Parsons interview

[Begin Tape 2, Side 1]
Warren: Mame Warren. Today is the twenty-ninth of February 1996. This is tape two
with Frank Parsons.
Parsons: We were talking about the story that I had written for the alumni magazine
that was sent to the trustees, and despite the fact that the majority of the trustees who
read it and responded thought it was a good article and fairly stated our position on the
racial integration of Washington and Lee, there was a small number of trustees whose
role and service to Washington and Lee, in fairness to them, was significant, and
President Cole asked me if I wouldn't—I don't think I had much choice, but asked if I
wouldn't change the story and do a less interpretive story and to deal with it on this
other basis, which I did. What that resulted in was a statement that quoted the board's
position on this.
         I would want to go back and read that article again before I would attempt to
quote it, but in the main, they took the position, that, "Hey, we've never interfered with
the admissions process in the past. We haven't had any black applicants, and we have
full faith and confidence and know that the admissions people will deal fairly with the
applications they get." What they did was simply, without saying that they were doing
this, agreed not to interpose themselves in the admissions process. I am certain that up
until that point, had we had applicants from black students in those days, we required a
picture.
Warren: Are you serious?
Parsons: I'm serious, yes. The word would have gotten to the trustees. There wasn't a
chance in the world we would let a black student in here inadvertently or without their
knowledge. But in fairness to the board, there had never been a completed application
by a black student. That's not to say that we could have gone on forever in that. The
board was completely unpersuaded by the fact that early in Washington and Lee's
history there was a black student who attended Liberty Hall Academy, Mr. Chavis, for
whom Chavis House on Lee Avenue is named. That didn't carry any weight with them
whatsoever.
Warren: Do you know much about that Chavis story?
Parsons: Yes. I don't carry it in my head. Again, I'd have to look it up. I'd be reluctant
to comment on it without refreshing my memory.
Warren: Where would I find that story?
Parsons: It's around. It's been written up in the magazine and in historical papers, and
I know that Taylor Sanders has papers on it.
Warren: How did young Mr. Smothers know that it was okay to apply?
Parsons: We didn't fool the newspapers with that statement from the trustees. The
headlines in the newspapers said, "Washington and Lee To Admit Blacks," or admit
whatever the "in" term for black people at that time was.
Warren: So when would that have been?
Parsons: 1967, around that time, '67, '68.
Warren: So it was a headline?
Parsons: Oh, yeah, it made the news. Yes, indeed.
Warren: Locally? Or how widespread was this considered news?
Parsons: I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't get in the papers across the country,
because there had been coverage from time to time. We had class valedictorian, or at
least one I know of, get up and in his valedictory address urge the university to accept
black students. So it was something that kept coming up in ways that—we had the big
flap over whether or not we were going to invite Martin Luther King [Jr.] to speak here.
Warren: When was that?
Parsons: That was in the mid-sixties, too. Again, an issue surrounded by a great
misunderstanding and controversy as to what actually happened. There was a group
here on the campus—I'm trying to think what its name was. It was sort of a religiously
oriented group that wanted to invite Martin Luther King to come to Washington and
Lee and speak at a time when Martin Luther King was engaged in his leading the civil
rights movement through civil disobedience. Before they ever invited Mr. King, this
group was sensitive enough to the attitudes of some of our trustees and felt that they
ought to ask the board for its permission to invite him. The board wasn't about to grant
its permission. They said, "No, you don't have our permission to invite him."

         Well, that got twisted around, so it appeared that Martin Luther King had been
invited to speak here and then denied the opportunity or the invitation was withdrawn.
Point of fact, it never was issued. But that in itself created a high visibility profile for
Washington and Lee's position on racial integration, and so like I say, we were pretty
much in the spotlight there from time to time, and sometimes in ways that cast Dr. Cole
and the institution in a favorable way, but angered the trustees and sometimes in ways
that appeared that the trustee viewpoint was indeed Washington and Lee, and that we
were still trying to oppose racial integration.

         So when the decision was made, it was clearly understood certainly in ways that
would reach out to qualified young black men in the community, that here was an
opportunity for them to come to Washington and Lee.
Warren: Would they have been offered the traditional free education?
Parsons: Yes, they would have gotten the Rockbridge County discount.
Warren: Tell me about the Rockbridge County discount.
Parsons: My memories of what it entailed are not as clear as they once were. At one
time, my first year here as director of publicity, Dean Gilliam wanted me to get out a
news story about the number of Rockbridge students, county students, that were
coming here. We were very proud of the fact that we offered an opportunity for
residents of Rockbridge County to come to Washington and Lee at a great discount in
the tuition and fees. I'd have to check to find out what that is. At a time when our
tuition was, say, $600 or something, the county student would pay $100 and $500 would
be forgiven.

         Dean Gilliam was very proud and Dr. Gaines was very proud of the fact that we
offered this opportunity to our local constituency, if you will, and I won't say
rationalize, it wasn't quite a rationalization, it was simply a good reason for doing it,
that by offering this opportunity, we were giving an opportunity to some local students
to go to college that they might not have exercised if we hadn't offered it, that their
means didn't even permit them to go to a state institution perhaps, but they could live
at home, and because of their tuition discounted here, they would have an opportunity
to come here. Sometimes we would take them—I think I'm correct in this—and Dean
Gilliam would let them in even though they were not among the best applicants we
had. He wanted to give them a chance. I would say that in such instances, his
experience and reason for doing so probably was justified. They were good and they
turned out to be good students.

         So that's been something that's been part of our heritage here for a long time. I
don't know the terms of it today. I think they still do it, but I don't know that the
differential or the ratio of support compared to what they would pay themselves is the
same. But that's something that I've always felt very good about at Washington and
Lee.
Warren: When I first heard of that, I was so impressed by it. I thought it was such a
wonderful offer. Maybe it's something all schools do, but I haven't heard of it before.
Parsons: No, I'd be so bold as to say it's something that all schools ought to do, but I
don't know, and I don't mean to suggest that we're unique in this. I'm sure there are
other places where this does happen. But again, I don't think it happens universally.
Warren: Frank, we're past five o'clock, but today I don't have to be frantic because the
dog's right here. But I think we probably ought to start winding this up. What would
you like to say that I haven't asked?
Parsons: I'd like to say that my memories of these things are fairly accurate. Almost
everything I've said I would recommend that the facts be checked if they can be
checked. Some of the things I've offered have been opinions, and some of these
opinions, I think, have been stated in ways that appear that I can certify their validity. I
don't think I misrepresented anybody in what I've said today in ways that would
embarrass them or anything like that.
Warren: We'll have to try harder next time.
Parsons: My concern is not being unduly critical. I've mentioned Jack Warner, for
instance, and his opposition. I have great respect for Jack Warner. He's a very fine
person, a good alumnus, very generous benefactor of Washington and Lee, and just a
genuinely entertaining person to be around.
Warren: We know he'll have a chance to speak for himself, too.
Parsons: I don't think I do him a disservice. He's a good old boy, and I've always liked
him and regretted very much that he was, for a time there, at odds with the institution.
And maybe others I may have mentioned today, but all of these persons, even when
they've been individuals in support of ideas that I couldn't agree with myself, I always
tried to remember that they had the best interest of Washington and Lee at heart.
Sometimes we have differing perspectives on the best interest from different vantage
points, but they've been men and women of integrity, and gentlemen and ladies, just
nice people, and even some of those that I've had the toughest time with, I could cite
chapter and verse here, one person in particular, even so, I'm inclined to think of them
in warmer terms, and maybe they weren't. [Laughter]
Warren: I do have one last question to wind this up. We started out talking about
academics in general. Let's bring it up to the present day. What do you think the status
of things is academically at Washington and Lee today?
Parsons: I think we're very much better in almost every way than the institution has
ever been in the past. Keep in mind we've always had really good students here, and
we've got really good students now. To say that we have better students now than we
had then is not quite fair. But I think that from top to bottom of a given class or a given
student body, we have better students here today. We offer a much better curriculum,
much more demanding requirements of them within their disciplines and within the
courses.

         I think it's tougher to get good grades at Washington and Lee now than it was
when I was a student here, and I'll represent myself as exhibit number one. I did very
well at Washington and Lee. I do not recall studying very hard. I was able to succeed
at a level satisfying to me and satisfying by almost any measure you would measure. I
graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and I did not have to work very hard to
do that. To my own discredit, at the time I was not embarrassed that I wasn't working
hard. I worked hard on some things, let's be honest. There were certain courses where
I did have to work hard, and I tried very hard to get an A from Claybrook Griffith and I
never succeeded. But in the main, college was not difficult for me.

         So are we as good as we can be? Of course not. I think that right now one of the
issues I understand that is before the long-range steering committee has to do with
whether or not we should increase our enrollment here up to 1,700, let 1,700 be sort of
the floor or the ceiling or the point that we would try to gear our admissions policy to
support. I have very strong reservations about whether or not we should go any larger
than we are. I just look up and down the Colonnade and the back mall there at class
change time, and I see swarms of people there, and if we get any more up there, I've
read where you put too many rats in a cage, they begin to fight, and I think sometimes
we put too many students up here on this ridge line and things begin to go sour.

         Now, we will have tremendous new capacity here when the Science Center is
completed and our renovations in Howe and Parmly are completed. We will have
some elbow room. If anything that sometimes educators, administrators, and faculty
seem to be unable to tolerate is elbow room. They've got to be able to touch things with
their elbows. They've got to have that sort of semi-cramped feeling. If you've got too
much elbow room, they want to think of ways to fill it up, and one of the easiest things
to do is, "Gee whiz, if we added X number of students, think of the tuition that would
bring in, and we could handle it here. We might have to add a professor in this
department and one over here, something like that." It's very easy to rationalize
growth. If you do it in 100-student increments, then that doesn't seem to be too much of
a change.

         When I came here, Mr. [Earl Stansbury] Mattingly was university treasurer. He
used to literally dance a little jig when we knew we were going to have 1,000 students.
That, to him, was the ideal enrollment. It certainly was his own breakpoint for financial
fiscal stability. We were over 1,200 students in the years immediately after World War
II when we had the influx of veterans, and then it leveled off at around 1,000. It seemed
to stay there for five or six, maybe ten, years. Again, I'd want to check that. But then
gradually it began to creep up and we began to seek slightly larger freshmen classes.
We added some additional capacity across the street in Gilliam Dorm for additional
freshmen, so we went up. Pretty soon we got up to around 1,300, 1,350, and even a
couple of years we got up above 1,400, then slipped back.

         When coeducation came to the forefront and we began thinking about what size
student body should we have, the notion was that we would try to achieve a student
body of 1,500, and that gradually over a period of, we thought then, I think, five or six
years, we would get up to that by gradually increasing the size of the freshman class,
and that we would seek a balance of two men for every woman. Again, that was an
extrapolation of the view commonly held by some members of the administrative staff,
some members of the faculty, certainly held by the athletic department, that we needed
1,000 men to survive athletically. We could not be expected to compete successfully in
football and lacrosse and some of the—
Warren: Of course, the women couldn't compete. [Laughter]
Parsons: Without 1,000 men. We were of the mistaken notion—I think mistaken
notion—that we had to have at least 1,000 men to sustain all the fraternity houses. So
that's how 1,500. We had to have at least 1,000 men and 500 women.

         I meant to say something about this when we were talking about coeducation. I
think this metaphor is original with me. I said even when you're the caboose on the
coeducation train, you don't want to jump the track. And we didn't have any
confidence that we could stay on the track, even though we were the caboose to the
coeducation train, that just because all the other colleges had done it and were
succeeding, we didn't know whether we could succeed or not. We had, I think, a
massive sense of lack of confidence that we could succeed. What surprised us is we
succeeded beyond our wildest dreams, that of the 104 young women who came in that
first class, I think 101 of them came back as sophomores, and the attrition level,
particularly among the women over the first four or five years, was minimal. So very
quickly we went up to 1,500, up to 1,600, and have been over that several times in
recent years. We've been very happy.

         One of the things I used to always ask every young woman among our students
I'd get to know, "Are you glad you came?" And I've never gotten a negative answer.
"Oh, yes." Usually it's very enthusiastic. "Yes, I'm glad."
Warren: Frank, the idea of two men for every woman is very attractive. [Laughter]
Parsons: Well, I used to facetiously say two. When we did accept our coeducational
status and began to recruit women, one of the things that we ought to put into our
catalog was a picture of a VMI dress parade. [Laughter] I don't think we've ever done
that, but there is—I don't know how much—cross current between that.

         When I used to be the parking czar, one of my memorable moments was when a
young woman, a freshman, came in to complain about the tickets that her VMI
boyfriend was getting when he would bring his car over on Wednesday afternoon and
visit her in the dorm. She said, "Quite frankly, I can't afford to pay his tickets anymore."
Apparently she was paying his parking fines, and she wanted some kind of relief.
Warren: Poor boy didn't have two legs? Not very far to VMI.
Parsons: I asked her, "Why does he bring the car over?" "Well, we never can decide
what it is we want to do until he gets here, and he likes to have a car in case we need it."
I said, "Well, tell him to park on the street then for an hour or so until you make up
your mind." [Laughter]
Warren: Frank, this has been a really good interview. I'm very happy.
Parsons: I'll be glad to talk on other subjects if you went to talk some more.
Warren: We will. I think you'll be very happy when you see this in print.
[End of interview]