Copeland interview

[Begin Tape 1, Side 2]
Warren: Were there particular professors that meant a lot to you?
Copeland: Yeah, one who just recently had retired, Delos D. Hughes, who at the time
that I'd shown up on campus was the chairman of the Politics Department, and his
nickname around campus was "Easy D" Hughes. Everyone knew him as Easy D,
because it was very easy to get a Din his class, a little harder to get a C, fairly difficult
to get a B, and virtually impossible to get an A. A fantastic, fantastic teacher. He was

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my advisor, so I knew him first as an advisor, and I just liked him. He's kind of a
shorter man with gray hair and a beard, who was just warm, and would look at you
and ask you a question and smile, and make you feel like he was really happy to be
spending time with you, even if he was on his way some place, on his way to class.
He just always, always made time for you, or would make time for you if he really
was busy. That made a real impression upon me. I ended up being a student of his,
and I did not get a Din his class. I think I got a B, but he was difficult.

        I'm convinced to this day, although I don't believe in reincarnation, if I did, I
would think that he is the reincarnation of Socrates. If ever there is a man who has
mastered the Socratic Method, it's Professor Hughes. He was just wonderful. He
taught the really big gut course in the Politics Department, Politics 265, Political
Theory, Plato through Burke. The reading was very dense and very conceptual
when we were talking his political philosophy. He just was fantastic, the way he
would ask a question of you that was already at least two leaps beyond simply, "Well,
what does Plato have to say about this?" or "What is Rousseau's position on this?"
He would assume that you already knew that. He was already two exits down the
freeway from you on that, and he wanted to already put you to the test.

         I was a politics major here. I had started out pre-med, and after a year in the
Science Department, I just didn't think that's what I wanted to do with the rest of my
life. My father was an attorney and still is, and I had always been interested in
politics, and so I sort of changed gears and became a politics major.

         Another influential faculty member was also in the politics department, Ken
Ruscio, who's now the associate dean of the Commerce School. At the time that I
was here, he was the associate dean of students, I think, for freshmen and residents
life, but his specialty was in public policy, and he taught some courses. I got to know
him not only through being his student, but also I was a dorm counselor my junior
and senior years, and he, as the dean of freshman residents life, was the supervisor,

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really the boss of all the dorm counselors, and so I got to know him fairly well
through that, too.

         I'm trying to think of some other men. Jim Warren in the English
Department, who, I think, I don't know how many, but quite a number of girls on
campus had crushes on him at the time I was here, and probably still do. But my
senior year, the beginning of my senior year, I had looked back on what my academic
experience had been, and after I'd taken the core requirement classes, I really
concentrated largely on either politics or economics or business administration, the C
School courses, because I thought if I decided not to go to law school, which wasn't a
sure thing then, you know, "Politics degree is kind of soft, I need to firm it up. I need
to have some accounting, maybe some business administration. I need to firm it up
a little bit."

         Well, the beginning of my senior year, I had this epiphany. I thought, "My
goodness, I'm in a liberal arts school, and I need to take advantage of it while I can
get it," so I spent my senior year, I think, taking a renaissance approach to my
academic diet. So I took an introductory literature course from Jim Warren, which
was American literature, I think Whitman through Faulkner, and I loved it. I
absolutely loved it. I loved the readings. I loved the work that I did in the course,
and I did very well in the course.

         I liked Professor Warren just because of the way he dealt with the students and
the mastery that he had, and the love that he had for the language. I just seemed to
hit it off with him. At one point, he and I were talking, or maybe he put a comment
on some paper that he was handing back about, "Too bad you weren't an English
major," you know. I was thinking the same thing myself.

         Let's see, Clark Mollenhoff, legendary journalist and professor of journalism.
During my senior year, my renaissance year, I thought, again, "What am I going to be
sorry that I didn't do at Washington and Lee when I graduate?" So I thought, "Clark

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Mollenhoff, who is just a giant, you know, I need to know this man, I need to take a
course from him." And so I walked into his office one day and I introduced myself,
and I said, "I'm not a journalism major, I'm a politics major," and I wanted to try
and take, I think, what was essentially a capstone course for the Journalism
Department, which really amounted to meeting in his office at a table about this size.
He had his desk sitting down at one end of it, and then a table just like this
emanating out from it. The students, he limited it to five or six students, and we'd
sit around, and most of it consisted of him telling war stories from his days as a
reporter in the White House press corps. And when we weren't doing that, he was
assigning us to cover-most of it was monitoring the federal government. What's
the government up to? So we would order inspector general reports and comb
through them, keep abreast of current events affecting particular departments.

         In any event, at the beginning of the semester, I walked in, I said, "You know, I
really would like to take a course from you, and this will be my last opportunity." He
was just this big hulk of a man, who, by that time, had lost an eye to cancer, and
recently, I believe, had his salivary glands removed due to cancer. But he was this
big hulk of a man, tough as nails, who said, "Well, if you want to be here, you're the
kind of person I want to have in this class. Where's the drop-add slip? Let me sign
it." So he let me in, and it was a wonderful experience. How much do I really
remember about what learned in that? Probably very little, but just the impression
that this man made on me, I mean, it truly is inspirational.

         I'm sorry I never took a class from Sidney Coulling. I've had a chance to get to
know him through his daughter, who was working here the year I worked in the
Admissions Office, who was married to a guy named Tim McMahon, who used to
work in the Admissions Office, and who was dorm counselor when I was a
freshman. Through one means or another, I've gotten to know him on some level,
but truly, I feel remiss that I didn't take him for a course. I think that was a mistake.

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I wish I could take a course from him. Maybe he's got some free time sometime, and
I could take a correspondence course from him.
Warren: Well, I never miss a talk when he's giving a talk. He's a joy.

         Well, since you were a politics major, I presume you got involved in Mock
Convention.
Copeland: I did. I did.
Warren: Tell me about that. Who was their keynoter that year?
Copeland: I believe the keynote-let's see that would have been 1988, and so the
keynote-
Warren: That wasn't Cuomo.
Copeland: Maybe it was Cuomo. Perhaps it was.
Warren: Didn't make much of an impression on you.
Copeland: Well, most people will tell you that Mock Convention is kind of blurry
for those of who've been through it as a student.
Warren: Tell me what you mean.
Copeland: Well, there's a lot of partying that goes along with it. As a sophomore, I
was still cutting my teeth, I think, with the party scene. Sigma Aqua was never
accused of being teetotalers, never accused of being sissies when it came to running
with the big dogs late at night. But by the same token, we were all law-abiding and
pretty mild-mannered within those confines. I'm trying to think. Bill Clinton.
Warren: So you were at Zollman's when he played?
Copeland: I was not. I wish I could say that I was.
Warren: I wish you say that you were, too. [Laughter]
Copeland: You're trying to find someone?
Warren: Well, Dallas was there.
Copeland: Yeah. And of course there's no shortage of rumors that seem to follow
the president around now, and apparently also then, about goings-on.

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         But, you know, Mock Convention, at that time what I did was limited mainly
to helping build the West Virginia float, and then riding on the float with Miss West
Virginia. We built a still and put it on the float, and there's actually a picture of me
in the yearbook from that year wearing overalls and carrying a jug.
Warren: Your moment of glory.
Copeland: My moment of true glory. I had arrived. I had arrived. But it was a neat
experience, even if it was all kind of stiff, to see how the convention process worked,
the nominating process. It was neat having someone like Bill Clinton here. I
believe-this is horrible. Was it Tip O'Neill that spoke also?
Warren: He's been here sometime fairly recently.
Copeland: I'm pretty sure Tip O'Neill was here along with him. It was just a very
festive time in the life of the university.
Warren: Did you get involved in doing research?
Copeland: I did, but it was fairly limited. Mainly what I did, was I solicited donations
from alums back in West Virginia to help us build a float.
Warren: So do you feel like you learned anything about politics doing that, or did
you learn you about a tradition at Washington and Lee?
Copeland: I think a lot of that is politics. About government, maybe not. But about
politics, yeah, I mean, probably in the strict sense, whatever I learned about the
political process, in the strict sense was pretty marginal. Honestly, I think if really
pressed, I think most people involved with it would tell you the same, except
perhaps the people ·who were involved on the steering committee, who were really
at the top echelon of the organization. I think for the rank and file-and I think this
is probably pretty realistic-I mean, the rank and file are just kind of there for the
festivities. I know watching the two conventions recently, the national conventions,
I think it's probably the same with them. I mean, they're there for the fanfare. A lot
of it's a production. I think our Mock Convention is pretty realistic in that respect. I

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think the people who are behind the scenes in really organizing, orchestrating it,
they were digging in gold, in terms of learning a lot about the way the thing works.
Warren: One of the things, I went to the convention this year, and went to every
minute of it, I loved it.
Copeland: I came back for it.
Warren: Were you here?
Copeland: Uh-huh.
Warren: I just thought it was so exciting. I thought it was great. You were there, so
you know what I'm talking about. One of the things that I found so intriguing was,
it was probably on the first night or the second day, that it became very apparent how
overjoyed Washington and Lee students were that they didn't have to pretend to be
something they weren't. They kept saying they were so excited because this was a
Republican convention. In 1988, there was a lot of play-acting going on, I presume.
Copeland: You're exactly right. In fact, there were very mixed emotions about the
exercises in 1988, and, I can imagine, mixed emotions in 1992. I was just getting ready
to come back to campus from Washington at that point. I spent a year working in
Washington. So the political science, the politics degree did actually come into play
at some point. But, yeah, I got that feeling, too. It's no secret that such a high
percentage of the student body here are politically conservative and call themselves
Republican.

         So I felt a real release this time that I hadn't seen in years past. In the past,
when people would announce, "So the g:ceat state of South Dakota proudly casts its
(however many) votes for Bill Clinton, the next President of the United States." A lot
of that was being said tongue-in-cheek, and now I think this past spring a lot of it was
coming from the heart, or at least from the gut.

         At W&L, there's never a short on parties, whenever there's Fancy Dress or
Mock convention, we're good at doing that, we're really good at doing that.

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Warren: Any particularly memorable Fancy Dresses for you?
Copeland: There was one, I think it was my first year here, maybe it was the second
year, the Dark Continent, and, of course, the motif was Africa. I remember they had
elephant, a baby elephant, out in front of Doremus gym as you walked in, with some
other small animals. I think the decorations that year, I remember as being fantastic.
There were so many fresh green leaves, jungle-like leaves, that really covered up
everything, you couldn't tell that you were in an athletic facility. As Fancy Dresses
have come and gone, and I've been at more since 1986 than I haven't been at, you
know, you get some where they do a good job of decorating and sort of creating an
atmosphere, and others where it's borderline to looking like a prom, I mean a very
big expensive prom. But the Dark Continent was pretty fantastic.

         I think An Evening Excursion on the Orient Express was another really neat
one, because they had just a variety of motifs, different locations along the stop of the
Orient Express. It seemed the decorations were good that year. I'm trying to think of
performers or occurrences at any of these that made them particularly memorable,
but none of them really do, besides the year that B.B. King played for-I don't know
how familiar you are with the whole sequence, but we have a Thursday night
concert at the Pavilion, where usually a contemporary artist of some sort plays, and
then the Ball is on Friday night, and B.B. King played Thursday night one year, and
that was fantastic.

         All the memories of the Fancy Dress, both in law school and as an
undergraduate, were very warm. I loved Fancy Dress during law school, because it
was my opportunity to be tour guide, or docent, to a lot of my law classmates who
went to school elsewhere. I always took a lot of pleasure in introducing friends and
classmates in the law school to what I consider to be really the best sides of
Washington and Lee, and I had a lot of fun being able to do that. A lot of fun.
Warren: I had the same pleasure with my husband, taking him to Fancy Dress.

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Copeland: You went this past year?
Warren: Oh, yeah. I have not missed an event or a party since I got here. I go to
everything.
Copeland: That's great. There's so much to take in.
Warren: I'm just trying to get myself educated, and I pretended I was a freshman.

         We're running out of time. I don't want to shortchange this question. Tell
me what the honor system means to you.
Copeland: The honor system, for me and my house, is the single most defining
aspect of this institution. It is, I think, notable for its simplicity and its clarity in a
world that is increasingly complex, where lines are increasingly blurred, and there
are frequently more shades of gray than blacks and whites that is almost like the
Golden Rule, you know, to do unto others as you'd have them do unto you.

         You're expected to do your own work here. You're expected to mind your
own property, and not to avail yourselves of others' property, and you're expected to
be as good as your word. You will not lie, cheat, or steal. And I think, if I can borrow
from the parlance of the Supreme Court, there's a penumbra of the honor system
that is as important as the technical confines that you'll find in the White Book, and
I think every Washington and Lee graduate will agree that the penumbra is that you
are to act responsibly as an adult, even when you're playing, and if you don't, you
take responsibility for it. That you are to be a gentleman, and that at the very least,
you should feel a sense of loss when you're not. It's aspirational in that sense.

         I mean, nobody, besides, perhaps, Robert E. Lee, himself, and Sidney Coulling
could be perfect gentlemen. But it's a standard for, I think, men and women alike to
live up to. Now as I'm practicing law, I really have seen how important the whole
character issue is in terms of being able to rely on someone's word and to know that
what they're telling you is the truth. So much of the grease in any kind of
transaction, the wheels that turn a business deal, or that help make a resolution of a

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conflict go smoothly, rather than getting caught up, has to do with personalities of
people involved.

         I think particularly when you're amongst your own, when you know you're
with someone from Washington and Lee, you know that the concept of the honor
system is ingrained in them, and it's important. The reputation of the honor system,
certainly in professional fields and regionally around Virginia and the Southeast,
people that are familiar with Washington and Lee, I think they still recognize that.
But I always come back to, I think, what I just said about the penumbra of the honor
system. It's not only that you will not lie, cheat, or steal, but that it really calls you to
be the best that you can be in treating other people as you would expect to be treated,
to be fair, and to think of others before yourself. All this is trying to define what does
it mean to be honorable, what does it mean to be a gentleman. I'm sure that's topics
of discussions that will continue to go on until the close of time, but that's the basis
of what it means to me.

         I will say probably the most poignant time of my years at Washington and Lee
occurred as a third-year law student, when I was the president of the student body in
the law school, where the president, you're the Student Bar Association president,
and one of the responsibilities of the Student Bar Association president is that in the
event that there is an open honor trial-I don't know how familiar you are with
whole procedure.
Warren: No.
Copeland: Well, the way the honor system works here, roughly, is, there are two
level of proceedings. Initially if you are accused of an honor violation, you are
brought before the Executive Committee in what's known as a closed hearing, and
they vote. There's a hearing that's held, and they vote on whether or not they think
you're guilty. If you're found guilty, you have two options. You can either
withdraw from the university and go about your merry way, or you can essentially

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appeal that decision to a jury of your peers, which is open. It's held in Lee Chapel,
usually, and it's open to all members of the Washington and Lee community.

         The Student Bar Association, the SBA, president is the judge, or the chair, of
that open trial. The executive committee shifts from being, in essence, the judge and
the jury in the closed hearing, to being the prosecutor in an open hearing. So
essentially there's a third party, a supposedly neutral third party, the SBA president.

         The long short of it is, my third year, I was called upon to chair an open
hearing in Lee Chapel, which was the first one that the university had seen in, I
think, two or three years. Usually there are one or two a year. The proceedings had
taken place throughout the whole day. I remember that the jury had retired to
deliberate, and everyone was scattered around the front lawn here, waiting for them
to come back, and we were all just sitting and waiting.

         I got the phone call that they had reached a verdict and they'd be coming back.
So I called my sergeants-at-arms, and I told them, "Get everybody back in the chapel,
and we'll wait on the jury. We'll have them come in through the basement of the
chapel, so that they don't have to walk through the crowd and come up."

         So the sergeant-at-arms brought them back in. They were all sitting there. I
imagine it was about 5:30 or 6:00 o'clock in the early spring, and the sun was coming
through the windows at Lee Chapel, illuminating the chapel with almost an eerie
orange glow. I was sitting facing everyone at Lee Chapel, and the chapel was packed.
Everyone was waiting to hear the verdict. The jury hadn't come back yet, and there
was probably a two-minute wait before the jury came in. It seemed to go on for
hours. Every single person I looked at out in the crowd, I was making eye contact
with. Everything about the honor system and I think just the gravity of what was
taking place, to me, that was the defining moment of it.

         I'll never forget that moment and the way that the whole experience just kind
of was driven home by the look on everyone's face in the crowd that I made eye

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contract with, and realizing that, we, as a community, take the honor system serious
enough to go through this. I'll never forget it. Very, very sobering and, I think, very
poignant.

        So I'd do it again if I had to do it all over. When I was just a freshman,
knowing everything I know now, or just a junior or senior high school, I'd do it
again. If I'm lucky enough to have any kids, first of all, I want them to go wherever
they want to go, but I hope wherever they want to go is Washington and Lee.
Warren: That's a wonderful way to end it, John. Thank you.
Copeland: Thank you. It's been a real pleasure.
[End of interview]

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