study engineering who tread out, they lose about 40 percent of their students because they can't make it. They can't make the core courses in calculus, math course is very difficult. I think state change for students is just awfully hard. We do not have, in many respects a university, we have nine Balkan states. We have nine colleges with nine different sets of regulations, academic regulations. There's no uniformity across the board. It can be very difficult to transfer from one discipline to another. And I think it is not the student-friendly campus in terms of academic policy. I think that's a problem this place has had and will continue to have until you get someone who will lay the gauntlet down. For example this year the College of Arts and Sciences reduced the number of hours required for graduation. Well SCHEV, the State Council of Higher Education[, VA] put the B on colleges and universities to reduce the amount of time students are in college. Virginia Tech's best known slogan is "the best five or six years of your life." Well indeed, if you take a look at the number of students who graduate here in four years, it's about 38 percent. UVA it's about 70 percent. If you put the extra fifth year, it's up to 70 percent. I just think when money is tight, parents can ill-afford another ten, eleven, twelve thousand dollars to keep a student around. The other problem is while we've been under the budget knife, we've lost dramatically in the number of faculty and staff to teach classes, and we've grown by 2,500 students, upperclass students get a difficult time getting required classes to graduate. And pretty soon, I think we've passed it we're going to meet each other at the knife and students get upset with things like that.
00:41:47Tamara: Your statement about that we're nine Balkan states but not a university, would you say that's one thing that [Virginia] Tech needs to address?
00:42:01Thomas: [Virginia] Tech really needs to address that. I think Peggy Meszaros is going to work hard at doing that as provost.
00:42:09Tamara: A few years back when you first came here, you commented about this stark look towards residence halls. Do you think the look is still a problem?
00:42:24Thomas: No question, that's because they were built as barracks. You can only do so much with steel, cinderblock, and linoleum. We put over 10 million dollars into renovating the dining hall. I think we did a lot in terms of renovating the food service. There is much you can do with cinder block residence halls. That's just the way of life. We let students paint their rooms, we put carpeting in the hallways. We replaced furniture, we replaced windows. I don't think there's a better set of residence halls in terms of maintenance than [Virginia] Tech's. Fact of the matter is you can't do much with what they have. You can't put a bulldozer in front of them and mow them down, you just can't. Other places in the state don't have the legacy we have with Hokie Stone and the military legacy and the starkness of it will always be here. I think we made some modest improvement but you'd have to completely rebuild it from the ground up. Payne Hall, our newest residence hall, is a good example of what can be done. It is a beautiful residence hall. I used to call it the Payne Hilton it's only 270 beds and there are close to eight thousand beds in the system. So eventually they'll have to replace residence halls. As they take the upper quad and turn that into academic offices and classrooms, there's 1,263 beds up there, they're going to have to build new buildings and I think eventually they'll do that.but it'll be thirty, forty, fifty years before that is seen.
00:43:52Tamara: Do you think the campus as a whole has an austere look?
00:43:56Thomas: I think this is one of the most beautiful campuses in America in terms of its setting. I think its buildings which were built pre-'40s, '50s, and '60s are pretty stark. There's some buildings that are absolutely awful, Derring Hall is one of them. They're just not building for good adaptive learning. The new stuff they've built thanks to the bond issue in 1992 is really a lot better. But this is a huge asset to the state of Virginia, it's a big campus. Buildings are expensive to build and there hasn't been any state taxpayer dollars since 1983 going into building. You cannot let buildings just be left to follow. They'll be swallowed up. I think the physical plan of Virginia Tech is among the finest in the country, they do an awful amount of good things to keep the place going. A lot of that's due to the equipment trust fund of the work of Spencer Hall who directs the physical plant and others have done, but a lot of work needs to be done. Without building a whole new campus, it's a pretty tough assignment.
00:45:15Tamara: Another thing I wanted to consider was the housing and maybe it's another Town Gown question. I wonder if you could talk about the problems you've had to address in terms of student housing for say Greeks or Black teens, different groups.
00:45:28Thomas: Well, Blacksburg has thirteen thousand students living off the campus. Fraternity housing, Greeks were not recognized here--Greek letter organizations--until 1972. It does not have a traditional Greek system, The houses are basically single family dwellings that were turned into what I call club rooms. The houses we built on the campus, of Phase I and Phase II of Special Purpose Housing, really meet a need but there's a huge Greek system on this campus, there's thirty-three fraternities and sixteen sororities. And they're popular, but their popularity comes and goes. To me, and we did a lot this spring with the town planning commission and taking a look at Roanoke St as a Gerek Area that could be turned over and renovated. Right now the zoning laws are pretty prohibitive. I think the addition of Delta Chi, a newer fraternity house up behind Holiday Inn and 460, is an example of what can be done. It needs to be a lot of work done, I think there ought to be an other ten to fifteen houses built on campus, Special Purpose Housing III, IV, and V. Black students international students, gay, lesbians, bisexuals, other special student communities tend to go where they're most comfortable. We at one time looked at having a lot of special housing arrangements in the halls. We abandoned that primarily because the numbers weren't sufficient to sustain and people tend to move in the residence hall system at will according to vacancies. So it worked out pretty well. It is a basic freshmen and sophomores on-campus program, junior senior off-campus program. I don't think that's going to change. Most students move off campus to get out of what they call dormitory life, institutional food, privacy primarily for alcohol purposes, dating or whatever. That's okay with me. I think students ought to have several different living experiences. Whether or not Blacksurg will grow very much, I rather doubt. I think it will always be the size it is, it will always absorb most of the off-campus housing.
00:47:46Tamara: So I noticed, I think there's one house that's moved out to Chirsitiansburg, one Greek, just because they couldn't wait. Do you see that as a solution or…?
00:48:00Thomas: Well, it's not a good solution. Blacksburg needs to have more housing for fraternities and sororities. There needs to be more places in the county, there needs to be more places on campus. That's a long term need, it's in the University's [Capital Oplate] Plan for '96 and '98, so it might get resolved.
00:48:23Tamara: Is the town receptive to working with this?
00:48:26Thomas: The town seems to be moving in that direction. The planning commission has done a good job and I'm confident that it's going to be taken care of.
00:48:34Tamara: So, did the big party converse you with the town? Did that make it more difficult to get housing?
00:48:42Thomas: Oh I think so. While this probably would not be well received, I think there is a conflict in Blacksburg on one hand trying to attract retired people, which has made a big move to do, but continue to be a college town with traditional students between the age of twenty-one. I'm sorry but those are in direct conflict, their lifestyles are in conflict. Because the town is so small, there's so many students here nine months out of the year, you're bound to have complaints. Noise is a real issue, older people tend not to tolerate a lot of noise. Students are noisy, they party, they create noise. When they drive their car they create noise. I think the two of those are in conflict, that will be a continuing issue.
00:49:25Tamara: What's the solution?
00:49:27Thomas: I don't know the answer to that.
00:49:32Tamara: I wondered if you'd talk about the difference in working under the administration of President McComas and President Torgersen?
00:49:41Thomas: Well first of all they were different times. Jim came in '88, we were coming out of the most healthy decade probably in the century for the commonwealth. There was plenty of money to do things. University had gone through tremendous growth, then in Jim's second year the dramatic budget problems began. And this is a very different university in 1995 than it was 1988. It has to be. It's in survival mode. I said publicly and I've said privately, I don't think the Board of Visitors could have picked a more appropriate president than Paul Torgersen. He's known in the state, dean of engineering for twenty plus years. He can walk into the General Assembly and be known right away. In terms of mending fences, I think k he's done a good job and as the state has become more fiscally conservative, Paul's record of leadership is pretty well known. Jim's priorities had to shift from the things he wanted to do because we simply had financial problems, which seemed to never end. We went through six major budget reductions and when you're reengineering, things are very unstable. I think the two administrations were very student centers in the McComas years, because that's what he said he would do and despite the financial problems we carried off a lot of that agenda. Paul's agenda is very different, it's out of survival, is Virginia Tech going to be able to survive in a state where higher education is no longer a priority? And I think that's very key, he's got a capital campaign where he's got to raise 280 million dollars of private money and privatization is a real issue. So I think the two administrations were dramatically different because they were responding to different things at different times. I'm one of these people who really believes Jim McComas died because he couldn't handle the stress of a series of issues that he was ill prepared to handle, that was not Jim's strength, was financial administration. He did not particularly enjoy lobbying in the general assembly, he would do it and I think it was fairly effective, but he hoped to come in here and take this place to the top as a land-grant institution. It takes money to do that. It just wasn't there and you have an extraordinary adversarial relationship with a series of governors that really never repaired itself. I just think he fell to the stress of all that. One of my reasons to leave was that I thought I had done all I could do, in terms of providing services for students. I think Paul has had to divert funds to where they ought to be, and that's to the academic enterprise. That's why students come here is to get a degree. I'm a builder, not much of a tearer-downer. And I think I had done all I could do with the assignments Jim had given me. I don't think student affairs had been diminished in this administration but I don't think it will have as high of priority simply because survival of the academic programs must be its top priority.
00:52:46Tamara: I remember you said when you first came here that you were a builder rather than a maintainer, but at this stage, just because of the financial hardship that the state is facing, that it's not a question of maintaining, it's really--
00:53:00Thomas: Surviving.
00:53:01Tamara: Or diminishing so the concerns, in the sense of student affairs. Of course the whole thing is concerned with students but those are not…
00:53:10Thomas: By necessity I just don't see them as having the ability to occupy the same place. I don't think that's with malice, I think it's simply trying to manage what you have under very dire financial circumstances.
00:53:27Tamara: So the Phase II restructuring, how has that affected the functioning of student affairs?
00:53:33Thomas: Well we wrote a plan, most of it is firmly intact, Vice President Cross will go ahead and continue to do that where we diminish the number of people employed in the division. We merged a number of departments, health and counseling are now in one department, recreation has moved into University Unions and Student Activities. We are simply doing less with less. That's the by word around the campus, it's very necessary. I think reengineering is now in place. I suspect if the Republicans win this fall, as I think they may, I think [Virginia] Tech is going to be in for a very rough year. Higher education is not a priority in the state, I don't see that on the forefront. This governor has decided prisons and dealing with medicare and other issues is where he wants to put his priorities. I'm not commenting with malice about that but I think Virginia Tech is in for another tough couple of years, unless the political climate in the state changes and I don't think it will.
00:54:41Tamara: President Torgersen, it hasn't been that long of a period since you worked in his administration, what goals did he set for you? Were they mainly the restructuring goals?
00:54:50Thomas: To continue the restructuring, to try to help students get prepared to take jobs, we merged cooperative education into career services. He's got a lot of support to being a practical university. Helping students get practical skills to get jobs. Leadership development, we have an office of leadership development and university unions and student activities that I think has been very good and very helpful. I think Dr. Torgerson is on the right track, I really do.
00:55:23Tamara: What has been your greatest satisfaction in your years here at [Virginia] Tech?
00:55:29Thomas: That's a very good question, I've been asked that several times. I think my greatest satisfaction is in seeing that we did make a difference in the time we were here. It's a friendlier place and students have a strong love for this university. That we were able to rebuild some of the physical infrastructure to improve the facilities, but most importantly that students here really coalesced and got along. There are three or four benchmark things that I will recall in leaving here. One is we managed that ugly Ku Klux Klan thing here in 1990 when the Klan came to town for twenty-two minutes. Out of most ugliness good things come and I think this became a much more supportive climate for persons of color and women and gays and others, as a result of people coming to gather. Clearly, and I don't want to put a lot of overstatement on this, I saw through some recent success in athletics a lot of spirit and a lot of soul. I'll forever remember Shawn Smith running up into the stands when they beat Marquette at the NIT and hugged his daddy. Absolutely something that would bring tears to anyone's eyes, because that's really what it's all about. If you can share that kind of feeling. ESPN still framed that and turned it into a poster and it's magnificent in terms of what that did for the school. I sat down here from eleven o'clock at night until four in the morning when they blocked off Main Street. There were four to five thousand kids waving the flag, celebrating, and hanging out. Then Thursday when we did the reception, when the team came back. They had five, six thousand people on a Thursday afternoon when people are working. It's wonderful. And then finally, perhaps the most poignantly, when eight thousand people turned out for a budget rally on the Drillfield. We had a cabinet meeting and Jim said, Tom how many students do you think we'll have? I said, probably three hundred. We walked out of lunch and there were eight thousand people there. I think students are much more involved in the life of the work of this place than they were when I came. If anything, that just makes me feel really proud.
00:58:00Tamara: Could you comment a little bit more about the KKK incident.
00:58:05Thomas: Well that whole thing--you talk about something that was handled with class. First of all I inherently believe in the right of people to express their point of view. I really do. I think the town council by issuing the parade did the right things. But we worked feverishly from md-November to January to plan for their arrival. We had the FBI involved, the state police involved, Montgomery County Sheriff, the town, my staff. Black students, White students, Jewish students, gay students, women's groups. It was a coming together of a community like I have never seen before and probably will never see again, and I don't mean to overstate it. We were as ready for that as any human enterprise could be. We had this alternative ceremony over in Burruss. Yeah we had some cat-calling, we tried to keep most people away from the parade. But the fact the Klan came and only stayed twenty-two minutes is a statement in itself. I have great pride in that event--not in the event. I have great pride in the way it was managed, and I was given responsibility to manage that by the president. I didn't do it alone, hell no. I had tremendous numbers of peoples involved, but it was a watershed experience for Virginia Tech, for Blacksburg, and for Southwest Virginia.
00:59:33Tamara: So, when they were having their march, another event was happening?
00:59:38Thomas: Yeah, being held at Burruss.
00:59:41Tamara: And that drew a good number of--?
00:59:42Thomas: Oh yeah we probably had a thousand people there.
00:59:45Tamara: Then the other was the Klan--
00:59:47Thomas: Three or four hundred people on the street at the parade.
00:00:00Tamara: When you were talking about your greatest satisfaction, is there any other accomplishment you'd like to note that you regard as a--?
00:00:07Thomas: No, I'm just deeply grateful for the six and a half years I was able to spend here. Some of the most satisfying experiences that I have ever had. It's going to be very difficult to mirror in any way what went on at Virginia Tech in the time I was here in my life. This is an awfully good university. Very good faculty, awfully good students, and wonderful traditions. And the fact I was privileged to be a part of that has had a real impact on me. So I'll always be grateful for having been here.
[End of interview] NOTE TRANSCRIPTION END
