A tip of the hat to Warren Vander Hill

When presidents fly the coop, people want answers, which is one reason history is important.

Warren Vander Hill (Ball State University Libraries)

In October of 1993, senior Ball State University officials went on a retreat to the Ogle Haus Inn, a Tudor-style hotel on a hill overlooking the Ohio River.

Because the school’s head men’s basketball coach, Dick Hunsaker, was in the midst of an NCAA investigation, my newspaper assigned me to drive down to report on the getaway.

My subsequent news article had mentioned, based on a postcard I had read in the Swiss chalet-like lobby, that the inn was loaded with amenities, such as suites with large Jacuzzis and private balconies.

Later, when I ran into BSU Provost Warren Vander Hill at a meeting back in Muncie, he chided me, “You son of a bitch” (or maybe it was, “You bastard”), “We stayed in standard rooms at the inn.” But when he called me that, he smiled.

“I didn’t actually report that anyone from Ball State stayed in a suite, just that the inn featured suites,” I responded.

Of all of the Ball State presidents and vice presidents I interviewed over a period of three decades, Warren was among the most helpful, down-to-earth, non-adversarial, and easy going. He was a good sport, and he could make someone who was academically inferior feel at ease. He died on July 1 at age 86.

I suspect we got along well because we were both “historians.” He was an actual historian, a professor of history in addition to serving as director of the honors college, provost and VP for academic affairs. Most journalists are not trained as historians, but in case you haven’t heard, news writing has been called “the first rough draft of history,” or “history on the run.”

Warren’s academic interests included history of the American environment, and he has been credited with starting the “greening of the university” — envisioning a BSU campus that would achieve prominence for its environmental commitments.

That was another area where our interests intersected. In 2003, I was one of three inaugural recipients of BSU’s Council on the Environment’s “Environmental Exemplar Award” — “in recognition of . . . promoting the sustainable use of natural resources or the protection of ecological systems through unbiased reporting.”

A year later, in 2004, the chairman of Ball State’s board of trustees (Muncie attorney Tom DeWeese) and BSU President Blaine Brownell held a news conference at the alumni center to announce that Brownell voluntarily was stepping down. We were led to believe he did so, after 3½ years in office, because he wanted to become president of something called U21 Pedagogica.

Journalists, faculty, staff, students and the public were skeptical.

But it would take nearly eight years for the truth finally to come out. Vander Hill, who by then was retired, in 2011 tipped me off that transcripts of interviews with BSU officials explaining what had really happened were no longer locked up under seal in Bracken Library. It was the longest I had ever waited for a public record and one of the biggest BSU stories of my career.

The transcripts confirmed that Brownell was fired, contrary to what the public had been led to believe in 2004.

As I reported in The Star Press in 2011:

“The last straw might have been Brownell's failed attempt to change the appearance of Charlie Cardinal, BSU's athletics mascot, although there were any number of other things he did that could have pushed the board's patience beyond the limit.

“They included an alleged lack of enthusiasm, disregarding the board's wishes regarding the hiring of a new athletic director, keeping a retired athletic director on the payroll, delegating too much of his authority to vice presidents, lack of effort in fundraising, vacationing in Florida when he was supposed to be making a budget presentation to state legislators and overdoing his international travel.”

It was Vander Hill and distinguished history professor Anthony “Tony” Edmonds who conducted the interviews of Brownell, trustee Frank Bracken and other officials to set the record straight on that chapter in BSU’s history.

History repeated itself in January of 2016 with the sudden and unexplained resignation of BSU president Paul Ferguson during another out-of-town meeting of the board of trustees, that one in Indianapolis.

The board did everything in its power to keep secret the reasons for the president’s vanishing act after only 18 months in office. The secretiveness included board silence; rejection of numerous public records requests from the media, and a severance contract that contained a mutual non-disparagement clause. The board possibly learned from its handling of Brownell’s firing that it’s better to remain silent than to lie.

When presidents fly the coop, people want answers, which is one reason history is important.

Edmonds, who was retired when Ferguson quit, at the time told me that Ferguson’s farewell seemed similar to Brownell’s:

"I would say that probably the board and President (Ferguson) had conflicting views on their respective roles. I am not sure the details of the resignation will ever come out, but I would argue that they should … This ain't a case of military or intelligence secrets whose disclosure could threaten American security. I would hope that Ball State would refrain from such contracts with future presidents."

Ferguson’s resignation prompted discussion, rumors and unease on campus and among donors, alumni and the public. The board of trustees hired a public relations consultant with expertise in crisis control to advise it.

One faculty member compared the trustees to the politburo of a communist state. Another argued that the public had a right to know why Ferguson quit because the severance agreement called for him to receive a paid sabbatical leave and severance pay involving public funds. That professor added:

"Nobody wonders why a football coach gets fired; it's pretty obvious. And yet we don't have any information yet on why this (resignation) has occurred.”

To my knowledge, no sealed interviews of the parties involved in Ferguson’s departure were ever conducted for the sake of history.

Bruce Geelhoed, a BSU professor of history and chairman of the history department who has written in the past about the school’s history, recently told me:

“As for President Ferguson, I've never seen or heard anything about his termination.  He also left Ball State and Muncie very quickly after the board's action, so there wasn't much time given to any serious discussion about his departure.” 

Fortunately, an email authored by Ferguson was leaked to me at The Star Press late in 2016, nearly a year after he left town.

As I reported then:

“Former Ball State University President Paul Ferguson and the chairman of the university's board of trustees began butting heads early in Ferguson's short-lived presidency over cronyism, politics, a welcome reception and more, The Star Press has learned.

“The unhealthy relationship culminated in Ferguson's resignation last January, only 18 months after he took office. The conflict centered on allegations that the chairman micromanages the university. It fragmented the board. And some wonder if it could harm the school's chances of attracting a strong leader as its next president.”

But we didn’t get to hear the whole story. The board’s chairman, Rick Hall, an Indianapolis attorney, mostly declined comment, saying at the time, “You know the restrictions that we have on the agreement with Paul, and we are going to honor that agreement, and I am not going to comment on what purports to be an email from a former president to a former trustee."

The other members of the board accused the newspaper of portraying Hall in an “unfair, inaccurate and disturbing” fashion.

In a letter to the editor, the other trustees wrote that they and Hall were committed to a balanced budget; that they had adopted the lowest tuition hike in nearly 40 years; that they had recognized the need to address a decline in enrollment in 2015; that a president needs to be fully engaged in external fundraising and promotion of the university; and that, after a downturn in 2015, fundraising was up by 28 percent the following year. (Couldn’t some of those comments be construed as disparaging assessments of Ferguson?)

But on its web site, Ball State today paints a rosy picture of Ferguson, stating of his tenure:

“Key success metrics included overall increases in student enrollment (2.6%) to 21,196 students with student success in retention and graduation rates with four year rates showing the highest rate of increase for all Indiana public universities (12% over five years to 44.7%).

“Ball State was characterized as fiscally healthy with a balanced annual budget and 2015 Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s Bond Ratings maintained at Aa3 due to ‘the University’s strong, integrated management approach.’

“Increased State appropriations (3%) were related to successful performance funding and affirmation of Ball State as Indiana’s ‘Entrepreneurial University.’ Approval was obtained for a new $62.5 million Health Professions Building to house a newly formed College of Health.

“New community economic development partnerships with the city, county, and state in accord with the Launch Indiana program extended Ball State’s entrepreneurial expertise. Dr. Ferguson consistently promoted high quality student life experiences that were inclusive and diverse as demonstrated in the impactful Beneficence Dialogs.”

But as far as I know, neither Hall nor the other trustees ever fully addressed Ferguson’s complaint that Hall was micromanaging the school. So it looks like we’ll have to settle for only “a first rough draft” of that chapter of BSU’s history.

Where’s a Warren Vander Hill when you need one?

Previously

Why BSU president Paul Ferguson left, why it matters

List of past BSU presidents

(Note to readers: I moved to Chicago last year and quit writing Greater Muncie, though I felt like writing this article and have one more coming. Thanks for reading).