University President Dave Frohnmayer is preparing to retire June 30 after 15 years in office. He will be succeeded by Richard Lariviere, who takes office July 1. Frohnmayer sat down with the Emerald to discuss his presidency’s successes, struggles and missteps, and respond to questions about campus controversies, from rising tuition to the Diversity Plan to the role of intercollegiate athletics. In the second of this week’s three-part series, Frohnmayer discusses criticism over the prominence of athletics at the University, the Worker Rights Consortium and oversight of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.
Allie Grasgreen: You’ve taken a lot of flak from the public and some faculty, University Senate members, for the role that intercollegiate athletics plays at the University. And it’s obviously a huge money-maker and publicity source for the University, but do you think that there’s any truth in claims that you and/or the athletic department have sacrificed student and faculty interests in some instances in favor of revenue, or for any reasons, with things like Civil War game scheduling and cutting wrestling to reinstate baseball, which drew a lot of attention nationally, as well?
Dave Frohnmayer: I mean, I guess the general categorical answer is no. I mean, athletics here is self-supporting – you know, precariously so. But that’s so unusual for a University of our size and competitiveness that it ought to be the occasion for applause. And that’s something that I worked toward in the early days of my presidency, and that’s something that John Moseley, when he was provost, promised to the faculty. He promised that the savings from athletics would go into faculty salaries, and they did.
So actually, the success of the athletic department has had a lot to do with the success of the academic venture. The increase in our enrollment, which has brought tens of millions of dollars of revenue to bolster the academic side of this University, didn’t occur by happy accident; it occurred in part because our profile in intercollegiate athletics draws people’s attention to the University of Oregon and they think it’s a cool place to go. And we actually know that from our profile of students. I am not making this up. And many of the critics, I think, know this information but haven’t assimilated it, and that is that when you ask a student, good students who are honors college students, or on honors tracks elsewhere, and you ask a cross-section of them what they like about the University of Oregon, they don’t distinguish between enjoying a Saturday afternoon at an athletic game, or playing intramural sports, and doing well in a class.
So for them it’s not either/or, it’s part of their total University of Oregon experience. And there is no question that the fundraising capability of the University of Oregon is vastly increased by having a competitive athletic team. I gave this answer and I’m quite sure it’s true, at least metaphorically, that we have raised more money for the academic pursuits of the University in the skybox at Autzen Stadium than any other single geographic locale, by the cultivation of donors; and these aren’t people who necessarily give to the athletic side, they just love seeing a good game when their team can play competitively. And that’s part of the cultivation process of bringing people back to and identifying with their University and wanting to build it.

AG: And the athletic department is self-supporting, but a quarter of the Campaign Oregon fund also went toward intercollegiate athletics. Is that for buildings and facilities?
DF: Well, these are once-in-a-century expenditures. I mean, seriously, I mean Mac Court lasted for 82 years, or is it 83 going on 84? So that itself distorts the particular fundraising priorities. But we didn’t want to have a separate athletics fundraising campaign; we put everything deliberately under one campaign rubric so we wouldn’t have campaigns keep competing against campaigns.
AG: So I guess, then, in some senses it’s part of the University and also separate from it.
DF: Well, it’s part of the University’s culture … Actually, we knew when we started that it might be as much as a third of the campaign … But we’ve raised $853 million, and by the way, in my presidency more than $1 billion, you know, that’s never happened before, so we feel pretty good about that. And if we didn’t have the magnet of interest in the University of Oregon because of its competitiveness in intercollegiate athletics, we would be a smaller, poorer, more poorly-attended university. That’s one you can take to the bank, critics notwithstanding.
AG: OK.
DF: President of a major, major university back East, private university that is in the AAU (Association of American Universities), and he’s a professor of comparative literature, he was just stepping down as president, and I complimented him on how good his campus was and how excellent his programs were. And he shook his head sadly and he says, ‘Yes, but I sure wish we had football.’ True story. And from a distinguished university, the name of which everyone would recognize.
AG: And then another major thing that you’ve been criticized for is giving donors, namely Phil Knight, too much say in institutional matters. And those concerns were raised when the oversight of the art museum shifted (from the Provost’s Office) to University Advancement and the University withdrew from the Worker Rights Consortium after Knight threatened to stop donating, or said he was going to cut off ties with the University. And I know that OUS was involved in that as well, but, any truth in those concerns?
DF: No, I mean, Phil Knight had nothing to do with the art museum changes. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, no!
AG: Oh no, oh, those are totally separate examples.
DF: No, every constituency was unhappy with the way the museum was going. And a change in reporting relationship was one of the things that we decided to do after discussion with the provost and Advancement, you know, to get things off dead-center. And while there was, I’d say – if not exactly a firestorm – there was bitter criticism at the time, I think that criticism has really melted away. When the consequences of bringing people together, of rea
lly time and attention being paid to that process, and choosing (an executive director) who by acclimation is widely regarded as a really good catch, Jill Hartz, that the art museum has come together in ways that the prophets of doom would have to say didn’t come true.
I said that badly – the prophecies of excessive donor influence didn’t materialize because it wasn’t there. In fact, we got constituencies to talk to each other in a way that they hadn’t done before, we ended up with a wonderful executive director; the museum is taking off on a really good course right now. I think that the apprehensions about whether there was excessive donor concern have been allayed by the results that we now have.
The Worker Rights Consortium issue was different. That was a really bad decision by the University, and I take full responsibility for it.
AG: To join in the first place?
DF: Well, we didn’t ever join, actually. It hadn’t been formed. But the more we observed what it actually amounted to, the less attractive it was. And as you know, the (Oregon State Board of Higher Education) passed an internal management directive that before anything came to a head precluded our formally joining it. But I’m glad they did what they did and I’m sorry we had acquiesced in that way. And, as I say, the buck really does stop at my office. I should have been smarter.
You know, as a wise consultant talked to us early in the process, and this is someone whom we’d used to talk about our overall status for many, many years, and he (said), ‘Dave, this should never have happened.’ And I said, ‘John, you’re right.’ So we had to unwind what was I think a serious mistake in terms of appearing to take political sides in a very complex international argument.
AG: So if something like that came up again, you would just not even consider it?
DF: I wouldn’t. But I’ve tried to say why more carefully. And if you look at a lot of movements of this kind, they actually run through the history of the University of Oregon. And in almost every case, when it’s been handled, I mean, boycotting lettuce for example, boycotting grapes, boycotting goods and so forth, when (the University acts) as a judge in the marketplace based upon the social views of particular products, ‘A,’ you remove it from the students’ choice, which is probably a bad thing if you’re trying to exercise moral judgements, ‘B,’ you can or might take sides in the wrong place of a very complex argument. If you go back and read Ken Metzler’s book on President (Charles E.) Johnson – have you ever read that?
AG: No.
DF: Well, it’s a sad, compelling book about this place exactly 40 years ago, when Chuck Johnson was trying to broker lettuce boycotts and grape boycotts, and that was at the height of the student uproars of Vietnam and domestic civil rights anyway. And it drove him into sort of a catatonic state. And it’s not known to this day whether he committed suicide or whether he just couldn’t get his little VW bug out of the way of a logging truck. He was killed on the McKenzie Highway. So the book is called “Confrontation: The (Destruction) of a (College) President”. But it’s very instructive because these problems recur every generation or so, they just get reiterations about what you should ban or how you should sit in judgment.
The wiser way to deal with all of these things is to have the students choose on an individual basis whether they want to participate in buying a brand or eating a product, doing veal or not doing veal, that that will be a student choice. It’s going to be a moral choice. And for the administration to take away is almost always a political mistake because it really does politicize the university.
AG: And then over the summer there was (the Amethyst Initiative, in which the president of Middlebury College was) gathering all the signatures of University presidents who thought should lower the drinking age. (One-hundred and thirty-five higher-education leaders have signed the initiative thus far.)
DF: Yeah.
AG: Is that the reason that you didn’t sign that?
DF: Yeah. I try to be very cautious what I commit the University to because I want to keep it free for the individuals within it to make these choices. That’s what the essence of academic freedom is. And so if the University precludes those choices one way or the other, or if it speaks in the name of one or the other, it would be denying a far more important moral statement.
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