UA-R-GC-1914-01-01-1961-08-15_Page-056

I middle of one weekday morning. There were but three persons on the entire main floor. At the trustee meeting new buildings were discussed but nothing was mentioned about the use factor of present classrooms and laboratories. Since our college is church-related, we evidently assume all our volunteers are ethical. Yet in observing colleges and universities for The Readers Digest) I have been astounded to observe that the ethical conduct of the church-related colleges is, on the average, not as high as that of the non-sectarian and the public institutions. This receives little or no attention by the boards. Furthermore, we should be alerted not only to signs of personal advantage-taking among us trustees but to evidence of materialism among the faculty. The dedication of most college professors is pro­found; they are devoted to teaching and learning. But are other motives creeping in? I know that a major portion of one faculty meeting was spent discussing ways and means for assuring that any professor who gives a lecture for filming will be paid or allotted teaching-time credit for each and every time the film is shown. Can we then criticize James C. Petrillo's musicians or the "work miles" of railroad and airline unions? We trustees spent most of the meeting time thinking in terms of short-time solutions for pressing problems-what the early flyers used to call "seat of the pants flying." Instead, we had better have been looking for long-time solutions, seeking to evaluate basic trends, to set underlying policies based on thoughtful foresight. We live in dangerously difficult times; whole societies are turbulent; change is everywhere. And in this period, educational policies set by tra­dition, by folk-lore, are no longer adequate. We, the trustees, are at the center, at the focus, at the policy control wheel. This is no time for us to be diddling with detail. This is the time for using all of the abilities and facilities of each and everyone who has a keen sense of the future. Winston Churchill long ago observed: "Great issues go by default when attention is diverted to minor affairs." Truly, truly few men in history have ever had such great responsi­bility and such great opportunity as have we college trustees. For­tunately, among our trustee boards are some of the ablest men and women of America. But we must free ourselves from being rubber stamps for administrators, or mere fund raisers, and instead focus more time and talent on the Great Issues. We trustees should be peer­ing into the future and acting with astute foresight.