A Life behind the Ivy Walls

 

                                                                                        

                      
     

     Okay, it was like this. One day I was mopping floors, cutting lawns, and doing whatever I could to complete my undergraduate degree, while supporting a young family. My dreams of “making it” in a rock band hadn’t worked out when I realized my livelihood depended on the dedication, work ethic and creativity of other musicians, in the early 1970s, a pretty shaky proposition. So, I decided to go my own way, finish my B.A. and start on an M.A.

     Unexpectedly, I landed a job at a major university, here in L.A., as a program administrator. Later, as I got to know the people who hired me, they said they knew I lacked the experience for the job, but I had more maturity and seemed more responsible than other applicants they’d interviewed, some graduates of prestigious universities and multiple letters after their names.

     Two years later, I was still getting my bearings, but I wanted to get out of L.A., so I moved up north, to east Sacramento, and was, again, lucky to land a job, this time at a community college, a few miles outside of  the city limits, out towards the Sierras, doing the same job, more or less, writing reports, designing programs, and dealing with deans, professors, vice-presidents, and other program administrators, a gaggle of P h. D’s and M.A.’s. among them, and, of course, still bright-eyed and bushy -tailed about working in higher education.

     I’ve got to admit my surprise, and in some cases downright disappointment, when I learned so many hotshot, educated people in higher education were incompetent, opportunistic, manipulative, or just plain slothful, at all levels of the academic hierarchy, from professor to president, no "common sense," as American political philosopher Thomas Paine might say, and in some ways, no different than some of the folk I worked with mopping floors and cutting lawns.  

     My friends in the corporate world don't deny the same thing doesn't exist in their shiny towers, as Lee Iacocca found out when he took the helm at a dysfunctional Chrysler in 1978, and workers at Boeing have known all along, come on, losing doors and tires after takeoff. That’s not to say, I didn’t also meet brilliance and ingenuity, sometimes in the most unlikely people, often researchers tucked away in isolated labs across campus.

     After a few months, my boss’s boss, a blue-collar boy who “made it good,” gave me props for serving in the military and going to Vietnam, "You know," he said, "colleges are structured like the military. We're at war against ignorance," so he offered me a promotion from program administrator to director, bypassing others who felt slighted, which is another story. At least it got me out of the basement and onto the first floor--with a window, a big deal in any college or university campus.

     As a director of a unit called Developmental Programs, I was required to sit in on the assistant vice-president’s weekly briefings, held on the fifth floor, the president’s floor, in a typical room you’d expect to find in a traditional college, massive double wood doors, the walls covered in dark mahogany siding, and long, wide meeting table, and heavy, elegant oak chairs to accommodate the presence of each person's perceived brain power, not unlike the true definition of the Latin, "Mensa."

     Sitting around the table were deans, directors, and the assistant to the assistant vice-president, Bernard Slyder (Ed. D not Ph. D., a keen difference on a college campus) who welcomed us, gave us a bit of a pep talk, and turned the meeting over to his assistant. Dr. Slyder, a big man with an ample, but not fat, midsection, sat back in his plush chair, crossed his arms, and commenced to shut his eyes, just like that, which, in my naivete, I figured helped him focus better.

     Every once in a while, he’d smile and nod, briefly open his eyes, as if our reports met his satisfaction, then, again, nestle into his chair, and shut his eyes. He sure sounded like he was asleep, a slow steady breathing escaping between his lips. When the meeting finished, his eyes shot open, as if on a timer. He thanked us and said he’d see us next week.

     After the meeting, I asked my friends about it, telling them my suspicions. They laughed and, in a not so scholarly jargon, said, “Yeah, he was sleeping, man. The dude's a righteous narcoleptic, sleeps through staff meeting. It’s his prerogative.”

     My friend Marty Montoya, in the office of “outreach services,” said, “The vato does whatever he wants, ay,” and said another, “Yeah, welcome to higher education.”

     The stories about Bernard Slyder were endless. A community college president, back in the 1960s, offered Slyder a dean’s job because Slyder had once been on the city council where the college was located. Slyder’s family had owned a popular electrical business in town. In the 1930’s, they’d come to California from Oklahoma during the dust bowl period, and after spending time working in the fields, got into the electrical business and struck it rich when they got some lucrative contracts, hired more electricians, and built their own company.

     Slyder got a bachelor's and a master's from a state university and pretty much mail-ordered his Ed. D. His slick social skills made him influential friends and kept laborious work tools and colored wires out of his uncoordinated hands. My understanding is that he talked his way into the Friday night poker games, where big time farmers and choice businessmen gambled with college and university bigwigs, and other town notables. It wasn’t long before they talked Slyder into local politics.

     Once on the city council, Slyder built up a robust rolodex filled with the names of prominent state politicians, mostly Democrats, but some moderate Republicans, and since they worked a few miles up the freeway at the state capital, they were always accessible. It was a mutual arrangement. Slyder promised to deliver them votes, and they promised to pass bills benefiting his interests, whether business or education. Some old-timers say, Slyder even hosted the Kennedy brothers at his Victorian home at the edge of town, so it wasn’t long before other presidents promoted Slyder, utilizing his rolodex and figuring he couldn’t do much damage as an assistant vice-president of students and community relations.  

     Then came one night in the late 1970s, a few years before I arrived. As the story goes, Slyder checked out a college vehicle and returned it to the motor pool banged up, but not like he’d had an accident, more like he’d parked outside a baseball stadium and the foul balls had their way with the vehicle.

     Rudy Moreno was there to collect the keys when Dr. Slyder returned the vehicle to the motor pool. Rudy said Slyder handed him the keys, told him to have a good night, got into his own car, and drove away. No one knows how the story leaked, but when it did, the whole campus was talking.

     Now, this story came to me secondhand, and like any secondhand telling, it means somebody told somebody else, reliable? who knows for sure, but it became campus lore, and from what I understand, is still making the rounds, nearly thirty-five years later.

     The way I heard it was Dr. Slyder checked out a campus vehicle to attend a regularly scheduled Wednesday night meeting in town. It was a large agricultural campus, spread out over hundreds of acres, some cultivated for research and others virgin land, nicely wooded nooks, good places to disappear for a few hours, which is what Dr. Slyder was doing.

     Each Wednesday, at the appointed time, another car would pull up beside his, his secretary, Marsha Montgomery, and she wasn’t there to take dictation or answer phones Some say this had been going on for some time, months. Now, Dr. Slyder was no spring chicken, as they say, but still spritely, according to some, and quite the ladies’ man, but on this particular night, they were both in for a surprise.

     No one admitted to finally squealing to Marsha’s husband, but, somehow, he got wind of the affair and took up his place behind a tree to confirm the rumors true. At the time of his choosing, Al Montgomery, a mechanic in a part of Sacramento known as Norte del Rio, a biker’s enclave at the northern-most edge of the city, came out from behind a tree, a baseball bat over his shoulder, ready to pounce.

     When Al peeked into the windows and confirmed the identity of the occupants inside the campus car, the mechanic from Norte del Rio lifted the Louisville slugger high over his head, brought it down, and began wailing on the hapless campus car, battering it in every spot imaginable, even grotesquely disfiguring the college name and logo on the driver’s door. It's not exactly clear what happened from that point on, except for Rudy Moreno, and the guys in the motor pool, who gave their rendering of Dr. Slyder, cool as a cucumber, returning the battered vehicle to its home among the other vehicles. 

     Rudy had no choice but to report the incident to his boss, with no explanation, since he had no idea what had happened. Rudy's boss reported it the appropriate authorities on campus, and the story hopped from lip to lip, ear to ear, from the lowest level clerk to the highest-level administrator in the president’s office, who, along the way, reluctantly, filled in the blanks.

     Strange, though, right? like it never happened, if, in fact, it did happen, but campus life chugged along as normal. That’s the thing about secondhand stories, exaggeration and hyperbole, even if some swear to its truth. I know Marsha worked on campus but secretary to the director in the office of Academic Program Enhancement, a scholarly way of saying “tutoring,” and Dr. Bernard Slyder, returned to his position, nary a question about the incident.

     In our meetings, everything was normal, except for my friends’ eyerolling, Dr. Slyder, welcoming us, turning the meeting over to his assistant, a rather young and pretty administrator from Bringham Young, and he’d sit back in his plush chair, close his eyes, lay his arms across his belly, as if he had not a care in the world.