First interview with H. Edwin Young

H. Edwin Young #117 Transcript

LS: This is an interview with Chancellor Edwin Young. I'm Laura Smail. We're talking in his office in Bascom Hall which he's about to leave and this is June 21st, 1977. Chancellor Young, I heard from Sol Levine that you were invited back here from Maine by Harrington to be a vice president.

EY: Yes.

LS: I hadn't known that.

EY: Yes.

LS: Did you come as that, or --

EY: Yes. I was vice-president for six weeks or so.

LS: And what was your view of what you were going to be doing?

EY: Oh, I was going to be helping Mr. Harrington in some legislative and other matters.

LS: Not international programs?

EY: Not particular, no.

LS: He thought you might be planning to get involved in --

EY: Well, I would have been, probably, because I'd already been involved. But I 00:01:00would have been sort of a generalist.

LS: And you'll be leaving Bascom early in July.

EY: Yes; sometime I suppose after the fourth.

LS: Many of the people I've talked to who have left Bascom, mainly people in the English Department, History, felt very sad. They feel that -- the German Department -- that there's a loss of contact between faculty and students. Do you have any regrets about --

EY: Leaving Bascom?

LS: Umm (affirmatively).

EY: Oh, yes. I'll never have as fine an office in my life as this one. This is -- I like this old building. I like being on the ground floor. I like the student traffic. You'll notice in my office, anybody can just push the door open and come in. They do sometimes (laughing); some people who'd rather -- but I see a lot of people and one of things about the new job is I will be removed from faculty/student contacts.

LS: Yeah.

EY: But nine years is long enough, I think, and I think the fact the place 00:02:00deserves some changes. I would have been retiring in a couple of years, anyway. [pause in tape]

LS: Well, I really want to talk about the TAA.

EY: Yes.

LS: And I guess my first sort of overall question is how much of your energy, emotional energy, time, thought, over your period as Chancellor has been -- what percentage -- has been devoted to problems having to do with the TAA and the TA's?

EY: Oh, relatively small; maybe four, five percent. In short periods of time, I've had to be concerned -- I was concerned at the time it was organized and at the time of the strike, but outside of that, I don't -- I haven't paid very much attention. I've met with them on a number of occasions, and five or six months 00:03:00ago, I met with a group from the TAA, but the actual bargaining's been carried on by other people in administration of the contract, and I don't second guess what they do. In fact, often I don't know. The assumption of the TA has been that I'm very deeply involved, but really have not been, that be-ith beyond certain critical times. I was very concerned at the time of the strike, as anybody would be.

LS: When you came, the Mulvihill Report was -- let's see . . . it must have been just about finished.

EY: I believe so, yes.

LS: Were you aware of it?

EY: Yes, and was concerned that we weren't implementing it, because I think that the -- I don't believe the implementation of it would have deterred an attempt at organization, but I think it would have made -- provided less support, 00:04:00because it did point out some things that needed correction and nobody did anything about it until we had the organization.

LS: So why not?

EY: Oh, the faculty thinks in long time spans that -- "We'll get around to it," that they're going to be here the rest of their lives. The TA's, of course, think much shorter spans, students do. I think it's the nature. One of the good things about a university is the longer view, and that's what -- but for patient people, it gets very annoying.

LS: And you presumably had no authority to push --

EY: No, no. It was a report really to--oh, I suppose if I'd made that my major activity, but remember, I came in the middle of a very serious, rough period. I had a lot of other things to do; keeping the place open.

LS: Ah, what has been -- or your own view, of faculty contact, of the percentage 00:05:00that students should have -- you know, Dave Cronin signed a statement saying he thought two-thirds of faculty contact hours really should be with full time faculty.

EY: Yes, well that seems a reasonable number, and actually I suspect it's that now. You see, it depends on how you do the count. The TA has one way of counting, but if you take the total number of hours, you can get different results, you see.

LS: Yes, I do know that. I hoped I had worded it right; maybe I haven't.

EY: Yes, well anyway . . but on the other hand, I think there's another side to it, and that is that you can't have a uniform rule. One of the interesting things that's going on now is the discussion of laying off tenured faculty in 00:06:00some of the universities. We aren't going to be faced with that problem in Madison, partly because when there was a sudden bulge, we were able to use TA's; now we can increase and decrease the numbers so it serves some -- so over time, I think, we're likely to decrease somewhat as we get stabilized. To rush out and hire a lot of people in the poor market wouldn't' have been very wise. It wouldn't have been very good for the students, either. Of course, my own view is that properly supervised TA instruction can be very good instruction, but I would say of the credit hours that a student takes, I'd say two-thirds ought to be from senior people. I'd personally use student, as credit hours, rather than contact hours because some of those contact hours are kind of --

LS: Three [hundred level?].

EY: Discussion groups in small -- or drills in language or labs; a lot of different ways of saying it, but I'd say two-thirds of the credit ought to be taught by senior people probably; no magic about it. In some fields, they're all -- some students get almost 100 percent, and others take courses -- one time I had a group of students, radical students, demanding that there be more small classes that would take more minority students and we'd have a small population in the university which, of course were part of their demands, and so I said to them, "Well, now, look, I've got a printout that we have on all these small classes. Why don't you take those? What are you fussing about these big classes for?" "Oh, well, it's harder to take small classes because the professor knows what you're doing, so we take the big ones to avoid the hard work." So, you 00:08:00know, this kind of criticism is kind of silly. So I don't pay as much attention to some of that. I think some people teach superbly in large classes. Harvey Goldberg who was, you know, an idol of the radical kids a few years ago, takes a lot of -- he gets turned on with a big crowd. My professor, Selig Perlman, was one of the greatest labor his -- THE greatest labor historians. He didn't get going unless there were 100 people in front of him, and he was tremendous and he was, you know, voted very high; one of the most popular teachers. In those days, they elected outstanding teachers. Other people can only teach with a handful. [Word unclear] couldn't -- no more than a dozen people could hear him. So you get all kinds of situations, so we need to, I think, think through what the course is, what's trying to be achieved, more than any arbitrary numbers, I 00:09:00think. I don't believe it's possible to hire full time faculty to teach elementary languages, math, you see.

LS: No.

EY: On the other hand -- and probably not to run labs, routine beginning labs. I'd rather actually take a number and go at it from the point of view: What does this person do? I'm also very concerned that some people don't properly supervise and by supervise, I really mean help, the TA. There's some knack to the trade. One ought to meet with TA's and they ought to have a hand in -- not from the point of view of authority, but from the point of view of good management of -- discussed with the professor what's being taught, what the objectives are, make suggestions.

LS: That's one of the things that was missing in the '60's for many --

EY: Yes, now I used to -- I was a TA and I had to -- I taught courses of 400 00:10:00students and I had lots of TA's and had great respect for their abilities and their contribution, but it was necessary to meet with them and advise them. There's some tricks to the trade of teaching: How do you handle a class? How do you keep one person from dominating a discussion section? And all these little things that make sure that people [would rather?] come and that the discussion isn't a repetition of the lecture or a repetition of the textbook and so on.

LS: Yes, well of course the purpose of the TA as the faculty claims is to train teachers [words unclear]

EY: Yes, yes, but I don't like the suggestion which was put forward to me recently by somebody who came in demanding why -- he's a former head of the TA's, but he now works for a radio station, came to interview me. "Wasn't it criminal," he didn't say criminal, some other word, "that the university didn't require TA's and professors to take courses in pedagogy in the School of 00:11:00Education?" Well, (laughing) I don't agree with that but I do agree that they need some help from master teachers.

LS: When did you -- were you aware that there was a TAA on campus at the time you came?

EY: I don't know.

LS: It was very small.

EY: Yes. I don't recall their organization, but I wouldn't have been surprised at it, because remember the TAA formed -- had two roles: one was to try to be a traditional trade union, but it was also a radical organization to support radical activities and it always was working both sides of that --

LS: Well, the trade union side didn't come on for quite awhile.

EY: They claimed to be it, but they didn't really do much about it, but they were, really. And so it was another vehicle for organizing some demonstrations and so on, supporting radical activities.

LS: Now the Shabaz proposal when it exploded on the scene, when did you know about that? Do you remember how you heard about it?

EY: That was in what?

LS: That was in -- out of state tuition for graduate students should not be remitted.

EY: Oh, I probably didn't know about it in advance; very unlikely that I would have, but I don't recall.

LS: But you were -- had to be notified.

EY: Well of course if I were around, yes.

LS: Well, so, what did you --

EY: What's my reaction?

LS: Yeah. What did you do about it?

EY: I guess I'd forgotten -- I suppose I tried to -- I don't remember what I did, but what I would have been likely to have done is to tried to get some estimate of how much -- how effective it was going to be, and then try to get some lobbying behind the scenes to make sure it was killed. This is my typical way. See, I don't go out in the papers and denounce people usually. If somebody 00:13:00asks me, I would have said it would be very wrong, but I normally don't just grab the headlines. I would more likely go down and talk to two or three knowledgeable people around the legislature and said, "Now, how serious is this?"

LS: Did you?

EY: I can't recall I did. By the way, you might find out by talking to Jerry [Engle?] or looking at -- see, things moved so fast. I had so many things going on. I was dealing with police departments and national guard and there were a lot of things besides -- see, the TA looms large to you because it's what you're working on, but to me, it was just one thing.

LS: Yeah. As I say, it exploded on the scene.

EY: Yes.

LS: From the point of view of the TAA, but for you it was just --

EY: It was one more --

LS: That's interesting, because I really did think that you would have remembered it more. It seems -- everybody says that's how it began.

EY: Yes. Well, see, I've had a lot of things laid on top of that.

LS: Yes, yes, of course.

Well, then, do you remember the first meeting when Hank Haslach brought a campaign to your office with some union leaders?

EY: You mean from the labor --

LS: Let's see . . . [Glenn Van Curran?] and Tom King and Dick Kingston?

EY: Well, I knew I knew that the group came, but I don't remember much about it and you see, on a number of occasions, they brought people in, but I wouldn't remember much of the details. The date would probably be in the calendar that they made an appointment, but I wasn't--

LS: But it didn't make an impression on you as --

EY: Well, it made some impression, of course. It -- you see, the thing that I was aware of all through this and this is, as I say now, I haven't told people this: I was operating some kind of strategy, you probably guessed. I don't know if you figured out what it was. I wasn't concerned about the TA's. I was 00:15:00concerned with our continued relation with the rest of the labor movement and so in my dealings with the TA's, I always had to act very carefully that I didn't appear to be anti-labor. See, I have been, from the time I was -- got my Ph.D. here, or even before, I'd worked with the labor movement. I was director of the School for Workers. That was an emergency thing just to fill in until we found somebody. I had been on the University Labor Management Committee as a management member for years and we had, even before there was a union, very -- before the state recognized unions -- very good working relations with our unions. It still goes on, as you probably know. Don King and I are friends, by the way.

LS: Yes.

EY: And so the -- I didn't want to jeopardize that. So if they brought labor people in, at that time I didn't know Tom King. He was -- I don't know what he 00:16:00was -- but union representative, but I knew a lot of labor people. My whole concerns throughout this whole thing was the relations with the labor movement. The TA's couldn't do anything to us. I had beat them in that. See, I could have killed them off at the first strike. They were beaten at the end, but Arlen Christenson and other people said, "Well," you know, "let's not push them too hard," and I went along with it. But they came to me later -- they caved, but see, I do believe that people have a right to organize if they want to. I argue against faculty doing it because I think faculty governance is better than any union contract, but the TA's never had faculty governance and I never gave it to them, you see. And so I always had a different feeling about them and their right to -- and I knew about the Mulvihill Report and felt -- and I knew there were some real grievances as well as the radical activities; so I had a good 00:17:00deal of sympathy for the TA's throughout all this, even though I had to be fairly tough in my official relationship with them because some of them were using it for other purposes, but it was kind of a mixed thing with me.

LS: It must have been.

EY: So I would have been very -- at the time . . . whatever, I don't remember the particular episode, but I would have treated them more seriously, because I was really dealing with the other labor people. I knew, for instance, that if I took a very anti-labor stand, the pressure that the TA's were putting on the labor people to observe their picket lines would have been more fruitful. So that's what I was -- that was the game from all along was not to let our TA thing damage our relationship with bona fide trade unions. I never considered a student union bona fide trade union for this reason: that the turnover is such 00:18:00that the people you're dealing with across the table have no investment in the future. I don't think collective bargaining works if neither the employer or the employees aren't going to be there in the future and we go through this with MULO -- this charade of bargaining. Well, now they've got a bill in the legislature, this local, Jack Klarenbach, to force us to bargain wages with MULO. Well that's fine for his student constituency, but it's a damn poor policy for state, and the -- but the reason is, is there's no continuity to them. You get one thing worked out with one group -- for instance, we had one president of the TAA whose wife was pregnant, so she wanted a doctor of her own choosing. I was trying to provide them with much better health service but no, they had to have insurance so she could have a doctor of her own choice. And the next year they said, "Well, why didn't you give us the -- why can't we use the student health service?" which I tried to give them the year before, you see. It's this 00:19:00kind of lack of continuity; but so be it. It's part of their education, too.

LS: Do you -- does anybody say this to them?

EY: Oh, they don't pay any attention, of course. Hank Haslach -- there's no point in saying it to Hank Haslach. He's been here longer than I have (laughing).

LS: That's true.

EY: But by and large -- and, of course, one has to say, "What is their alternative?" you see -- "What is the alternative?" because the faculty hadn't acted earlier.

But take the TA's now -- as near as I can tell, the reason the English Department gave up teaching composition was because the TA's refused to do it. All they wanted to teach was Revolutionary Literature -- not all of them, though. And by the way, it is always -- when we talk about these groups, I'm talking about the activist ones.

LS: Yes, I know.

EY: And not the great bulk, so these departments stopped teaching composition. Now the TA's are the ones who are demanding -- they're outraged -- they want to appear before the Regents and demand that we teach it -- ought to provide jobs 00:20:00for the TA's (laughing) and it's necessary. It's got to be done, but they were the ones who killed it.

LS: Were you very alarmed when that happened? When the English Department canceled the composition course?

EY: Well, if they couldn't control the TA's, there wasn't much point, you see? After all, if they were using the classes to kind of -- at least some of them -- to discuss, talk about -- no, I'm concerned, I happen to believe that reading and writing are the most important things we do around here.

LS: Well, I know you're getting it started again.

EY: Well, I've always felt that way. See, I'm really quite a fundamentalist. I think if anyone knows some fundamentals of science and writing, and I don't believe you can write without writing. I think you have to -- in fact, my writing isn't as good as it was when I graduated from college because I was writing a lot, you see. One has to do it a lot. A dictating machine isn't a very good device for writing. If I care about a letter, I write it out in long hand. 00:21:00So I was -- but under our system, that's the English Department's decision. I was bothered by it, but I couldn't -- I don't really believe that a Chancellor can second guess a department in our structure, even when I may believe privately that they're wrong, because actually most of the time -- I have great confidence in departmental systems, the larger departments particularly. Some of the small ones get one or two people and they go a little hay wire sometimes, I think, but the large department, the people involved with the subject -- part of it, of course, is that the English people -- they're literary people, and we were asking to do high school work, you see. That's the problem with it. It's a contradiction. We have the same thing in beginning math now, and we have it in beginning languages. We never have, will have -- this is why TA's, at least in 00:22:00the schools where they don't have TA's and they hire lecturers, well we've got -- a couple of our very bitter women around here on the staff are people who have been lecturers in teaching beginning languages for years. They want to be professors; treated like professors, after all, you see, and so it's a very serious problem.

LS: Yes, I know.

EY: So how one gets better -- in the long run, we ought to get back into secondary schools.

LS: Can you do anything about that?

EY: I think public pressure will do it.

LS: But did you help it along?

EY: Oh, with pressure from here as much as we can, but in the meantime, we have to do some immediate work. But I'll pressure it. I'll talk about and we'll get around the state. But I can't put myself in a position of saying, "Well, I know how to run the public schools. I may not run the university very well, but I can run public schools." (laughing) Because, see, I blame the public for what's 00:23:00happened. When you pressure the teachers to teach so much human relations and social adjustment and not let every pass and all the things that our public has done to the schools, then-- my children come home from West High School talking about the economics they're learning in Social Science, it makes me weep. As economists, you know, it just makes you weep because they're not talking about anything that's important at all. It's like some of the environmentalist. They just get carried away with -- anything that affects the environment is all equal (laughing). Well, I don't think it's equal. You're getting a lot of opinions today which perhaps don't pertain too closely.

LS: [Words unclear]. But, I would like to know: you said you were concerned with your relations with the union.

EY: Yes.

LS: What about your relations with the faculty?

EY: Well, I was concerned with that, too, and that's why we tried to get some faculty involved, and if you'll notice -- the faculty -- many of them were 00:24:00critical of me.

LS: Yes.

EY: But they weren't -- they hadn't solved the problem, and I had to face the problem. I had to make a decision, and I made it, and I don't regret the decision I made. At that time, the law was -- there was no clear law. Later on -- if it had come up some years later, after the law was clarified, I wouldn't have recognized the union. But at the time, it seemed that the faculty position, by and large, they weren't willing to do very much.

LS: I suppose you're right. You could say, "Well, you didn't -- you had your chance with the Mulvihill Report."

EY: Yes, and the faculty didn't stand up and speak against the TAA pretty much; a few did. The faculty got excited when -- and I consider myself a faculty member -- when they want to take over one of the classes. The faculty really didn't care very much how hard they pressed the administration on money or hours, things like that, as long as it didn't annoy the faculty.

LS: They're very split right now.

EY: So I had to use my -- see, the thing that I did know, that I had so much backing support that they were willing to let me make some mistakes, see. I have done things all the time that I've been Chancellor which faculty, different groups of faculty, disapproved of at different times, but taken on the whole, I've had very strong backing and so they say, "Well, you know, you're soft headed about that," but on the whole, and so I can get away with it. The other side of it, you know, is nobody wanted the job anyway (laughing).

LS: Did you -- well, you did consult with faculty, then.

EY: Oh, yes.

LS: Did they -- this group came, as I understand, one week and you said, "No, I won't recognize you," and then a week passed and then you called up Muehlencamp and said, "Yes, c'mon over and talk." I'm not sure if that's the way it went, 00:26:00but what countered for your changing?

EY: Well, I must have -- I thought it over and I suppose I discussed it with many -- with a number of people, but I really made up my own mind. That was my decision and nobody else should be blamed for it. I'm probably -- I thought about it a good deal. See, the thing that bothered me about it was that when we have the law, national policy, that people have a right to organize and bargain through representatives of their own choosing, and I knew that I didn't have to recognize them. See, if I'd have said, "Yes," that day, I would have no choice. Saying, "No," I knew it could go the other way. You see, if somebody's pushing you with something, you can say, "no," and buy some time, but if you say, "yes," you're finished, so that's probably what I -- but I don't -- but you see, I don't have that kind of memory that would --

LS: O.K. That's alright.

EY: Well, and I hardly believe most people do. Some people speak as if they had 00:27:00it all -- remembered everything, but they don't really.

LS: Were there Regents that -- did you have to worry about what they might say?

EY: Oh, I didn't worry too much about it, because if we consulted the Regents, they're quite conservative. If I'd asked them to do it, they wouldn't have done it probably.

LS: Yeah.

EY: But again, they needed me then.

LS: Yeah. I see. That's right.

EY: Yes (laughing). You know, I --

LS: I see, yes.

EY: Yes, I've been able to have my own way about a number of things (laughing).

LS: On the -- in the Structure Agreement, the main issue was the right to strike.

EY: Yes.

LS: And there's a lot of fuzziness there.

EY: Yes.

LS: And your understanding was that there wasn't a right to strike.

EY: That's right.

LS: Absolutely.

EY: Um-hmm (affirmatively).

LS: No sort of around the corners.

EY: No.

LS: Because according to, Feinsinger has written an article, [word unclear] he'll probably ask you about all this. It suggests -- it says that the 00:28:00administration knew that really there was a right to strike at the time.

EY: No, that's not true.

LS: [Words unclear]

EY: No.

LS: Or a right to strike on non-bargaining issues. That is, that they were just confined by the state law as to --

EY: That's just interpreting the law, but I never took that interpretation. See, I refused to accept that interpretation. I heard that argument, but that meant that you could trump up -- you could have a strike anytime; just trump up some other reason. See, they could say that they had a right to -- they used to argue that as long as they weren't striking and we were bargaining about it, they could strike in support against the war or they could strike for this -- whatever group was demonstrating or something, and I just said, "The hell with that."

LS: As far as you were concerned [words unclear] --

EY: No. If you made it a study of various public employers in the state of Wisconsin who have had strikes, who was the toughest one?

LS: Ah . . .

EY: There's a school, you know, the case two or three years -- Hortonville -- the school [words unclear] denied. They got [words unclear], no strike.

LS: Did you -- you consulted Jim Stern.

EY: Yes.

LS: Did you know Marketti?

EY: Yeah, slightly. I got to know him -- he was a student of Jim's.

LS: Yes.

EY: Very abled person, but determined to raise hell.

LS: Yeah; and Hank Haslach.

I would be interested in what you thought of them as people to deal with.

EY: Oh, I didn't like dealing WITH them, as people deal with -- see, because they didn't -- they weren't really interested in trade unionism. It wasn't really collective bargaining. It was dealing with a radical group who were using the guise of collective bargaining to -- and I had to go through the format of 00:30:00it, but they really weren't -- we weren't doing that. What they were concerned about was other things, really, at that time.

LS: That's true, of course.

EY: Yeah. And they were using the trade union movement, you see. I don't know what Marketti's doing now, but I suspect he's been fired lately.

LS: He's in West Virginia. I just yesterday saw an interview with him. He's been working in a mine.

EY: Um-hmm. But he worked for a union and I think he got fired from that.

LS: Yes.

EY: I think, you see -- because it's his nature, I think, to try to use the union to organize for other -- this is a standard operating procedure. It's going on all over the country now, reminiscent of the '30's and '50's -- disciples. The radicals will be in school and they'll try to get something going and organize a revolution. They can't get it going, and then they read their text with some version of Marxism, that is really to organize the workers, and 00:31:00then they were being exploited, and you know they are being terribly exploited. They then -- but they don't know it, and so they join the unions and then they get very active in the committees and they volunteer and then they try to take over. It won't work-- [pause in tape]

EY: But they're getting, right now, all over the country -- they're giving unions a lot of difficulty.

LS: "This group" -- you mean --

EY: Yes, this group. See, all the proportionate numbers, because they go to all of the meetings. They wait -- everybody else goes home. They're still there. It's the standard procedure, but they won't succeed because after awhile, they'll throw them out again, but this is going on and it will happen. The Markettis of this world and just as regular, the Haslachs. Of course, Haslach hasn't really gotten to a real union, but --

LS: Well, some of these people stayed in the academic world and have become quite respectable.

EY: Yes.

LS: Probably in the way Hank Haslach has.

EY: Very respectable?

LS: Well, in a way, not entirely.

EY: What's he doing?

LS: He said he's teaching minority groups or underprivileged at the Engineering School. He's teaching Math, remedial Math.

EY: Oh, my God, why is he -- they keep hiring and hiring him. You see, under the agreement, he's only supposed to be here five years, on the payroll.

LS: He's been here since 1965.

EY: Yes.

LS: And he hasn't finished his Ph.D. He's still working on it.

EY: No, no. I wish him no -- as long as he stays away from me, I have no concern, but I could -- you see, I could never regard him as a trade unionist, in the real sense of it.

LS: No, that's right. He didn't regard himself as a --

EY: No. He was a vehicle for --

LS: Yeah. But they're -- this accounts for their abusive language. Now, Jim Stern said that it was perfectly normal to use expressions like, "Kick your ass," and all that sort of thing, but [Cab DeCobly?] said -- who's also had 00:33:00bargaining experience -- said it was absolutely out of the question in union bargaining. Now, what --

EY: Well, ah, they're much worse than the unions. Some union people do this, but it isn't thought very well and most don't. But there are some who are quite profane -- the profanity is much more -- and vulgarity, too.

LS: Yeah.

EY: But not the mean, bitterness of the personal attacks that some of these people -- and they would pound on the table and act -- they did behave outrageously.

LS: Well, now, I thought so, and certainly all the faculty I've talked to thought so.

EY: Yeah, but the way the university thinks -- see, in some ways, if I hadn't had the TAA, I should have invented them, because there's nothing that's inoculated our faculty so much against unionism as the TA's, because some of them, see, that's their own experience with them, and they think that's what unions are like. Well, it's not true. It isn't fair to unions because they're not like that (laughing), but if you really wanted to inoculate --

LS: We better take that part off the tape.

EY: Oh, I don't care.

LS: Just joking.

EY: As long as people don't take it too seriously.

LS: Jim Stern said that this wouldn't bother people, and I told him that faculty --

EY: Well, look. I can tell you something -- that recently, some of the state people are quite bothered by some of the use of language they've had from the public employees union, which is a little bit -- they've been acting a little similar, and these are people that used to love bargaining. They don't like it, and they don't know -- they're really very upset by it. It's a form of harassment and insult.

LS: Yeah. Well, Ed Krinsky said that if he had known that he was in for that sort of thing, he might not have taken the job [words unclear].

EY: Yes, and he's had a lot of experience as mediator, you see. I've been -- you know, I'm a mediator, arbitrator. I've been around collective bargaining a lot, 00:35:00but there's nothing like -- of course, I never dealt much with the TA's.

LS: No, but some -- so, Neil Bucklew was suggested, like Jim Stern says -- he said he suggested him. Did you -- the TA's didn't like him very well.

EY: No. They didn't like anybody who didn't agree with them.

LS: How did you -- did he keep in as close touch with faculty, that is the Dean's Office, as Krinsky did? Do you know?

EY: I think he kept in touch with some people, but I don't know how much. He wasn't here a very long time, but he kept some contact. We were always -- see, we always were very much aware of the fact that we had to have faculty support and even if it was grudging sometimes and an involvement with the deans, but I 00:36:00don't know. Bob Doremus could tell you how much because, you see, L and S was the principle --

LS: I didn't think of asking him that. I'll talk to him again --

EY: By the way, he has a very good memory.

LS: Yes.

EY: And this is one of the sharpest minds in the university, Bob Doremus is. Anybody who gets straight A's in Physics major in Harvard is pretty bright. (laughing)

LS: That's right. [Words unclear] Yes, one of the important things to do in this job is to go back and talk to people. I do talk to them a few times.

EY: Sure.

LS: But why was Christenson there if Bucklew was -- because Krinsky didn't have --

EY: Well, but Christenson was the person who was working for me as my lawyer and had some collective bargaining experience. I guess the one thing I can say about Arlen is he's so patient and wants to leave good -- everybody good and has good 00:37:00intentions in this world, but you gotta -- that's where we went farther than we should have gone; Arlen Christenson -- he's just a -- I guess he's what -- if it weren't -- at least, what, 20 years ago would have been called a Christian (laughing).

LS: Yeah.

EY: But -- no, he's a very nice person and he believes it, you see. He tried -- he wanted to believe that they really were good intentioned. I knew better. I knew what they were up to.

LS: As a matter of fact, he said that. He kept hoping.

EY: Yes.

LS: He had a lot invested in making the agreement.

EY: Yes.

LS: And he quoted you as saying, "You don't necessarily win just because you get an agreement."

EY: Yeah.

LS: But Doremus, in fact, thought that he was a better bargainer, Bucklew was.

EY: I don't know. Well, I don't know . . . but, you see, Christenson gave -- set the first framework. At least he got on better with the TA's because they could 00:38:00see that he was one of the -- he was so eager to have an agreement. See, I think this is -- anytime you get yourself in the frame of mind that you've got to have an agreement, you've lost part of the collective bargaining. You've got to believe that you can only pay a certain price for an agreement, and beyond that you won't go. Otherwise, you'll start giving it away. I've watched quite a bit of this stuff. It's like, you know, people say, "There's nothing as bad as war." Well there are worse things than war. Some people in [Gander?] are dying because they can't stand that character. It's better to be -- to die than be [sliced?] and it's like collective bargaining: lots of things worse to give away than to let a company go bankrupt in order to prevent a strike or to -- in the state 00:39:00service, to make it impossible to manage it. So -- but you have to have that frame of mind, you see, and I think Arlen didn't really want to believe that.

LS: But he's a bargainer himself, isn't he? I mean, hasn't he done --

EY: Oh, since then he's done -- yes, he's done some, yeah, but there's always dealing with people, you see, who didn't want to settle. See, that was the other side of it. These people wanted -- if Haslach had his way, there would be a continuous strike, you see. So there's a difference. Now, I have an advantage that some of these other people didn't have. I had studied labor history and had had these radical kids in my classes over the years and I knew them quite well. When I was an undergraduate in Maine I was president of what they called the 00:40:00Liberal Club there which was kind of a -- somewhat left of center and main -- it wasn't very far left, and the Communist tried to take over, so I dealt with them, you see.

I dealt with them here in '45 when I was a graduate student. I watched them try to take over the veterans organizations. I've seen this game played. And I'm not saying Haslach is a communist, but the tactic's the same. Where the objective is is destruction, not settlement. So, you see, all Arlen's experiences have been with people who want the firm to continue. They want the settlement; like the state employees. They want a settlement. Now, they're probably -- I would guess there's a few of those people who don't, because they're some of these same people who have taken jobs and they're in that union now, but the great bulk of those employees want a settlement, and Tom King knows that, whatever he -- [words unclear]. But Arlen was dealing with people who didn't want to settle. They would have wanted -- except on such terms -- they would have raised the 00:41:00ante every time.

LS: Yeah. Doremus said that Hank Haslach's face lighted up when Tom King said that they could go on strike.

EY: Yes.

LS: But Arlen Christenson did say that it was unusually difficult to bargain. Now maybe you've covered that in what you've just said, but his point was that there was no central decision making. In other words, that you couldn't just say right off the bat, "O.K." or not, but you had to consult with some people.

EY: Me? From my side, you mean, or from the other --

LS: From your side.

EY: Oh . . .

LS: I mean, he couldn't call you up and say, "Shall we do this?" and you couldn't immediately say, "Yes," or "no." You'd have to say, "Well, what will the faculty think? What are [the reasons?]?" Is that --

EY: Well, it's some of that, but that's a way of slowing it down, too. (laughing) It's a mixture. Obviously I couldn't -- I had to get -- see, the 00:42:00Regents could have overruled me, so I had to feel my way along a bit. But some of it -- one of the other things in collective bargaining -- see, the union always says, "We've got to go back to the membership."

LS: Yeah.

EY: That gives them a second crack at it. Why shouldn't I do the same? The fellow up front should never -- who's at the table should never be allowed to really -- right off the top of his head make a commitment, because there's no way of taking it back, you see. So they say, "Come back. We've got to talk it over and let's look it" -- gives you a second crack at it. The union always does that.

LS: So he had two stations: he could go to you and you could go to somebody else.

EY: Yeah. And the other thing -- and I did have -- I had to keep them reluctantly with me, you see. I did have my politicking to do. See, if I had -- I don't -- I can imagine what it was. If I was going to make some serious 00:43:00concession which would have the Regents' approval, it's much better to get the approval in advance than confronted with it.

LS: The Regents?

EY: Yeah, or some people.

LS: Oh, I see. So you called them as well when you had to -- on some of these things.

EY: Well, I suppose on one or two instances, yes, or maybe the president of the board or something, so he could say well, he'd been informed, or something like that. Now, they weren't very happy about this, but at least -- I had to -- you know, and then onto the faculty, you know. I had to carry a constituency with me, but there's two reasons for not giving them authority: one was I had to carry the constituents, but the other one was I didn't want to give it away. I mean, I didn't want them to get caught, you see, in saying, "Well" -- making a mistake or misunderstanding, because they would have never -- when you're dealing with a union across the table, anything you can say, you never can get back. So, it's a combination of the two things, I suspect.

LS: Were the Regents -- would they possibly also be saying, "We'll make these statements for the public that we're opposed to them, but really we'll follow along with whatever is out there."

EY: No.

LS: No.

EY: I don't think so. They never said that. No, they gave me a good deal of support on things they didn't believe in, but they never made a statement like that.

LS: I don't mean made it, I mean would they do it? Would that be a way of offering -- that you'd [protest?].

EY: You see, the Regents -- there's many different ways as there are Regents, but they were never -- see, the Regents had never --

LS: [Words unclear], yeah.

EY: They don't see much of each other. People always think of them as a block, but it's the most divided group of people. They come together once a month. Now some of them get on the phone and talk to each other, at that period more than now. See, they're very conscious of public meeting law. These Regents -- if we 00:45:00have a cocktail party at my house, they won't come to any conclusion about anything. If they discussed anything, it wouldn't be conclusive. They're not going to get caught disobeying the law. See, it's very awkward. They're really very -- in private, they're very meticulous about being legal, which is good. If it's the law, it's the law. I think they have to be.

LS: And you also said that you were slowing things down, that it was --

EY: I mean, that is -- it slows down making a decent decision, in a sense coming back. It gives us time to think about it.

LS: Yeah, but I meant in the sense that bargaining started sometime in May or June and went all the way through to January. Now, was this deliberate?

EY: No. It was because they were impossible demands, you see. The demands were 00:46:00impossible. They were designed to be unacceptable.

LS: Jim Stern said that he felt your faculty advisors were much more conservative than the larger body of faculty and that they, the faculty, in fact would be willing to go -- to make more concessions with than --

EY: I don't think so. I think that the ones who were talking would, but if you -- it's like the [word unclear]. I've been [presenting?] with [word unclear] for all these years. There's a group that does a lot of talking, and they're much more liberal, but sitting over there is a great number of people who don't agree with it and they don't say anything, but they're there, and they're the people that keep -- they're very important people to me.

LS: And they come to all the meetings, yes.

EY: And they're much more important than some of the people who do a lot of talking, you know; whether Anatole Beck agrees with me or not, it really doesn't bother me very much, but to have a very senior scientist in the College of Agriculture who's a well figure unhappy, that makes a difference. So I think I'm probably better -- I have a great affection and respect for Jim Stern, as you know, but I think I'm a better judge of faculty than [word unclear].

LS: Well, what he said was that he called you up about the last week, just towards the end, and said that you weren't going far enough in making concessions, such a giving the TA's a four year appointment instead of one and some other things, and I think he came over and talked to you.

EY: Probably.

LS: You don't remember that.

EY: No. But, you see, I saw so many people coming and going on about so many 00:48:00issues, I wouldn't remember which ones. You see --

LS: So, from your point of view, this wasn't a turning point.

EY: His coming over?

LS: Yeah.

EY: I can't recall; that he's coming to talk to me?

LS: Yeah.

EY: I would have always listened carefully to Jim. I have great respect for his judgment. I think I've always had one doubt, though: I think he's so committed to collective bargaining that when in doubt, he would have an agreement and he would go further than I would. For instance, he's not as concerned about faculty collective bargaining as I am, probably, but because he's so devoted to it, you know, and he sees it as another -- I'm absolutely such a traditionalist about university governance. Remember, Jim came out of the -- at that time, hadn't long been out of the auto workers.

LS: Yeah. Yes, I realized after I talked to him that he had a very different point of view from the ordinary faculty.

EY: Yes, yes; very different, you see.

And so he -- we were looking for somebody in the department and Elizabeth Brandeis said that, "I was on a program in Milwaukee with a young man from the auto workers named Stern and we ought to get him," and it was very unusual to hire people out of a unions; [most at fashion?] level. So I discovered that -- I got some papers about him, discovered that he was going to be speaking to a union group in Portage or someplace, so I drove up and sat in the audience and listened and he did such a tremendous job of explaining the rules of position, but then he said -- he said, "Now, that's the official position. As an economist, I don't agree with it altogether," now, and they said, "What don't 00:50:00you agree with?" and he explained very carefully and he presented it so fairly and so well, and I thought, "We've got to get this man."

LS: Was he a Ph.D.?

EY: Yes.

LS: He was a scholar.

EY: Oh, from Berkeley -- his Ph.D. from Berkeley.

LS: Oh, that's right; that's right.

EY: Yeah. Oh, I have a great respect for his analytical ability. I've always saw him -- but on the faculty, I think I have a better sense, maybe, or I did then -- maybe I've lost it now, but it's a long -- but I think, you know, that's my stock and trade, you know, after all -- getting along with the faculty -- he's fishing with a weak line.

LS: Well, were you then holding these things off? What Feinsinger said was that you always kept some things in your back pocket which you could give in on at the last minute.

EY: I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, this is so normal for bargaining, you see. 00:51:00If you put everything out front, there's nothing to settle with. But, see, the union always takes everything you offer, and then the bargaining goes on from there. But then you can carry it to ridiculous things and you'll have to be a little careful with some of this stuff when you edit it, I hope (laughing), but take the local situations going on in the state. See, Tom King's making a lot of propaganda. They're giving the unrepresented employees seven percent and the state's offer is two percent. You see, the state is only offering state employees two percent. Now, they don't -- nobody took that seriously, but they shouldn't have done it, see. It's offering so little so they can get more. They should have offered something more, I think. So you don't hold back everything. You make some reasonable offer, but you have to have something back if you're going to settle.

LS: I see. That's right. In 1976, the Dean's office wanted a class size of 28 00:52:00and you -- and that would have been out of the questions for you --

EY: Yeah.

LS: To offer that. It would have been outrageous.

EY: Yeah, sure.

LS: Yes.

EY: But, you know, a lot of this isn't very calculated. I don't --

LS: Well, it's your nature, or your training.

EY: Well, I just do it off the top of the head, usually. I'm not a very calculating person. But people think I'm -- I've got a reputation for being a little -- almost -- some people would go so far as to say "devious" because they can't figure out what I'm up to. It's because I don't have it figured out myself, you see (laughing) and so there's no way of predicting what I'm going to do.

LS: I hadn't heard that you were devious from the people I've talked to.

EY: Well --

LS: But everybody -- the expression always is, "Keeps things close to his chest."

EY: That's exactly the opposite, you see. But do you know how to hide things?

LS: Hmm?

EY: If you want to hide something, where do you put it?

LS: Well, it depends on --

EY: Well, often if you put it right out in the middle of the room, nobody sees it.

LS: [Words unclear]

EY: (laughing) Yes, you see? So I don't hide it. They think I do, but I don't really.

LS: So you weren't as upset -- you weren't upset, then, by the possible TA strike?

EY: Well, I didn't want a strike, but I thought a strike was much better than giving away the shop, because that's what the decision was. It wasn't did I want -- I didn't want it. You see, because you didn't know what the strike was going to lead to.

LS: Well, that's what I would like to know, what you did foresee.

EY: Well, what I saw was I calculated. I have to -- this is the way I would normally behave under these things, so I assume I did at the time. I would look at it this way, and I'm sure, at least, it developed this: if there's a strike, 00:54:00will the rest of -- see, I didn't worry about the TA's. I worried about the other unions. Would they go out on the picket lines? That's the issue. Therefore, in the behavior with the TA's, I had to act reasonable. As long as I acted reasonable, and we did -- we made concessions that we probably shouldn't have made, but as long as I acted that way and then there was a strike, I thought the labor movement would -- the other people -- they didn't like the TA's. See, the traditional trade unionist is a fairly conservative person, and I know that, see. Now, I know that when they go talk to certain -- and meet the leaders, they'll get some words, but my lines to the labor people were better than the TA's lines.

LS: Did you call labor people up and ask them what they were going to --

EY: No. You wouldn't call them and ask them what they're going to do. That's unfair. You try to guess from the best evidence you can get your hands on. Some 00:55:00of them might have --

LS: The Capital Times said you would work your . . . I've forgotten the phrase . . . but that both you and the union were working terribly hard at -- on the state of the various unions.

EY: Well, some of my people were working with them, I suspect. I can't believe they weren't. So I kept -- I had some conversations, but I wouldn't call up and say, "Are you going to do it or not?" I would be more likely to call up and say, "Well, Joe, I understand you're under pressure from the TA. Maybe you'd like to hear my side of it," and in the middle of the conversation, I would probably come to some conclusion. It's conceivable we might have had, but you don't -- see, it's dangerous to ask that question, because for a labor person to say, "We won't honor picket lines," is a pretty hard thing for them to say. What you have to do is estimate what they're going to do by your own -- what you know about 00:56:00it. But I'm -- people can't push me around. You can push me only so far. See, I'd rather lose a strike than be the one that gave away the governance in the university. And so -- but you never know in a strike what's going to happen. There's too many variables. See, somebody might have gotten killed - - they fired a gun into the Chemistry tank with chemicals and did some other things. Other things happened at the same time. They didn't deny doing them, they just wouldn't admit it in some of those things, but later on some of the leaders went to Minneapolis to talk to the people up there and they said that the thing they should have done is use more violence. They should have used more violence; that 00:57:00they had us on the run. They didn't understand me very well.

LS: You would have tightened up a little bit.

EY: What?

LS: You would have tightened up.

EY: Yeah. Actually, it's like these kids came in the other day and were going to take over the office and barricade the doors and I wouldn't let them. I just stood and held the door myself so they couldn't move me. So I get almost a little irrational, but I'm stubborn, and so I wouldn't go. And see this is why I was useful in these years when people wanted to close the place down. I just said, "We won't close it down. I don't give a damn for anybody."

LS: Is that -- one of the questions is how much of your concern had to do with stopping of deliveries for research. That is, the Teamsters were on -- well, to begin with, what about the Teamsters?

EY: What about them?

LS: Well, the fact that they did support the TAA.

EY: Yes. Well, we couldn't -- I wasn't very happy about it, but there was a split, see, in the Teamsters Union and we had a sort of radical friendship; Mark [Tagan?] working with them, and got support and it was a way for them to show their muscle, but finally when we stopped paying -- the bus drivers didn't get paid, they got tired of that, and they reacted against the leadership.

LS: Did you hear the rumor that the TA's paid the bus drivers during the work strike and that they were striking but they weren't driving.

EY: No. I never heard that. I wouldn't be surprised if they tried it, but they couldn't -- they didn't have the resource to do it very long.

LS: It must be [word unclear].

EY: But, you know, it could have --

LS: That somebody had had an inheritance and just liked to use the money --

EY: It wouldn't surprise me, yeah.

LS: It'd be easy to find out, I think, if that is true.

EY: Yeah, well, I'd be interested in that, because it could have happened.

I used to go out on the picket line. This drove the TA's wild, when I went out --

LS: There's a nice picture of you --

EY: I was talking with the pickets, you see, and I can be fairly persuasive, you know, when there were areas of questions with them and, you know, "Do you know this is . . . " "Do you know what you're saying?" and so on, that was just all I'd do. That just upset the leadership terribly (laughing).

LS: And what sort of reception did the TA that you talked to give you?

EY: Oh, they were always right.

LS: But they're a wonderful bunch of people, you know.

EY: Yes, that's the thing, you see. And that's what a lot of people don't understand. Around the state, they were always being sympathetic, you know. Some people wanted to even get legislation to outlaw having TA's.

LS: Yeah.

EY: And, of course, that's completely the wrong thing. See, I always knew that too, see. I knew what the average TA was like and I knew how they were being 01:00:00torn; whether to support their leadership, which they didn't agree with, and out of loyalty, you see.

LS: Yes, that's true.

EY: It was a terrible spot they were in. I understood it.

LS: And, of course, it was a marvelous experience for some of them, the whole --

EY: Now, some of them thought that we would use --keep lists of people who did what and write letters and so on and jobs and things -- we never kept any list. I never allowed any list to be kept of any student whoever disrupted or did anything. I never kept --

LS: You didn't but some of the faculty perhaps.

EY: The individual faculty members might, but most of them wouldn't.

LS: Yeah.

EY: But the TA's had some view that we would, and they would always wanted to bargain about this, you know, but we had to write only favorable letters which, of course, all you had to do was send along with the letter a copy of the agreement (laughing) to make the letter worthless. We never did it, but you know 01:01:00the radicals all thought that we kept dossiers on them. The only place you can find anything about them is down in a cabinet file. Their names are there.

LS: Well, I was thinking of the rank and file TA's.

EY: Yes.

LS: I've interviewed a couple of women, and it was a really great period in their lives, and --

EY: Well, you see -- we made it easy. You could come here. This is what the university is about, and I encourage it. It's a place where you can be radical and do crazy things and go away and start all over again, and this is one of the reasons why I never want to keep track of it. When I used to appear before the Legislative Committee, they'd want to know how many have we expelled lately, you know, undergraduates, and I'd always say, "Well, we're really trying to graduate them, that's our business," and I'd fuss it up a little bit and we'd get some investigations going, but we never did much around all that period to -- that really would later damage a student. The only thing that -- once they get 01:02:00arrested, then they've got records. There's no way of preventing that, but I've tried so hard to keep students from being arrested. They never understood that. I couldn't announce it, of course, but I never wanted them arrested. These kids that came in the other day to try to take over the office, the police could have -- we could have booked them all and had charges, but we just threw them out on the street without even asking names. Is that the end? No.

LS: What about the injunction? Was that a fairly automatic procedure, or was it important to do it?

EY: Well, it was important to do it; otherwise, you're making strikes for free and it's against the law. I was going to uphold the law and I was also going to show those "so and so's" (laughing) that after -- but they'd done some -- committed violence, you know? They were doing violent things. There was violence going on, and I attributed it to the TA's.

EY: I couldn't prove it.

LS: You mean some of the window breakings.

EY: Window breaking and intimidations, threats, and the pistol shot to the tank.

LS: I didn't hear about the pistol shot.

EY: They fired a gun; somebody fired a gun into a tank of ammonia over there; could have killed somebody outside the Chemistry building. [Words unclear] pretty bad [word unclear]; a lot of things happened. I think it was worse than it appeared in the press. The violence was worse than that, and then the same people argued they should have used more of it. They're ruthless; completely ruthless.

LS: Of course, that's where the democracy of the union worked, because they did -- there was a vote as to whether they would add violence, and they voted against it.

EY: Yeah, but some went and did it anyway. It was done anyway. See, but you 01:04:00never know, of course, it could be by supporters who were not in the union.

LS: Yes.

EY: So one has to be careful about what one says about who did it, but the union didn't condemn it; the leadership didn't condemn it. And then they later went up to Minneapolis and the leaders did advocate violence. (tape cuts out) . . . depending on what day it was, you see. You'd have to go back and look at the calendar and find out what happened on any given day. But remember, I had to worry about black students during this period, too, and worry about the kinds of the things that led up to the bombing of Sterling Hall. I had the whole state of 01:05:00Wisconsin to worry about: the legislature.

LS: And for them -- for the state and the legislature, the TA strike was definitely [word unclear].

EY: Oh, yes; yes, indeed. Well, it was important to me. I'm not saying it wasn't, but the things came on -- there's been so many things in the years since then, but --

LS: I suppose it's something that the legislature could actually pin -- I mean, they knew what a union was and whereas the strike against -- the decision about Cambodia was [words unclear]. So you didn't worry about losing control?

EY: Of what?

LS: During the strike. Or did you?

EY: Well, I suppose I did. See, you never know what's going to happen. A strike is a terrible -- it's a very big gamble, but what I was more worried about was 01:06:00that somebody would be killed or something, and I didn't want a strike (tape cuts out and then repeats briefly) but I believed that the strike was a lesser evil than giving the place away and no matter what concessions we'd given them, they were going to strike anyway, see. I told Arlen quite early, "We're going to get a strike." I said, "There's no way that you or I can prevent it," because this is what they -- that's what the leadership wants. They want a strike because their purposes are not bargaining purposes. It's not collective bargaining. He didn't want to believe that, but did he tell you that I told him that?

LS: He stated that you knew -- that you felt there was nothing more important than an agreement, that is that you couldn't just give everything away according to --

EY: Yes; and the other side is that the other side wanted a strike no matter what we gave them. The other thing that you learn in collective bargaining is that if you promise things and then make concessions and then have a strike, then you're expected to give everything you promised even after the strike is settled. That's another aspect of collective bargaining. Collective bargaining is often a one-way street. The employer gives and the union takes.

LS: In this case you didn't. You were --

EY: I pulled back, but that's unusual.

LS: Yes.

EY: (laughing) Yes.; that was a great shock to some people.

LS: Jim Stern is apparently -- well, I said that, but I was quite puzzled with Nathan Feinsinger. He describes [word unclear] as having been extremely upset by 01:08:00the strike and by Marketti and by the hostility.

EY: Well --

LS: Are you --

EY: Jim was upset -- I think, see, Marketti was one of Jim's favorite students and Jim thought he had more -- I think he had more influence than he thought, that to have your students behave so badly and then to also maybe to see such an aberration of collective bargaining, I don't know. But was he upset at me? Is that Nate's view?

LS: No, no, that wasn't -- no, not at you, but just at the students.

EY: Yes.

LS: And that they got to him. They knew he had [words unclear].

EY: Yeah, oh, yes.

LS: [Words unclear]

EY: A lot of liberals got a rather rude awakening in these times.

LS: But he didn't say that?

EY: No.

LS: That he was upset and also --

EY: See, I didn't -- maybe Nate misperceived, in terms of degree. Nate was very 01:09:00helpful, by the way.

LS: Well, that's the next question I'm going to ask you.

EY: Nate loves this university above all things, and he worked, and Nate is the sort of person if I said, "This is the bottom line," he'd work for settling with that bottom line. If he could try something else that would maybe get a settlement, he would (laughing) but he would always -- Nate really believes in the same kind of university I do. He'll give away the rest of the country to get a settlement, but -- Nate is really, most of the time, wants a settlement for settlement's sake, and that's alright in collective bargaining when both parties want to survive, but Nate, to support my position, really helped me very much. You see, they'd go see him and seek advice and you could just tell him that you 01:10:00can't get beyond the issue. You'd be lucky to get as much as -- you know, you better take what you can get, and so on. But, you see, the only time there was any hope for settlement was after they were beaten in the strike. They were losing the strike, and groups, departmental groups, were voting to go back when they then decided to call off the strike.

LS: You mean of TA's?

EY: Yes.

LS: Yeah.

EY: They were -- that's where I made the decision not to destroy them, the union.

LS: Yeah, that's what Nathan and I thought was the reason and also that he said that you knew that you had to live with these people afterwards, so you didn't really want to just kill them off. Is that --

EY: Partly that, and partly -- see, I don't believe in raw power on either side. I don't like to win by much more than 52%. It's just my nature. I don't like 01:11:00rubbing people's faces in it. It's nothing rational about it. I go by my stomach a great deal.

LS: So you did want him, then. So I think I understood that you hadn't wanted him to [word unclear].

EY: Nate?

LS: Yeah.

EY: Well, I didn't want to give him too much authority, but I used him a bit and he helped some, but I didn't want to put him -- see, I've known Nate a very long time. After all, I was his straight man for him. We worked on the GRK strike together. We worked on the construction strike here, so I knew Nate quite well and sometimes he can settle when the mediating's pretty great. I didn't want that to get carried away, but he was a good trooper, and he helped me anyway.

LS: Do you think of yourself as having gotten him in, or the TA's as having 01:12:00gotten him in?

EY: Well, I don't know. Knowing Nate, you'd be playing all sides (laughing).

LS: You mean he would have gotten --

EY: He would have gotten in if he could have. You know, he's just like a farm horse. He couldn't stay away, and they went to him and I went to him because I -- but I wouldn't normally discuss things with Nate anyway, because I knew he'd be seeing them, you see, and also I trust his advice, judgment, because, you see, I knew where his basic loyalty was -- to the university -- and Nate was very fond of me, too, personally, as I am of him, and so I just -- I don't know in hindsight whether I did the right things now, but see, so much -- I had to make decisions like that (snaps fingers) so many times, and they weren't all -- they weren't complicated. There was a kind of instinctive way of going about it. It made -- you know, somebody goes back and really did a careful analysis, they 01:13:00may come to the conclusion that I did the wrong thing from the beginning. I have to live with it, though. But that's the difference -- that's another thing, you know; a person has to live with it, has to be careful. One of the things I've learned in some of these things is that whenever I've taken other people's advice and done something against my judgment, it turned out to be wrong. Then I really feel bad; but when I make up my own mind and get caught with it, then I don't feel so bad, because I deserve it, but to have taken somebody's advice against my better judgment and then it turned out to be wrong, then I really feel bad.

LS: What was your father's [words unclear].

EY: Oh, yes. Well, my father was a fisherman. He died when I was eight. I had a very strong mother, able. I was born in Newfoundland -- Labrador. I've been 01:14:00supporting myself since I was about ten, making my own living.

LS: How?

EY: Well, I worked on a farm. Then I earned money in the summer and go away to school, worked my way through college.

LS: What did your mother do? Did she work?

EY: She remarried after three, four years and I decided that I'd rather be independent.

LS: Did you live there at home?

EY: No. We've been very close, but I haven't lived with my mother for -- since I was 10, 12 years old; only for short times.

LS: You said she was very strong.

EY: She had three children. I was the oldest in Newfoundland; came to this 01:15:00country and got a job. Of course, her father had gone from Maine to Newfoundland, so it was a -- we had family ties and she supported us, but she -- I didn't know my father well at all. He was away a great deal with the fishing and they were always gone to sea.

LS: Was she an educated person?

EY: No. Her father was, but she wasn't beyond elementary school or --

LS: Was she religious?

EY: Yes. Yes, she's religious. She follows it, but I'm not. She's in a nursing home now. But she could do lots of things. I'm not like her, I suspect. She had 01:16:00great ability. She could -- once -- she's a wonderful seamstress. She could take a machine apart and put it back together again and do all kinds of things. She can't anymore because of her -- she had a stroke. But I don't think that -- I think it bothered her that I was so independent, but she never did anything. She sympathized with it, in a way -- so we really -- even though I didn't -- we didn't live together, we've been very close . . . strange.

LS: Well, I ask -- I generally try to get people's backgrounds. I mean, it does, after all, have something to do with --

EY: Yes, yes. I suspect in looking back, and I hadn't thought of it much, you know, I don't spend much time on -- but, the fact that I was insistent on going my own ways, that stubbornness that --

LS: Drives you.

EY: But would lead me to take a strike rather than give it away.

LS: Yeah. [words unclear] Well, so you trusted Feinsinger [words unclear]. I'm curious -- was there any question of punitive action?

EY: Well, the question was whether we cared what we did about the injunction. 01:18:00They were at suspended sentences -- whether they should pay fines or not. We held that over them for about a year and then we asked the Judge to dismiss it. I'm not sure that was wise. We probably should have collected the fines.

LS: I thought you did? I thought they paid $5,000.

EY: Well, there were some cases we didn't -- some of them got dismissed; maybe some of them paid some, but I -- see, my view is -- Bob Fleming and I are friends, close friends, for many years, but Bob even went down and bailed some of these people out. Then -- I think it was Percy Julian -- was his lawyer -- and when he got the bond, money back, he mailed it to -- I'm not sure it was Julian, but I think it was -- it was one of local activist lawyers. Instead of giving the money back to Fleming, he mailed it to the students he bailed out, 01:19:00and so Fleming never got his money back. Served him right, though (laughing). Bob says he -- he was surprised. He thought he was just helping them out, but you just -- there's some people -- this was one of the problems that some of Bill Sewell's friends had. They were advising Bill that, "These are just nice, gentle people," and just to make some concession and they'll just be reasonable. They weren't reasonable people. You just -- this is a small group of people, a very small minority, who want disruption for its own sake and will carry it as long as they can get away with it, and Haslach would run a strike forever if he could. When they had to give up, when the rug was pulled out from under them, he gave up, and he'll fight another day. But once -- you don't have to hate them, you don't have to beat them up, but you have to understand them, and they're 01:20:00people like this. We have some people. We don't -- and this faculty never had very many of them on the faculty. We've had a few who are always looking for some trouble somewhere, but very few and then it changed. The other things about the students: most of them get over it, too, if you don't get them with a police record. And the police record is the thing that's the dangerous part, because it bothered me during the black strike: the radicals were spoiled blacks making all the noise here. I'd be on an airplane with them, and I'd see them on the airplane all dressed up going east somewhere, so they'd go away and forget the whole damn thing. They left the blacks out. This is typical of -- see, our radical kids tend to be upper class kids. They become advertising executives and their parents did the same thing; one of the most interesting things. Somebody -- the number of our radicals who are the sons and daughters of the radicals 30 years before . . .

LS: I know, that's what I always ask them, if their parents are, and they are.

EY: Yes.

LS: Yeah.

EY: And they're not -- you know, the parents have given them a guilt complex because they gave up the revolution and went into the advertising business, or became psychiatrists in New York or psychologists. We had one black girl around here. She was screaming about the ghetto and all that and her mother and father were both practicing psychiatrists in New York and lived [by the ocean?]. I knew these [word unclear], you know. You get that kind of -- so there's a fakeness about [word unclear].

LS: I shouldn't say -- what I have found out is that their parents were liberals. I don't -- none of them have turned out to be radical -- at least they haven't said it, so.

EY: Yeah, well when they were students, they were doing the same kind of thing in the '30's, some of them; not all of them, of course, because you don't -- but there's some of them. But then they get -- they mislead some other people who are serious, and they get them in trouble and then they -- but the thing about it is -- and I'm still happy that they can do these things here and if they don't push it too far, they can go away at no cost. And this is why -- this is 01:22:00real redemption, you know, so -- and it's good, because if there's ever a time for young people to do -- for anybody to be radicals, it's when they're young. I don't want to -- but I don't believe in law breaking. I believe in a persuasive argument, but anyway, but some of them are -- we have some crazy ones, too. There's a handful right now that just -- I'm using the word "crazy" meaning that they're unbalanced people. I'm afraid of them, not for me, personally, but I'm afraid that they'll do something desperate. There's always a danger that they'll throw a bomb or do something like that, you know, or build a fire or do something.

LS: [Words unclear]

EY: I'm talking about some undergraduates, but they get used by the other radicals, you know. They're the ones that do the dirty work, and they're not 01:23:00balanced. They're having problems and if you checked on them, you'd find out that some of them have been seeing psychiatrists pretty regularly. We had one of our radical students the other day tried to jump off a building -- the ones that go with him, you see; not many. There aren't all that. There's a few of those, and that's another thing that worries me is how those people who are able really are being used to some extent, and yet [words unclear] people have personal problems. When they -- you mentioned two girls, what a great time they had. There's a letdown afterwards, though.

LS: I guess it was something to live for.

EY: Um-hmm, yes, to identify with. One of the things that I've noticed and other people have noticed, too, that very homely, or a lot of fat girls tend to get 01:24:00mixed up in things, in these things.

LS: [Words unclear] that not to be the case. The people I've talked to --

EY: No, no, but I mean -- that's not saying that they're all fat and homely girls, too, but they get recognition for their activities. I know some of the pickets so well. They've picketed my house, they picket for grapes, they picket for lettuce.

LS: Oh, that's right. I suppose you get all that, too.

EY: Yes (laughing), but I'm kind of fond of them all. This they would never understand, would they?

LS: No, I don't think so.

EY: No. They had -- I had to be the enemy. That was --

LS: Later on they may, and they did have the grace to say that Ed Krinsky had a sense of humor. They liked him better than the president because he did, so they saw that. I'd like to ask you about whether you've had compunctions about 01:25:00ordering the faculty to report about their classes and to meet classes.

EY: Oh, I'm -- you mean ordering faculty -- I have compunction about ordering the faculty to do anything, but sometimes you have to. You can't have it so that people can be on strike and be paid.

LS: But you -- it did cross your mind that maybe you were infringing on their autonomy, did it? Or --

EY: Oh, I suppose it did. It would normally do it, but you know, it infringes on -- expecting to meet their own classes infringes on their liberties. Some faculty take their -- I've had faculty take a very strong view that they're completely free to do anything that they want to, but I don't believe it. They don't either, really. See, I couldn't do anything that the bulk of the faculty wouldn't accept.

LS: Yeah. I think Paul [words unclear] said that.

EY: Yeah, sure. [Words unclear] but they would be resentful of their colleagues not doing it.

LS: I guess the issue is that people felt that they would take responsibility 01:26:00for meeting their classes, but maybe not in their classroom, and resented being told that they might not [words unclear].

EY: I suppose. There was some -- you know, sometimes I had to do things that some people didn't like, but that's the nature of things, but I probably would make a pretty good estimate of what I could do and couldn't do. You see, I think, as I said earlier, I have probably have a better ear for this than many people. I don't pay so much attention to the ones who are doing all the talking. After all, my friend, Kay Smith, who's going to sound off no matter what happened. Anatole Beck's going to sound off, and Harvey Goldberg is going to go with the students and some other people, and I could name some others who'd 01:27:00always -- you could count on them, and the students know that and they laugh at them, but they used them, and I can count on that. Sometimes the newspaper people and some others will say, "Well, everybody's saying it." Well everybody isn't saying it. Everybody who's talking is saying it, but a lot of people aren't saying anything, and I can pick up the phone and call 25 people if I wanted to and get a better sample, but that's just the business I'm in. But that might [word unclear]. And then sometimes, I must admit, that if I thought it was the right thing to do, I'd do it anyway.

LS: You mean anyways.

EY: Yeah, yep. I don't do that very often, but there's sometimes I do things.

LS: Have you ever done it?

EY: Yes. But I'm not going to say exactly (laughing), but I wouldn't be likely to do it. I'd be very reluctant to do it, but if -- you know, if I thought it was that important, I would; for instance, the decision to call the National 01:28:00Guard. I made them alone. I didn't consult anybody. I was going to keep this place open, but there was a rationale to it, again; now maybe you'd be interested in that.

LS: I would.

EY: You see, people don't -- so many things are right in front of them, they never see. Under the law, as it was -- in the first place, back up . . . in the '30's, the Pennsylvania State Troopers were usually strike breakers; therefore, when we got the state police in Wisconsin, the highway police, the labor people made sure that they couldn't have any law enforcement except patrolling highways. So the state police were not available, the state troopers. The law provided that before you could get the National Guard, first you went to the city police, then to the county and then to the contiguous counties. The 01:29:00contiguous counties have part time volunteer deputy sheriffs, untrained; some of them not very fond of radical students at that time, I imagine. So the only way you could get rid of those deputy sheriffs was to get the National Guard. I had to go through the routine, but --

LS: But didn't you have to say, "Will you come?" and what if they had said they would.

EY: Who?

LS: [Word unclear]

EY: They did come.

LS: Oh, they did.

EY: But the moment I got the National Guard, they sent them home again.

LS: Oh, I see.

EY: See, the only way to get rid of -- not to --

LS: Oh, I see, yeah.

EY: The only way to avoid having these untrained deputy sheriffs around with all the -- was get the National Guard quickly. The National Guard was wonderful. They'd stand down here and those girls would spit on them, spit in their faces. Oh, the women were just so -- behaved so badly, those radical women. I could have -- I wanted to take them over my knee and spank them with a paddle; but 01:30:00they were bitter. Their language was so foul, really much worse than the men. And the way they [word unclear] fellow students. They were just young fellas the same age. They behaved beautifully. We had one episode, the fixed bayonet episode; a mob of 300 surrounded about four or five of the soldiers and they said, "How can we frighten them away?" and one of them said, "Let's fix our bayonets. That will frighten them," and they did and of course the T.V. cameras all took it and we got fixed bayonets and all that stuff. We stopped that, but that -- that's all changed now, because the law got changed so that state troopers can protect the state parks. Do you know that this is a state park?

LS: No.

EY: It is. (laughing)

LS: Well, now it's quite [Words unclear]

EY: Yes, so we wouldn't have the National Guard anymore.

LS: Oh, I see what you're saying; state troopers.

EY: Yeah.

LS: Was that done for that purpose? So that they can be the ones that come?

EY: Oh, I wouldn't think there'd be any relationship between the two things.

LS: Oh. Besides, it's not likely to happen again.

EY: You never know what's going to happen. You know, if you got something that really outrages young people the way the Vietnam War did, it will happen again, because it wasn't the radicals -- if the radicals had been alone in that, it would have been very different. They had a lot of support from all kinds of students. I would never -- students are idealistic and if they're outraged, they'll do something. My job is to keep the university open.

LS: I was just about to ask you if you noticed any difference in the TAA in the '70's.

EY: Well, last -- I've seen very little of them, but I think they're more in the direction of collective -- trade unionism.

LS: And how are you -- I don't know . . . are we getting near 10:30?

EY: It's 10:10.

LS: Oh. Yeah, alright -- yes, is that all you were going to say about --

EY: Yes.

LS: How you would compare the crisis of the work stoppage in 1976 to 1970.

EY: Well, they stopped for a couple of days, didn't they?

LS: Right.

EY: Yes. Oh. . . I never took it very seriously.

LS: It didn't loom in your mind really?

EY: No, no, no. No, because you see, I knew the students weren't going to support them. The students weren't -- they didn't have the Vietnam War thing. They didn't have the radical -- all the other issues that were going on. And so 01:33:00I never took it very seriously; maybe I should have.

LS: On the other hand, I guess the Dean's office was very upset that --

EY: Oh, well, they're doing it, yes.

LS: I mean, at the class size, specifically [words unclear]. Did this create a problem for you?

EY: Oh, yes, I had a problem. I've always felt that TA's shouldn't have as large classes as faculty members. I can do more with 40 students now than I could in a discussion than I could with 15 when I first began. And so in some sense -- I didn't like the fiction that the TA's had that the class size was really bad, you see. By the end of the term, the classes were smaller and there were some of 01:34:00them who were just too lazy to correct papers; there was some of that. But most of the TA -- we have a teaching award for teaching assistants and two or three of the TA officers have gotten those awards. They are just tremendous (tape cuts out). These awards didn't come because they were active in the TAA. They came because they were outstanding teaching, and they know. When those people felt that the class was too large, I would tend to be [word unclear] at that point. Now, I don't happen to believe that all classes should be small, but if it's a discussion group, particularly language ones, so the Dean's office was so worried about the budget, so we were cutting the budget all the time.

LS: Yes, of course. That was their big problem.

EY: Yes.

LS: So how do you balance that?

EY: That's it, see. Well, we balanced it by compromise; made them take some of --

LS: You're -- I mean, 19 against 28.

EY: Yeah, but they didn't dream of 28. Now, it's conceivable, you see, that in some place, 28 would have been alright, but by and large, it wasn't. In the best place, there would be no limitation and a careful review of each course and class and arrive at it in a reasonable way; the size would be the best thing, but we aren't going to do that. There's no way of doing that. Because in the first place, the students always want to be at certain hours, and the policing of that is another problem, and when the TA's -- when we fully had a union, the TA's would agree to let them in, because they'd say, "Well, look, I'm in your 7.5 section. I've got a breakfast job. Can I come at 9:00 and the TA would say, "yes,"" so there's -- so we can't --

LS: I bet they still do.

EY: Well, I don't know. I suppose they do. But anyway . . .

LS: [Words unclear]

EY: It's interesting.

LS: Ed Krinsky . . . did he leave because he wanted to? [words unclear]

EY: Oh, yes. Oh, he left -- see, he wasn't very happy at what he was doing because he wants to be a mediator, arbitrator, middle man. He doesn't like to be on one party, but he did it very well, but he didn't like it. And when he had this opportunity to make a lot more money to really do what he wanted to do and expand his arbitration, he became quite active in arbitration. You know, the FT -- the TA's had tried to prevent him from being an arbitrator.

LS: Yes, I know, which is a nice story.

EY: Yes. It is a nice story, but the other side -- you know, I'm an arbitrator, and I don't do it now, but I used to do quite a bit of it.

LS: But he regarded himself, he said, in a way, as an arbitrator who came to you -- he thought of himself as somewhat more . . . what . . . unionist, than you were.

EY: Oh, yes. Well, I mean, if it had been the other way, we would have lost everything. I couldn't say, "No," and then let him drag me a little bit, and that's where we'd arrive at.

LS: Is that what was going on?

EY: Oh, sure. It was always going on. (laughing) I'd come down and say, "Hell, no!" and then he'd start arguing with me. See, I forced him to lay out the case, but I wouldn't always let him have his way.

LS: Because you let him have his way.

EY: In the end, but then he'd argue it out, see, make him -- convince himself that he really wanted to do it. Oh, I gave him a great deal of leeway, but I didn't make it easy for him to give something away.

LS: But why did you -- why was it so late on that work stoppage? If you remember, you agreed to the class size over, by course, at about 11:00 at night, 01:38:00and the students were all set for a work stoppage, whereas they say, and they may be right at this time, that if you had done it two days earlier, that they could have taken it and not have the work strike.

EY: I don't know. I don't remember. Maybe I couldn't -- you know, I had to persuade -- I had to live with the Dean's office too, you know, see? Sometimes in these things, you're in a situation where you may know exactly where you're going to come out, but you're going to carry people with you, and they've to see they're serious, that there is pressuring, you see.

LS: I see. You're saying it might have been, but you don't remember.

EY: No. Because you don't --

LS: I mean, even this was 1973.

EY: But for me to say I remember the exact date would be untrue. And I'm not trying to avoid telling you.

LS: No.

EY: You understand that, because -- no, I can't remember the circumstances why we did it, but probably -- normally it would be because I had to gauge the 01:39:00situation. I had to bring -- I had to, you know -- if I made the decision earlier and say, "No," that would look as though I didn't give a damn what the Dean's office thought. I was just --

LS: Yeah, that's true. That's [words unclear]. Does the TA emphasis on undergraduate teaching, has that caused you any trouble in the state? Because the implicate that the university didn't care about undergraduate teaching assistants.

EY: Oh, it -- a little, but it gets added to. See, this has been the line. I haven't been used to this. This is the line of some of the private undergraduate schools for years. We, at one time, had a president of Beloit who used to go around saying that if the state would give them the money, they'd really teach the students the right way, or one time, there was -- before merger, somebody 01:40:00made some talk about at their schools, they have professors, and that at Madison, they have teaching assistants. So I made a list of all of the professors who were teaching assistants here that year, because they were still trying to get degrees, so I'm used to that. But it didn't help any because it -- people believed some. See, the establishment is always at -- in a weaker position with news because most of the news people are young people were tend to empathize with these people and who'll print their statements. They don't care whether they're true or not.

LS: And it looks very convincing.

EY: Yes, and they like to needle the establishment. So this was more ammunition for that, but would I put it very high on my list of things? I wouldn't worry about it, but it wasn't good. It was another -- these people were willing to hurt the university by misrepresenting, you see.

LS: What is your opinion of the TAA, the significance of it on campus?

EY: Oh . . . I don't think it's terribly significant.

LS: And what has it accomplished?

EY: Well, it's made us -- I don't think it's improved teaching very much. It's insistent that we administer the contracts more careful -- I mean, supervise the TA's more carefully. It has led some faculty members to stop using TA's altogether, which has saved us some money and some of them, you know, just stopped. They won't do it, because they don't want to put up with the foolishness. It's put one more bureaucratic -- added to our cost by having people like Krinsky and others and so on. It's made life a little more difficult, a little more bureaucratic and yet we had somebody coming to us 01:42:00because there were some people who were unjust -- I mean, blowing off too much on the TA and so on.

LS: It's given you quite a say in the [word unclear] doesn't it?

EY: Yes.

LS: [Words unclear] to take control of some of the --

EY: Yes. It means more centralization, see. This is what -- unionism always means centralization. This is why -- one of the reasons I'm so against collective bargaining for the faculty because the decision making would eventually land up in the governor's office. That's where it has in New York State.

LS: As it should.

EY: Yeah. So you treat everybody alike, which means a great inequity, because people shouldn't be treated alike in the university.

LS: Especially [words unclear]. Well, I guess we'll stop here.

EY: O.K.