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1/14/2004
In February 1916, some 425 alumni sat down to dinner at the 13th annual gathering of the General Alumni Association (GAA) of the University of Minnesota. They were feasting in the dining room of the agriculture department on campus and guests were serenaded through appetizers by the senior agriculture quartet. The evening's festivities ended with a skit starring Minnesota football hero Johnnie McGovern playing a dimwitted ag student opposite the dean of the agriculture school. The dean couldn't quite make McGovern's character see the difference between the ag school's definition of graft, as in a type of a plant surgery, and graft in its illicit connotation, as an under-the-table payment. According to a report in the meeting minutes, this revue was accompanied by both "sallies" and "paroxysms" of laughter. All fun and good times aside, some serious and lasting business was being taken care of by the GAA at that meeting. It had been a relatively tumultuous year at the U, particularly for its Board of Regents. There was controversy involving a project that would link the University and the Mayo Foundation in Rochester, Minnesota, in a joint teaching and research initiative. There was also a hiccup in University relations with the state legislature. A generous 1913 legislative session had turned stingy in the spring of 1915, cutting back on building funds and adding nothing to staff funding. Not only that, alumni had been frustrated in their efforts to do anything about it. The Board of Regents had let the GAA know after the 1913 session "that it was not the wish of the University administration that the alumni should take an active part in support of the legislative program put forward by the Regents." Soon after the opening of the 1915 legislative session, however, it became evident to the GAA that alumni support for the University "was needed and the necessity for such support became more and more evident as the session continued." The alumni association put out a special issue of The Minnesota Alumni Weekly, calling on its members to contact the legislature in support of the University appropriation. But it was too late in the session to be an effective tool, according to The Weekly in a later report. Its efforts "could accomplish little" before the session adjourned. The founders of the GAA—men like its first president, Henry Nachtrieb (1882) and its first executive director, E.B. Johnson (1888)—envisioned an alumni organization that would complement the University's administration and Board of Regents in their dealings with the state. At the same time, the founders promised to be unafraid of tackling the hardest issues of the day at the University and advocating for what they believed to be in the best interest of the school. Since Nachtrieb, Johnson, and virtually all of the founders were still around in 1916 and holding office on the alumni board, it's easy to imagine how they felt about holding their tongues during that last legislative session. This was the same group that had noted the association's 10th anniversary, a few years before, by listing its proudest achievements, almost all of which involved advocacy: "[The GAA] was the dominant factor in the campaign that secured the release of the University from the board of control supervision. It initiated the movement for the greater campus and helped secure the necessary appropriations. It . . . was the chief factor in securing appropriations for putting salaries of the faculty on an approximately fair basis." And it successfully fought the proposition to raise the Northern Pacific tracks on campus, a prospect "which would have done incalculable harm to the University." In a nutshell, the GAA, from its infancy, was a group that liked to play in the political arena and puffed out its chest about its accomplishments there. At that 1916 gathering, between the glee singers and Johnnie McGovern, the alumni board made its feelings known to the assembly in the form of a resolution: If the alumni are to be really useful and serve the University to the best of their ability, if they are to do what all good citizens have a right to expect of them, they must maintain their independence and their right to express themselves fully, freely and directly, upon any matter connected with the University. It is inevitable that at times they should differ from the Board of Regents. If the past history of the association teaches anything it teaches that the alumni
If our association is to mean anything in the life of the University, it must stand for what its members feel to be right regardless of all else. Loyalty to the University must stand first. In the years that followed that thunderous 1916 resolution, the alumni association was not always so bold or determined in the political arena. The strength of the organization's role as an advocate waxed and waned from that early organization to the present one. It was sometimes influenced by large historical forces like war and economic depression, sometimes governed by its relationship with the University, and sometimes steered in other directions by the predilections of its members. Through the years, University budgets and the pros and cons of lobbying on behalf of the U at the legislature caused recurring debate within the alumni association. When the 1923 legislature cut University appropriations by $700,000, the alumni association decided it needed to adopt a more "militant policy" toward legislators, but many in the organization were obviously ambivalent about the work involved. "We are not lobbyists," wrote E.B. Pierce, the executive director of the GAA, in his annual report that year. "Lobbying is an undignified and obnoxious method of securing the results desired." Still, Pierce reminded the members, there was work to be done at the Capitol and "it may become necessary to obtain commitments from candidates for House and Senate concerning their attitude towards the University before election time." A few years later, University budget problems had less to do with the legislature than with Governor Theodore Christianson (it should be noted that Christianson was a leader in the state Senate in 1923). In his 1927 budget message to the legislature, the governor chided the University for asking for increases in a time of looming economic troubles. In particular, he was adamantly opposed to new construction on campus. "Teachers, not buildings make a school. Not proud piles of brick and mortar, but earnest, devoted men and women." That said, the governor wasn't offering much incentive to teachers, either, a fact pointed out in The Alumni Weekly in January 1927. Unabashed by the governor's lecture, the alumni journal asked its readers "to stand in readiness to aid their alma mater" in an emergency appeal to the state legislature to restore cut financing to the U. The alumni association helped the University restore some funding through the legislature that year, but the budget battles with Christianson would continue. During the next session the legislature, in contrast to the governor, "was not unfriendly" to the University, according to the minutes of a 1929 GAA board meeting. To help grease this amicability, however, it was suggested to alumni "that members of the Legislature appreciated little courtesies from those for whom they were expected to do things." Complimentary football tickets were particularly welcome in the House and Senate. By 1933, even this brand of politicking was fruitless. The depths of the Great Depression caused a shrinking of all budgets, including the University's, a fact accepted by the alumni board with the comment, "It might have been worse." The alumni association's legislative program seems to have gone through a period of decline from the Depression through the 1940s, and an attempt to stimulate alumni efforts in the early '50s was met with some ambivalence. While members of the Minnesota Alumni Association's executive committee felt "that the establishment of a contact program with Legislators on important committees was essential," the University was not wild about MAA involvement. (The association changed its name to the Minnesota Alumni Association in 1948.) The postwar era had arrived at the University and at the statehouse. Budgets were larger and more complex. There was a growing sense that professional expertise was needed to understand the intricacies of the process, so please don't send novices to lobby in St. Paul. A meeting with University President James Morrill produced the impression "that the University didn't particularly want the alumni to help except in a very minor way." Still, in the spring of 1955, the MAA organized a letter-writing campaign to legislators from 700 alumni in
Fiscal politics were not the only legislative matters of interest to the alumni association. The earliest alumni association boards, at least back to 1908, were also very interested in the composition of the Board of Regents, and lobbied for a board that would have "the majority of the appointed members . . . be chosen from the graduates of the University." In 1910, the GAA sent a list of recommended candidates to the governor's office to fill a vacant seat on the board and added a note reminding him again "that other things being equal an alumnus of the University is more likely to render devoted service on the Board of Regents than one who is not an alumnus." As with fiscal politics, advocacy in the composition of the Board of Regents has not always been a top priority with the alumni association. In 1931, five seats were open on the regency, but the board of directors of the GAA were not particularly interested. "It was the decided opinion of members present that the alumni association should take no action with regard to the election of regents. If the alumni in the various districts care to unite in securing the election of any individual, they are, of course, free to do so." But in 1950, MAA board of directors spent a good deal of time creating a policy statement regarding the selection of University regents. The objective was to maintain a list of persons who would be qualified to serve as regents for the state and University. Nominees would come from alumni in congressional districts across the state and be screened by the MAA board, which would then draw up a list of three qualified candidates per district. The list would be made available to the governor and legislators as well as members of the MAA. Like the pioneering alumni associations, the modern alumni association's passion for advocacy was fueled in part by a rebuff from the University. In 1984, when the U was searching for a new president it said thanks, but no thanks, when the MAA asked if it could help in the process. That rejection helped spur the determination of incoming alumni president Penny Winton (B.A. '74) and the MAA's new executive director, Margaret Carlson (Ph.D. '83), to make the alumni association more of a player in University politics. The regent selection process turned out to be the best avenue for that participation. Many observers at the University and in state government thought the process had grown too partisan over the years. In 1985, the MAA decided to create an independent task force to review the selection process. It advised that an ongoing committee be established to set criteria and help identify quality candidates. Alumni wrote a bill to this effect and lobbied for its passage. By 1988, the recommendations of this group had been codified into state law and a Regent Candidate Advisory Council (RCAC) had been established to screen qualified applicants for the Board of Regents. In 1986, the MAA revived its legislative program through the Legislative Network. This volunteer cadre of alumni, students, faculty, and friends of the University all enlisted to advocate on behalf of the U at the Capitol. The network would become the chief lobbying tool of the University of Minnesota Alumni Association (the organization took this name in 1990) in legislative matters to come, including funding battles in 1992, '98, '02, and '03. The 1998 legislative campaign, nicknamed "249" to symbolize the $249 million requested for building projects, was a particularly fruitful effort for the network. The UMAA was able to mobilize more than 2,600 volunteers for the effort, which ultimately garnered $200 million in bonding and $36 million in supplemental support for the U. The modern alumni association, with its emphasis on advocacy and a legislative program, has a great deal of resemblance to the early organization. However, the association's founders would be stunned by what has become of what they started. The Legislative Network has recently grown to 10,000 alumni and friends. That was near the total number of living alumni of the University of Minnesota in 1916. The modern network is no doubt a potent force in the politics of higher education in the state of Minnesota. But it still owes a debt to the tenaciousness of that earlier, smaller group of alumni association pioneers who marked a well-worn path to the state Capitol in St. Paul. Tim Brady is a St. Paul freelance writer. | |||||||||||||||||||
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