Conflicts over reorganizing the UNC system
Holshouser reflects on the reorganization of the UNC system. In 1971, legislators placed the UNC system schools under the governance of a single Board of Governors, but conflicts continued. As Holshouser remembers his involvement in the enduring fight over the university system, he recalls UNC system president William C. Friday's involvement in the conversations about reorganization and segregation.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with James E. Holshouser Jr., March 13, 1998. Interview C-0328-2. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JACK FLEER:
-
Another issue that you mentioned that was very important to you, and I
wanted to explore a little bit, is the university governance procedure.
Under Governor Scott a major battle had occurred.
You were a member of the legislature at that time and you were very much
involved in those deliberations. What was it about that that you had to
do as Governor? Why was that a major concern of
yours?
- JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:
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Well I think I talked with you before a little bit about the fact that I
thought we probably struck the best lick for the state in 1971 in
putting together the new structure of the university, the best thing
that happen while I was in the legislature. I still think my involvement
in that was more important than anything I did as governor and I think
it is one of the best things that has happen for the state in my life
time. Mostly because I think higher education in North Carolina is what
sets the state apart from a lot of sister states. I think we have just
been fortunate not to say we are perfect. We have a good education
system, public and private higher education, and probably have got a few
too many of each. I am not going to take on that battle. I have reached
the place where you have only got so many fights that you can fight and
that is not one I am going to fight. I had, for a guy who was thinking
about running for governor, I had put myself at risk a lot in
'71 simply by plowing a path of what I believe was where we
should end up and it came very close to perfect of where we did end up.
And if I had written it from the start it wouldn't have ended
up exactly where it did but very close. The things that were different
were not material long term differences. I felt that not only had we
done a good job for the future in terms of getting away from all of
these institutional battles, but that we had a way of maximizing the use
of the taxpayers' dollars by getting everything under one
umbrella, that said this institution is going to do this and this other
institution is going to be a different creature instead of trying to
have everybody be shooting to be king of the world. And I did a speech
to the combined Board of Governors and all the trustees up in
Boone I think in the fall of '73. It
sort of recites how I feel about that. And while the governor
wasn't going to have a lot to do with what happened over
there when it cranked up and I wasn't going to be meddling in
Bill Friday's business. I told him that he could count on my
support all the way through. The most current immediate challenge to
that was the East Carolina Med School. I talked with him a lot about it
and I told him that sort of standing out here in the parking lot between
election day and inauguration day that in sometime along the way he
needed to calculate whether this was going to be a losing battle or not
and if it was it was probably one that shouldn't be fought
simply because the new institution was so young that you
didn't want it to be fatally injured right off the bat. It
turned out that we fought the fight and lost, but it still
didn't destroy the system. I fought as hard as I could. The
morning before the key vote in the House committee I had all the
Republicans to the mansion to breakfast. Got a commitment from all of
those Jack Stevens could deliver to the Democrat side that they would
stay to the person against it. The thing is that it turned out that
Stevens couldn't get enough Democrats and ours turned loose
and we probably lost a dozen or so, I can't remember exactly.
But I have always thought that was and in retrospect it probably turned
out for the best. Because even though it cost a lot of money and it
might have been spent in some better ways, at the moment the East
Carolina Medical School has turned out to be a real asset for the state.
If a man can't admit some mistakes, he isn't much
of a man. But we didn't know how well it was going to turn
out at the time. It is nationally recognized for the family medicine
program. Right now they have got a telemedicine program that is beaming
in doctors' office all over the east where people can call in
for consultations and specialization assistance. It is really working
well.
- JACK FLEER:
-
Did you feel at the end of your term, having in a sense lost that fight,
that you had won the larger fight
maintaining…?
- JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:
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Yes, lost the battle but won the war. By the time I left office I think
it was in good standing and on solid ground. Still you are going to have
some fights. The fight that came along unexpectedly for me, and I
wasn't even aware of it when I was in office and signing
papers about it, was the stuff that was going on with HEW about the
segregation. Bill Friday would call and say they were having some more
negotiations with HEW and I had to sign off on a new plan if I would. I
would tell him to send it over but I didn't realize all the
implications of it at the time. It was only after I got on the Board of
Governors and on the committee here that was working on that that I
realized just how prolonged the process had been and how much of the
university's resources had been expended in that fight that
would have been so much better spent in other ways.
- JACK FLEER:
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And do you think that threatened the governance system or was that
undermining the quality of the program?
- JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:
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I don't think it threatened the governance system. I think it
threatened the ability of whatever governing body you have to act for
higher education. Because you just couldn't let the federal
government become the dictator for how you are going to run the
university. I think Bill Friday was exactly right in fighting it. For a
fellow who is by and large a liberal, he got a very bad name in some
circles. He is not a racist certainly but one who was standing in the
school house door and a lot of people thought for the wrong reason. I
thought for the right reason. I shouldn't stop there because
the things that the university implemented under his guidance in trying
to meet the same kind of goals and desirable
results that HEW wanted showed that he was going to do the right thing
but he wanted us doing it instead of them telling us and making us do
it.
- JACK FLEER:
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Which was an important difference?
- JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:
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Yes.