Touchton interview [Begin Tape 1, Side 1] Warren: All right, you just said there are a lot more interesting things to talk about. Do they relate to W&L? Let's talk about them. Touchton: Sure. Well, building on what we just talked about, which was fraternities, I think it is a great irony, or maybe something even better than irony, that if I graduated in 1960, I must have gone on the alumni board in about 1973, and by that time, fraternities' house conditions really had deteriorated. Housemothers had been done away with at some point along the way; I don't remember why. We had gone through the Vietnam years, and I and some of my contemporaries and even older alumni end up on the alumni board in the mid-seventies, and we are absolutely appalled at what had happened to the fraternity houses physically. I remember our going to Bob Huntley and saying, "Either clean them up or shut them down," because it was just awful. I think Bob Huntley, who I believe is a wonderful man and was a great president of Washington and Lee, they were right in the middle of a capital campaign, he had a lot on his plate, he had, if you will, more important things to worry about than fraternities, so I really think that they just couldn't deal with the fraternities in the seventies, at that particular time. Then I ended up on the board of trustees in about 1982, or so, and in 1984 became chairman of the Campus Life Committee. It was really the first time that the board of trustees had had a Campus Life Committee. I had previously served on the board of trustees at the University of Tampa, which is that building I told you about, across the 16 river, and had been chairman of their Student Life Committee, so I knew a little something about board committee structures. But when we were studying the coeducation issue in '84-'85, Rector Ballengee, who was a very good rector, had created a Campus Life Committee, and charged it with some oversight over the life of the student body, not that we wanted to run it, but what could the trustees do in understanding and influencing the life of students on campus to make it better. Well, the very first chairman of that committee was Gordon Leggett from Lynchburg, and in the last few months that he was on the board, and then as he went off the board, Rector Ballengee asked me if I would be the chairman. And in May of 1985, I submitted to the Campus Life Committee of the board two statements which the board adopted, one having to do with campus life, student life, generally, and the other having to do with fraternities, and it was interesting to me that after some of my unpleasant experiences and reactions in the late fifties, here I was twenty-five years later as the chairman of the Campus Life Committee, with oversight over fraternities. And it was the beginning of what really became the Fraternity Renaissance program, and I think it was almost meant to happen. Warren: Well, keep going. Touchton: Well, I brought you some documents which you can take away with you. I found that I have on my desk three file drawers of Washington and Lee material, which would be impossible, and no one would ever want to go through them all, but what I made for you were several of the early documents relating to the Fraternity Renaissance, which is what you expressed an interest in talking about, which is a lot more interesting than my years at W&L. But here is a "Statement of Policy Relating to Campus Life" by the W&L University Board of Trustees, dated May 25, 1985. Here is the "Statement Relating to Fraternities" by the W&L Board of Trustees, of the same date. Here is my sort of background comments about campus life and the fraternity statements, which I don't remember if I read this to the board, or if I did this for myself. 17 The way I approach problems or tasks, I guess, if I can write down on paper what I think the problem is and a potential solution to the problems, then that tells me I really understand what it is I'm trying to do. So I am a prodigious note-taker and writer. I did the same thing on the coeducation issue, too, by the way. But this is interesting because these documents are the beginning of the Fraternity Renaissance. Warren: Thank you, I'm very happy to have those. Touchton: The last item is—and there's much more than you want, but the last item is a letter I wrote to Paul Murphy in January of '86 because after—let's see what the sequence was. The trustees had dealt from time to time with—and so had the faculty— with fraternities, but it was really sort of a dilemma that nobody quite knew quite how to deal with it, how to deal with the problem of some aspects of fraternities not being as positive as they could be. I think we all recognized the positive aspects of them. The problem was how do we take some of the negative aspects and either tone them down or get rid of those negative aspects and shift that weight more toward the positive side. There had been various statements over the years, but fraternities sort of seemed to get worse and worse, particularly after the housemothers left. So when the Campus Life Committee was created, I think in '84, that was really the first time the trustees had had a direct pipeline into the student life process. Because of the Honor System, the trustees had really wanted to keep their hands off of student life, and had, in fact, delegated, in the same way the trustees delegates to the Executive Committee in the student body the operation of the Honor System, they had delegated to the faculty the student life aspects, you might say, the non-honor-system part of human life. Well, but we clearly were not happy with the way that was going. We respected the differing roles of the faculty and the trustees, but the trustees were getting negative feedback from alumni, from parents, from some students themselves about some of the negative aspects of fraternity life, and the trustees felt like we had to deal with that. 18 So when the Campus Life Committee was formed, the first thing I tried to do was to sort of set the tone for what is the appropriate role for the board of trustees to play relative to student life issues in general, and fraternities in particular. John Wilson, who was very supportive of, you might say, this new emphasis on student life and fraternities, with the coeducation issue out of the way—wasn't it in either '84 or '85? John Wilson went to the alumni board, which already had a Fraternity Committee, and asked them for help. They created the Alumni-Fraternity Council, with Paul Murphy as chair of it. Paul Murphy was really the hardest worker and the person who applied the most energy and thought to the Fraternity Renaissance program toward the following six or eight years. My role was to get trustee support, to keep the trustees informed about what was going on. Our preference always was for the students themselves to correct the problems as much as they would. After whatever the students would not do themselves, it was appropriate, perhaps, for their house corporations to change. But we had a weak house corporation system. We had a weak faculty adviser system. That meant a lot of issues ended up in the dean's office. The dean can't do everything, and there's always student concern about "the Hill." So then sometimes the president would get involved, in this case, John Wilson, and that meant the trustees became knowledgeable about what was going on. So the trustees finally thought it would help the process if we established policies and issued encouraging instructions to John Wilson to pass down to his deans and to the IFC leaders and to the fraternity members themselves, that there needed to be some changes made. Paul Murphy's Alumni-Fraternity Council, started by the alumni board, was a key—and the most key—part of that process, because they were the implementers. For the alumni to participate in correcting the fraternity problem was a much more acceptable idea than the board of trustees to be involved in trying to correct the problem. 19 Warren: Why do you think that was? Touchton: Part of it is governance and part of it is politics. That is to say, if the Hill and—first of all, students generally don't know who the trustee are, at all. Secondly, if the Hill comes down too hard on the students, then it creates animosities and divisions which hurt the community in other ways. If the energy for correcting the fraternity problems are coming from alumni of all ages, the fraternity members and leaders understand alumni more than they understand the Hill, or certainly more than they understand the role of the board of trustees, so for the alumni to be involved in the process is a more acceptable and understandable relationship for the average fraternity member. That doesn't mean they like it, but it means they understand it more. So what Paul Murphy did as chairman of the Alumni-Fraternity Council was to get the house corporations involved, sort of reinvigorated, if you will, to overhaul the faculty adviser process, to get some national fraternity leaders involved. We had a symposium on campus in the fall of '86, with coverage by the alumni magazine, which was a way of signaling to the alumni that we were starting to work on that problem, the problem of fraternity conditions and behavior. I met a couple of times with IFC leaders to try to explain to them that a new day was coming and they needed to work with us and correct some of the problems themselves before the problems got corrected for them. Warren: What kind of reaction did you get? Touchton: Not very good, really. As you can imagine, this was a new concept for them, and part of them intellectually recognized the authority the board had in raising the issues of their behavior, but in another sense, they wondered what right we had to tell them how to live their lives. We tried to respond in terms of, "You are part of a greater community. You are bringing disregard to that greater community because of your actions, and therefore we have a responsibility to that greater community, to try to 20 correct the problem." Some of the students learned that very quickly, and some of them probably never did quite learn it, until they probably matured a little bit. I also remember speaking. We had a meeting, I don't remember when this was, it might have been '88, in Lee Chapel, to which we invited freshman and sophomore fraternity members. Anyone was invited, but it was virtually required attendance for freshman and sophomore fraternity members. We said, "There are going to be changes made in the fraternity system, and if you don't like it, there's the door." Coeducation and the sharply higher application numbers permitted us to take a tougher stand than we could have taken before coeducation, because if anybody had chosen to walk out the door, it would have been expensive. Once coeducation occurred, anybody that walked out the door, there were hundreds more that could fill their shoes. So it was easier to be hard-nosed in 1988, versus 1978, let's say. But we went through—again, under Paul Murphy's leadership and mine from the board, as Campus Life Committee chairman; John Wilson was always very supportive, as president; Lew John and Buddy Atkins, and, later, David Howison, were always very supportive. One of the early things we did was to bring in an architectural firm from Charlottesville, VMDO—I don't remember what the initials stand for, but an architectual firm, to do a survey of all the fraternity houses, to see how bad the problem was physically. It was easy to determine that many of the houses were dangerous to live in, the wiring hadn't been changed in decades, the plumbing was antiquated, the damage to the houses from parties in some cases was just awful. So we embarked on a deliberate effort to completely rebuild the fraternity houses. It ended up costing, I think, about thirteen million dollars. While no consideration was ever given to abolishing fraternities, because we really did recognize—the board did, virtually unanimously—recognized that the positive contributions of fraternities were very good, but there were simply negative aspects 21 that had to be corrected. While it was not considered, if the decision had been made to abolish fraternities, then I suspect the university would have had to spend more than thirteen million dollars to not only refurbish the houses anyway, but probably to build a new dining hall or a new dormitory, or whatever. So I think one could, at least superficially, make the case that spending thirteen million dollars to renovate all the houses was less expensive than some of the alternatives. Having said that, it wasn't really approached that way, it was really done because we wanted to give the fraternity system an opportunity to show that it served a worthwhile purpose, and I think we have done that. It is not problem-free, but we always felt that the camaraderie and the friendships and the leadership training that occurred within individual fraternities was part of what caused alumni to feel so connected to the university. And we thought, particularly following the coeducation decision, when we really didn't know what all the influences would be and what changes would occur, we were not inclined to change Washington and Lee very much, and where we changed it, to change it only very gradually. Warren: It seems to me that that must have been a really complicated time, to have had coeducation in its birthing stages, and trying to get the Fraternity Renaissance program off the ground. I'm very interested in that happening coincidentally. And it also occurs to me that you had a very special window, having your son there as a student. Touchton: [Laughter] Warren: And I don't know how to ask that question other than that way, to say you had these three really interesting things going on in your life, all related to Washington and Lee. Touchton: Well, I tried to insulate, or protect my son from that, because—I made the comment that students really don't know trustees. Well, what happened through the creation of this Campus Life Committee and with me as the chairman of it, I became the trustee that was meeting with the students on a consistent basis, so I was, in many 22 cases, the only trustee they had ever known. And then for my son to be there at the same time, which was purely coincidental, it was difficult for him at times, but he seemed to handle it well, and I told him one time that I know it must be hard, and I was sorry if it was hard, but this was just something we had to do. And he sort of laughed. He's six-four, he's a great big guy, and he sort of looked down at me and put his arm around me, and said, "Dad, it's always been hard to be your son, but fortunately, the good outweighs the bad." So that was nice. [Touchton crying.] Warren: Let's pursue the coeducation theme that was there, happening simultaneously. I'm just so interested in so many different angles we've got going here, that I don't know where to go. Why don't you take it? You decide where to go with it. Touchton: Let's talk first about coeducation itself. I really feel good about the fact that I was on the board from—I've forgotten now—maybe '82 to '92, let's say, and the three issues that I was very heavily involved in were coeducation and Fraternity Renaissance and the capital campaign. In the case of coeducation—remember I mentioned how I like to write down, if I can express an issue in writing, it says to me I understand it— well, I did that in the coeducation issue, and my position paper, if you'd call it that, after I delivered to the trustees my feelings and thoughts about coeducation, those were the comments that got printed in the alumni magazine as one trustee's perspective of the coeducation process. I thought coeducation—I didn't have any feelings, pro or con, about it, when we started the process. I probably thought that, on balance, we shouldn't go coed unless we needed to. I wasn't one who thought that coeducation should happen because half the population is female. I didn't think that. But it became very clear to me as a trustee, as the trustees studied that question of coeducation for a full year, that W&L's academic purpose would be strengthened, and its financial future would be strengthened, and its reputation would be preserved if we went coed. And in the absence of going coed, I think we would have gone down in quality; I think we already had. And I think that 23 would have continued. So the decision to go coed turned out to be an almost unanimous decision by the board, and, I think, a good one, and one that I'm very proud to have played a role. Then the women started arriving, I think in '85. They arrive in September of '85. The Campus Life Committee having been formed in '84, the first statements by the board occur in May of '85. So you're right, the women were coming just at the very time that we were taking a look at the fraternity issue. In one sense, they're unrelated, they're just coincidental. In another sense, they were not, because the Campus Life Committee was formed in part because we wanted the experience of the women who came to W&L to be as positive as it generally was for the men. We wanted to make sure whether there were residential housing issues, or organizations on campus, or whatever other non-academic issues there were, we wanted to be sure that the community and the sense of community that existed when it was all male remained positive in a coed environment. So as the Campus Life Committee, with its fraternity interests, moved forward with other parts of the Campus Life Committee being interested in other issues, they did get discussed together and dealt with in committee meetings together, and at the board level together. We worried about if there are fraternities, will there be sororities, will the women want sororities? And one of our dilemmas early on was that one year, maybe the first year, the women didn't want sororities, and the second year they did want sororities, and the third year they didn't want sororities. Our attitude was, "We will not impose sororities on you. You are entitled to the same accommodations and treatment as the men. So, women, you decide whether or not you want sororities, for example, and if you decide that you do, we feel obligated to help you have them." We were also concerned about the treatment of women within the fraternities. We were also concerned about social outlets for the women other than at fraternities. We didn't want to make the women's decision for them. To the degree they wanted 24 fraternities to be their outlet, that's fine. To the degree they wanted avenues other than fraternity houses, to have a social life, we thought the community owed that to them. So when we thought about those issues, it was complex. Well, I guess I'm rambling now, but in one sense, dealing with fraternities and dealing with coeducation was purely coincidental; they just happened to happen at the same time. In another sense, they were inseparable once we were dealing—once coeducation happened, you did have to deal with it. Warren: I wonder if the young men who came in, believing they were going to an all- male school, and believing they were joining up to these wonderful party houses, how they reacted to having all this change thrust upon them, because it's not what they signed on for when they came to Washington and Lee in, say, 1982 or '83. Touchton: Well, I think we took some comfort—in the coeducation survey, and I think I might have something here, in the coeducation survey that was done obviously prior to the coeducation decision, we asked alumni what factors were the most important to them of the W&L experience. The five that were most important were quality of the faculty; the small student/faculty ratio; the Honor System; academically selective in admissions; relatively small enrollment. Having an all-male in undergraduate enrollment was ninth out of thirteen. That was from the alumni who were surveyed. When we asked the students whether or not they were for or against coeducation, as I remember, they generally, to the tune of about sixty/forty, were opposed to coeducation. But if you asked them what was best for the institution, what they thought was best for the institution, as I remember, that sixty/forty turned around, and about sixty/forty would have been in favor of coeducation if that's what was best for the institution. I think we took some comfort in that, in the Fraternity Renaissance program, in trying to emphasize that their behavior was endangering the nature of the community, and that that was true whether W&L was coed or not, because we had heard from parents and alumni for years that that was the case. 25 But it was even more important with W&L being coed. And I think we thought, by having the meetings with the IFC, having the meetings in Lee Chapel with the freshmen and sophomores, involving the house corporations, having the house corporations meet with the individual chapters, I think we thought that by educating them over time, explaining that we weren't trying to abolish fraternities, we weren't even trying to take over fraternities, we were trying to improve the nature of the community, I think we believed they would buy into that. I think they finally did. Some of them went kicking and screaming; others liked the changes. We thought it was important that the first round of houses that were remodeled—and you may remember we did that over a three- or four-year period of time—we thought it important that the first round of houses be done well, because the other students would be looking to see how we did it that first round. We tried to be honest, we tried to be candid, we tried to be firm. Paul Murphy had designed what was called—I thought I had a copy of that here. Here we are. "Standards for Fraternities." Warren: I'm glad to have a copy of that. Touchton: Well, I will make a copy of that for you. This is my stack, that's your stack, but you can have anything in it, in my stack. Warren: Okay, it's a deal. Touchton: But Paul Murphy had prepared "Standards for Fraternities." We really tried to convey, and we were trying to do it honestly, that it was a partnership, but we had to do what we were doing, and they had to buy into it; but they had to understand that we weren't doing it to be difficult or to be punitive, but because the nature of the community required it. And I think we did that. I think we did. Do you think we did? Warren: I think it's a remarkable change that's happened. I lived in Lexington from 1977 to 1980, and I remember the "animal houses" all too clearly. When I came back, it was, "What happened?" And that's how Frank and I got to talking about the Fraternity 26 Renaissance so early on, because there was a change at Washington and Lee, I thought more than coeducation. It was Fraternity Renaissance. Touchton: Well, it was. And by the way, I should not have left Frank Parsons out of my list of people that I mentioned earlier, because Frank probably had the most amount of institutional history of anyone there, and he was not only a friend of mine, but was invaluable in providing a perspective and thoughts about how to proceed. He remembered things that either no one else ever knew, or had forgotten, and you know how remarkable he is in that regard. Warren: I do, so well. Touchton: So I guess when you asked about proceeding with coeducation and the Fraternity Renaissance at the same time, the fact that W&L is as small as it is helped; the fact that it is as personal as it is helped; and the fact that everybody was talking to each other helped. That is, the trustees, the alumni board, the John Wilson and his staff, the faculty advisers, the house corporations, the fraternity leaders. It was not easy, and there was a certain level of frustration on the part of the students in responding to so much change, but we just kept saying, "But we just have to do this." And we did. Warren: I think when you're dealing with people in that age group, firmness is very important. Touchton: Couldn't agree more. Warren: My father would be glad to hear me say that. [Laughter] [End of interview] 27