1987_03 The Daily Collegian March 1987

              i
weekly mooazine seetjon
HAAK
Continued from page 7
pro-faculty, but why are you not siding
with the union? I think that would be
terribly inappropriate. Tm part of the
administration of the CSU system. I'm an
officer of the university who's part of the
management group I represent really,
the board of trustees, and the chancellor's
office. In 'terms of discussions with the
union, I do that unapolegetically. That's
pettCof the way the system is structured.
It won't work unless somebody is
management and somebody else is in the
union. Right now we have a very difficult
problem in that the union doesn't have a
contract Those negotiations are at the
chancellor's level and with the trustees.
By and large, they don't • affect our
campus much. We still deal with the
. academic senate as the administration
locally. I don't feel any personal stress
between myself and the union.
There is an impasse and there is no
contract that is of critical importance. On
that particular point some stresses are
quite high.
You mentioned you were a
member of the presidents'
commission for the NCAA. Do
believe athletics is given too much
emphasis in our community?
The media can play up anything the
media cares to play up. I think here at
the university; we've put the proper
emphasis on athletics. I think we view
athletics as an integral part of the
university. I think we try to view
athletics in ways that will be beneficial
to the rest of the university. Now, is it
overplayed in the media? I don't have the
answer to that
"I know Americans tend to be very
sports-oriented. I think so far, the
publicity athletics has received has been
a help to the university. When I see
youngsters wearing a Fresno__ State T-
shirt, I think that youngster is thinking
about going to college. When we talk
about national image in trying to recruit
quality faculty, I think athletics has been
a help when we talk about fundraising.
Clearly,  the fundraising  that went on  in
athletics has been extraordinarily helpful
in the fundraising of the academic -
programs. Without the fundraising in
athletics, I don't think we would have
cracked the barrier for significant funding
for the academic programs.
Do you spend a lot of time
working with the athletic program?
"In the earlier years, I spent a lot of
lime on the question of athletics. Way
too much time. If you would have asked
me that question 4 or 5 years ago, I
would have said athletics can drain
everything a president does. I spent
about a year primarily in the area of
athletics. One of the things we reached
an agreement early on with, was a policy
I proposed, and the Academic Senate
reviewed it One of the policies dealt
with funding levels for athletics —that
athletics would get what it earned from
the state budget resources. We've been
pretty much following that policy. In
fact we've reduced the athletics funding
from the state budget which at the time,
was about $350,000.
"Now we get into the question of
whether you penalize a program for
going outside and getting public support
I think that would be a very bad way to
go. I think if programs are able to go out
and get outside support from the Red
Wave or the boosters and supporters, that
builds an excellence in the quality of
athletics. But then it follows with a
4 notion of trying to expand that notion to
funding for the business school the
agriculture program and engineering.
Then how about funding for the liberal
artsy- and for the general university.
Usually that's been our strategy to go
that way.
Has that money and energy been
useful to the academic programs
yet?%
"Like I said, I think it has helped the
recruitment of faculty. I think it has
changed our image in terms of the local
population. The local population, before,
used to think your son or daughter
should go away to school to go to a
university. I think the question of
athletics and the athletic program has
changed  how  many  people  perceive  the
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local university. They perceive it as
much more of a significant place than
they did before. I think it has also raised
the aspiration level for a lot of people in
terms of what CSUF can accomplish. I
think what we have accomplished can be,
and is being, replicated in other areas. In
many general ways, I think it has been
helpful to the university. •
You said before the media can
play up anything it wants to. Do
you try and compensate or offset
that?
"You cannot offset the media. You can
try to involve other kinds of programs
and get as much coverage for these as
you can. Whether it's the drama program
going to London, or the presidents'
quintet playing.
"You try very much with the media and
encourage them to cover other parts of
the university. It has been, frankly, my
experience that a problem occurs. People
vydon't read these stories from inside the
university. I find a lot of people saying.���There's no coverage about the arts,
there's no coverage about business,
there's no coverage about agriculture.' I
read the paper pretty carefully. I get
clippings and know there is coverage of
all these things, but I don't think our
local people within the university read
that. They read the Bulldogs like
everyone else. That's the way life is. It
doesn't bother me that much. We try to
get coverage for other parts; besides, Tm
a Bulldog supporter. I enjoy reading
about them.
Some say test scores are not an
accurate way to measure a person's
intellegence, but test scores were
going down and are now going
back up. Do you think education is
doing a good job as compared to
20 years ago?
"I think education is caught up in
society as a whole. In the whole series of
things that goes on in our society that
perhaps we don't like, we discover their
impact Then, when we discover its
impact we blame it on education.
"The reason  I   think  test  scores  have
gone down and reading abilities have
gone down is because of the tremendous
impact of television. There is' nothing
profound about that You take youngsters
and plop them in front of the television.
Now they develop other visual skills, but
.they don't read the same way, for
example, I did when I was young. We
have a string of things that could be
factors.' Maybe the American diet is
changing and attitudes arc changing or
whatever.
"Now I don't like to blame education
for those.' I think education is blamed
because we, > as Americans, tremendously
prize education. In that sense, it is good
to be blamed because it means you're
important^ and you can make a difference.
But I don't think the blame is fair.
~\        / ■
Is California's higher education
system doing its job and where
does CSU fit into that?
"I thank California has basically a
very good higher education system. The
difficulty is, and it's kind of a peculiar
difficulty, a status and prestige difficulty
I don't think really should bother us, but
perhaps does.
"We are in a state with the best public
research university in the world — the
University of California. A lot of times,
prestige goes with research, but doesn't
go with teaching. So there'* a tendency
maybe for our system not to get the
recognition our system would get in
another state. I'm not sure Californians
really realize this, but it's a good thing
we really have. I don't think a lot of
people realize how good the CSU system
is.
"I think our role, fundamentally, is to
be the teaching-oriented university
system, emphasizing undergraduate
education. Then instruction to the
master's degree and I would argue we're a
regional ' institution serving Californians
in our region. In certain cases, we should
be involved in se&ctive areas of doctoral
work, but I view that to be in selective
areas and not to take away from our basic
role that is the undergraduate and masters
level. "^
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