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At first some people thought we were too liberal artsy.
We were referred to in our very early years as the little Harvard on the hill.
We debated long and *** campus and it won't be hard
for you to figure out which side I was on. Would we abandon the liberal arts?
There was a real fear about that, that we would go to the
other extreme and essentially become a technical institute.
And you can't have an institution like this without having differences of opinion.
Good discussion and disagreement over issues, there should be a lot of that on a campus.
One time we introduced something called the X Grade.
They did not think that a student should ever get an F.
Oh, that debate raged in the faculty association for months and months.
We had some really knock down drag out fights in
faculty association meetings over this. After a while, we found out, well that didn't
work so well. So we scraped it. But we would try things
and if they didn't work, we would fix 'em.
We all remained friends and so forth and uh, we all still worked for the good of the students.
We were doing things our way because we thought it was right.
Back in nineteen fifty-nine We had the faculty association.
And by faculty associated was a misnomer because it involved
everyone on the campus, it was faculty, it was staff,
it was administration, we all worked together. I don't ever recall a single policy that was
made in our faculty association that was ever overturned
by the administration or the board of trustees.
Which is why we had no need for a union here for so many many years.
We were the only community college in New York State that
had declined the opportunities to unionize. As we more and more become the loan institution
without a union we were envied significantly by my colleagues
that go to meetings and they would say, how do you do it, how
do you avoid it? We always prided ourselves on being a quote
faculty run institution. Board of trustees initially established this
college thinking it should be the faculty who set the curriculum
and set the standards. That was one of the reasons that I came here.
Because they had a very positive relationship and it was good.
Uh, I think we enjoyed each other, I think we respected each other.
There was such a real tight collegial community of people here.
Ya know, the president had one vote, I had one vote
and the director of building and ground had one vote.
There was a science of cooperation between us.
I remember going on some faculty retreats and that's exactly what they were.
In those days they were called retreats and we would go away and again
that was before union so we were mixing all together,
faculty, staff, administrator and so on. There was a lot of smiling going on.
There was a spirit, a camaraderie there that it'd be really hard to duplicate.
Now we were non-union all the way through that.
And it sounds clicheish but were family, we really like each other's company.
Even though our ideas, our thoughts, and feelings about education and the world
were very diverse. We would have some knock down drag out fights
between faculty members, between faculty and administration, and it
didn't matter. When it was all said and done we retired to
a local tavern and had a brew together or or whatever and
everything was still very friendly and sociable and so on.