My UMass/Boston years – August 1966 to August 1975
I was excited to be part of the new Boston campus of UMass and believed in its goal of bringing high quality undergraduate education to the city. Working with so many interesting, capable and committed students made it all worthwhile. I found the work satisfying, even though there were episodes of great anxiety, stress and very heavy workloads.
I came to UMass/Boston through a very unusual chain of circumstances, especially because I had not heard of UMass/Boston until the late spring of 1966 when a letter reached me from Richard Powers of the History Department, who had been my academic advisor at S.M.U. in Dallas Texas. At the time, I was still teaching in a secondary school in Tanzania, East Africa, under the auspices of Teachers for East Africa, a USAID program (started to convince the Peace Corps to send experienced teachers to host countries.) Dr. Powers’ letter asked if I was interested in a job in “student activities.” I replied that I was interested if they could hold the position open until I finished my contract in Tanzania.
Within days of my return from East Africa, in early August 1966, I came to interview for the position of Director of Student Activities. The only job description that they gave me at the time was that student activities were not to be the typical atmosphere of fraternity/sorority/athletics. Student activities were to complement a serious undergraduate education. I took this job, in part, because there were few suitable high school teaching jobs in the middle of August, and I needed a job. I was also still eligible for the military draft, even though I was over age 26 by that time. However, most important was the chance to be part of this new venture in an urban university
Within the first two weeks at UMB, Chancellor John Ryan asked me if I would be willing to take the position of financial aid officer for a while, just to get the program going. I agreed to take on the job, though I had no direct experience in these matters. The decision to enter this field led to the longest and one of the most significant threads of my work life, and it did not really end until 2010.
Given that there had been no program of financial aid in the first year of UMass/Boston, I had the opportunity to shape a new program, one that was not intimidating but helpful. Most of the time, I was handicapped by having to work through the financial aid office on the Amherst campus. I was sent there for one day of training, which consisted mainly of reading the manual on “needs” assessment, based on the “Parents’ Confidential Statement,” the near universal document used for making financial aid awards. I was then handed a pile of award forms and a budget for federal student aid funds. I returned to Boston and began reviewing aid applications the next day.
I soon found out that most UMB students were not typical college students, who entered college right after high school, sent by fully employed parent(s): many had left their parents’ home years before, or were estranged; the parents or the student had been receiving some form of welfare, not earnings; or they had no record of income or of paying taxes. These applicants required individual attention and consideration. And they needed patient help in just filling out the forms. All of this led to many confidential and stressful conversations with applicants, and I proceeded to do my best to understand their circumstances and respond with very limited funds at my disposal. In addition to being essential for making reasonable awards, these conversations became the basis for developing respect and friendship with many students that lasted over subsequent years.
The award system was very cumbersome and did not suit the Boston campus. Not only were funds limited, it was necessary to fill out a triplicate form for each kind of award for each student on a typewriter. (This often meant working weekends in June and early July to get the award letters out). These slips were then sent off by mail to Amherst, where the information was then transferred by someone else to a permanent record and then disbursement was made once every week. Any excess funds to be used for living expenses were not available until the end of the first month of the semester, and in the case of late awards, it usually took at least three weeks to get a disbursement of aid to reach a student who was out of cash.
This led to the use of the Emergency Loan Fund to help students in immediate need, but that required a co-signer for the loan, which few students could get. So I started co-signing for students who had financial aid coming. I was warned several times that I might be personally held responsible, but I continued, telling the Chancellor and the Vice Chancellor of Administration and Finance that the entire award and disbursement system should be changed in response to the need for timely disbursement. Eventually it did change, but late in my job at UMB, I was sent a collection letter to pay some $60,000 of unpaid Emergency Loan funds for which I had co-signed. When a lawyer wrote a letter on my behalf pointing out that the University had not followed timely collection procedures, the case was dropped.
The UMass/Amherst financial aid office was not really committed to helping as many needy students as possible. When I heard one year that they had returned some $20,000 Basic Educational Opportunity Grant (now Pell Grant) Funds to the Department of Education, I was outraged and dumbfounded. The Boston campus could have used all of those funds for students who had already applied. In spite of protests from the UMB campus, there was no remedy that year. However, the next year the Boston allotment was a more reasonable share of those funds.
(In this era, computerized records were primitive and controlled by the Amherst campus. To deal with this lack of orderly information, I resorted to my own solution. In my second or third year, I found a key punch machine and sorter for IBM cards, which I used to make my own spreadsheet of awards, listed alphabetically. It was the only way to get such a list when I needed it.)
In the early years I worked closely with Jancie Ross, and later Livaughn Chapman, in the Special Admissions Office, which had been charged with recruiting promising disadvantaged and minority students, who might not have considered applying for admission. I was almost always included in the interviews with these students, to make sure they knew what they were getting into and how much aid they could reasonably get. This was a particularly engaging and rewarding part of the job. I still run into a few of these students occasionally, and we catch up on our lives since UMB.
I also volunteered at an educational counseling center on Blue Hill Avenue: COPE, Center for Opportunities in Progress and Education. On Saturday mornings throughout the application season, a few financial aid officers from various Boston colleges came each week to help students fill out the forms needed for aid at any and all colleges and universities. This was started with federal grant funding secured by the faculty member who ran the Upward Bound program at Brandeis University.
All of my experience at UMass Boston contributed to my political understanding and engagement, which was a continuum that began when I was part of a small civil rights movement at the S.M.U. campus in the early ‘60’s, which staged several sit-ins at lunch counters and a stand-in at a downtown movie theater, all segregated. After college, I went to Union Theological Seminary in New York City for a year beginning in September 1962, where we lived through the Cuban missile crisis, and I did field work with grade school kids at an East Harlem church. Shortly after returning from my two-year commitment in East Africa, I joined the politically active Committee of Returned Volunteers (mostly Peace Corps), and, among several other projects, we staged a rally on the new Boston City Hall plaza in 1969 commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa and calling attention to the evils of apartheid policy there. Margaret Marshall, later the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, was one of the principal speakers.
The period of the late 60’s and early 70’ was one of almost constant, public political discussion and action. I joined a bus group from Boston to the March on the Pentagon in 1967. Shortly after that there was a strike at Harvard and the occupation of a building. Other school strikes followed, including UMassBoston. I was leery of joining the political action on the campus because it was not clear that academic freedom extended to administrators and other staff, but it was impossible not to hear what was going on. Later in my job there, I was able to join a political discussion group made up of mostly faculty members. That gave me the clearest framework for understanding what we had all gone through.
One of my greatest and disappointing failures was not anticipating how to serve the veterans who were returning after service in Vietnam, especially those who came through the Veterans Upward Bound Program. I did not fully understand their anger and willingness to buck authority. By that time, I was Assistant Provost and dependent on other staff people to establish the right tone for the program and a clear commitment to help them succeed. I was getting very different stories from those who were involved. The veterans’ eventual occupation of the Chancellor’s Office placed the responsibility where it belonged, though then it took some time to make a satisfactory, concrete commitment to a program for veterans.
After all this kind of political activity, it was not surprising that the proposed move of the campus to Columbia Point engendered the same kind of organized, informed and vehement response from students and faculty, who opposed the move to such a peripheral location and the intrusion on the community at the Columbia Point housing project. Public demonstration of opposition was inevitable, and I did join that protest.
The Park Square “campus” and its surroundings had been perfect, as far as I was concerned. Initially we were camping out in one space or another but finally landed in the Sawyer building. It was plain, but workable. I could commute by bike to work, or ride the T when weather required it. I could let off steam at work by walking in the Public Garden or run to Washington Street to go to Filene’s Basement.
I left UMB in 1975 after the move to Columbia Point, when it was made clear that I would have no place in the administration of Chancellor Carlo Golino.
Epilogue: In 1977, I took the job of Trade School Coordinator at North Bennet Street School in Boston, a trade school for adults in the North End. (I subsequently had the titles of Director of Education and Associate Director). I found much the same satisfaction there, as I had in the early days of UMB. The enrollment of the school was small, and it was possible to know almost everyone. In a small staff, I had several roles, but I continued to serve as the financial aid officer, and it deepened my understanding of those individuals, as well as the difficulties facing all students. I helped to start three new programs at the school and wrote much of the accreditation materials for six successful reviews. I worked there for 30 years full-time and three years part-time, ending in 2010. I still volunteer in various capacities. My work at UMB helped me to understand and focus on a very rewarding work life.