A lifetime in education
Okay, it
was like this. One day I was mopping floors, cutting lawns, and doing whatever
I could to complete my undergraduate degree, while supporting a young family. My
dreams of “making it” in a rock band hadn’t worked out when I realized my livelihood
depended on the dedication, work ethic and creativity of other musicians, in
the early 1970s, a pretty shaky proposition. So, I decided to go my own way,
finish my B.A. and start on an M.A.
Unexpectedly, I landed a job at a major university, here in L.A., as a program
administrator. Later, as I got to know the people who hired me, they said
they knew I lacked the experience for the job, but I had more maturity and
seemed more responsible than other applicants they’d interviewed, some graduates of prestigious universities and multiple letters after their names.
Two years
later, I was still getting my bearings, but I wanted to get out of L.A., so I
moved up north, to east Sacramento, and was, again, lucky to land a job at another reseaarch university, down by the levies and across the causeway, doing
the same job, writing reports, designing programs, and dealing with deans,
professors, vice-chancellors, and other program administrators, a gaggle of P
h. D’s and M.A.’s. among them, and, of course, a little more sabe under my belt.
I’ve got to admit my surprise, and in some
cases downright shock, when I learned so many hot-shot, educated people were incompetent,
opportunistic, lazy, or just plain ignorant, at all levels of the academic
hierarchy, from professors to chancellors, no "common sense," as American political philosopher, Tom Payne might say, and in some ways, no different than some people I worked with
mopping floors and cutting lawns. That’s not to say, I didn’t also meet brilliance
and ingenuity, sometimes in the most unlikely people.
After a few months, my boss’s
boss, a blue-collar boy who “made it good,” gave me props for serving in the
military and going to Vietnam, so he offered me a promotion from program
administrator to director, bypassing others who felt slighted, which is another
story.
As a director
of a unit called Developmental Programs, I was required to sit in on the assistant
vice-chancellor’s weekly briefings, held on the fifth floor, the chancellor’s
floor, in a typical room you’d expect to find in a traditional university, massive double
doors, the walls covered in dark mahogany, and long, wide meeting table, and heavy,
elegant oak chairs.
Sitting
around the table were deans, directors, and the assistant to the assistant vice-
chancellor, Bernard Slyder (Ed. D not Ph. D., a keen difference on a university
campus) who welcomed us, gave us a bit of a pep talk, and turned the meeting
over to his assistant. Dr. Slyder, a big man with an ample midsection, sat back
in his lush chair, crossed his arms, and commenced to shut his eyes, just like
that, which, in my ignorance, I figured helped him focus better.
Every once in a while, he’d smile and nod, briefly open his eyes, as if our reports met his satisfaction, then, again, nestle into his chair, and shut his eyes. He sure sounded like he was asleep, a slow steady breathing escaping between his lips. When the meeting finished, his eyes shot open, as if on a timer. He thanked us and said he’d see us next week.
After the
meeting, I asked my friends about it, telling them my suspicions. They laughed
and said, “Yeah, he was sleeping. The dude always sleeps through staff meeting.
It’s his prerogative.”
My friend Marty Montoya, in the office of “outreach
services,” said, “The vato does whatever he wants, ay.” Said another, “Yeah,
welcome to higher education.”
The stories
about Bernard Slyder were endless. A university chancellor, back in the 1960s, offered
Slyder a dean’s job because Slyder had once been mayor of the town where the
university was located.
Slyder’s
family had owned a popular electrical business in town. In the 1930’s, they’d
come to California from Oklahoma during the dust bowl period, and after
spending time working in the fields, got into the electrical business and struck
it rich when they got some lucrative contracts, hired more electricians, and built their own company.
Slyder’s
slick social skills made him important friends and kept work tools and colored
wires out of his hands. My understanding is that he made his way into the
Friday night poker games, where big time farmers gambled with university
bigwigs, and other town notables. It wasn’t long before they talked Slyer into local
politics.
As mayor, Slyder built a rolodex filled with the names of prominent politicians, mostly
Democrats, but some moderate Republicans, and since they worked a few miles up the
freeway at the state capital in Sacramento, they were always accessible. It was
a cool arrangement. Slyder promised to deliver them votes and they promised to pass bills benefiting his interests, whether business or education. Some old-timers say,
Slyder even hosted the Kennedy brothers at his Victorian home at the edge of town,
so it wasn’t long before other chancellors promoted Slyder, utilizing his
rolodex and figuring he couldn’t do much damage as an assistant vice-chancellor
of students and community relations.
Then came one
night in the late 1970s, a few years before I arrived. As the story goes, Slyder
checked out a university vehicle and returned it to the motor pool banged up,
but not like he’d had an accident, more like he’d parked outside a baseball
stadium and the foul balls had their way with the vehicle.
Rudy Moreno
was there to collect the keys when Dr. Slyder returned the vehicle to the motor pool. Rudy said
Slyder handed him the keys, told him to have a good night, got into his own
car, and drove away. No one knows how the story leaked, but when it did, the
whole campus was talking.
Now, this
story came to me secondhand, and like any secondhand telling, it means somebody
told somebody else, reliable? who knows for sure, but it became campus lore,
and from what I understand, is still making the rounds, nearly thirty-five
years later.
The way I heard it was Dr. Slyder checked out a university vehicle to attend a regularly scheduled Wednesday night
meeting in town. It was a large agricultural campus, spread out over hundreds
of acres, some cultivated for research and others virgin land, nicely wooded
nooks, good places to disappear for a few hours, which is what Dr. Slyder was
doing.
Each
Wednesday, at the appointed time, another car would pull up beside his, his
secretary, Marsha Montgomery, and she wasn’t there to take dictation or answer phones Some say
this had been going on for some time, months. Now, Dr. Slyder was no spring
chicken, as they say, but still spritely, according to some, and quite the
ladies’ man, but on this particular night, they were both in for a surprise.
No one admitted
to finally squealing to Marsha’s husband, but, somehow, he got wind of the affair
and took up his place behind a tree to confirm the rumors true. At the time of
his choosing, Al Montgomery, a mechanic in a part of Sacramento known as Norte
del Rio, a biker’s enclave at the northern-most edge of the city, came out from
behind a tree, a baseball bat over his shoulder, ready to pounce.
When Al peeked into the windows and confirmed the identity of the occupants inside the university vehicle, the mechanic, from Norte del Rio, lifted the Louisville slugger high over his head, brought it down, and began wailing on the hapless university vehicle, battering it in every spot imaginable, even grotesquely disfiguring the university name and logo on the driver’s door. It's not exactly clear what happened from that point on, except for Rudy Moreno, and the guys in the motor pool, who gave their rendering of Dr. Slyder, cool as a cucumber, returning the battered university vehicle to its home among the other university vehicles.
Rudy had no choice but to report the incident to his boss, with no explanation, since he had no idea what had happened. Rudy's boss reported it the appropriate authorities on campus, and the story hopped from lip to lip, ear to ear, from the lowest level clerk to the highest-level administrator in the chancellor’s office, who, along the way, reluctantly, filled in the blanks.
Strange,
though, right, it’s like it never happened, if in fact it did happen. That’s
the thing about secondhand stories, exaggeration and hyperbole, even if some swear
to its truth. I know Marsha worked on campus but secretary to the
director in the office of Academic Program Enhancement, a scholarly way of
saying “tutoring,” and Dr. Bernard Slyder, returned to his position, nary a question
about the incident.
In our
meetings, everything was normal, except for my friends’ eyerolling, Dr. Slyder,
welcoming us, turning the meeting over to his assistant, a rather young and pretty
administrator from Bringham Young, and he’d sit back in his plush chair, close
his eyes, lay his arms across his belly, as if he had not a care in the world.