Coughlin, Rev. James H., S.J. - Oral History (transcript)

              Fairfield University
Oral History Transcripts
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Rev. James H. Coughlin, S.J.
Dean of Graduate Education; Dean of the College
of Arts and Sciences; Vice President for
Academics; Acting President
August 15, 1991
Rev. James H. Coughlin, S.J.
a brief biography
“There have been times when I've cried, times when I've been frustrated,
there are times when I thought of shooting myself, but this place I love, I
think it's wonderful.”
~ Father James Coughlin, speaking of Fairfield University.
Rev. James H. Coughlin, S.J. was born in Dorchester and attended Boston Latin
School and Boston College before entering the Society of Jesus in 1940 at
Shadowbrook in Lenox, Massachusetts. He earned degrees in philosophy and
theology from Weston College, was ordained a priest in 1951, and pursued
graduate studies at Fordham University School of Education. Father Coughlin
wore many administrative hats – sometimes simultaneously – during his 30-year
tenure at Fairfield University. He came to Fairfield in 1955 as Dean of Graduate
Education, and subsequently served as Dean of the College of Arts and
Sciences (1962–1978), Vice President for Academics (1966–1978), and Acting
President for several months in 1973 between the terms of Rev. William C.
McInnes, S.J. and Rev. Thomas R. Fitzgerald, S.J. He returned to teaching in
1977 and in 1978 became Rector of the Fairfield Jesuit community. When he
retired in 1985, he became Assistant Rector. From 1987 until 1991 he was
minister of the Jesuit community. Father Coughlin also served on the board of
trustees of St. Peter's College, Jersey City, N.J., and on the boards of Boston
College and of Fairfield University. He was an honorary degree recipient of the
Doctor of Humane Letters from Fairfield University in 1978, as well as the
Distinguished Faculty/Administrator Award from Fairfield University in 1982. He
died in June 1992 in Waltham-Weston Hospital in Massachusetts at age 72.
Sources: Fairfield Now, Fall 2004, p.32; the Fairfield University website, list of past honorary degree and award
recipients; Boston Globe, June 16, 1992, p. 59
Photograph: Fairfield University Manor, 1957.
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fi INTERVIEW WITH JAMES COUGHLIN. S.J.
QUESTION #l, VHS ill (0-00-00-00) I GUESS THE RETREAT ENDS
TOMORROW I8 THE LAST DAY. I WASN'T QUITE SURE BECAUSE I DIDN'T TALK
TO FATHER LANGGUTH AT GREAT LENGTH. WHAT IS HE DOING IN BOSTON RIGHT
NOW? IS HE BASICALLY RETIRED.
ANSWER: Sort of, George has been everything and he's really
retired but he won't lie down. I'm likely to break in and explain
coughing briefly.
QUESTION t2, VHS #I (0-00-05-26) YOU CAME TO FAIRFIELD IN 1954. I
THINK THAT'S ABOUT RIGHT.
ANSWER: I have no recollection of dates. About then, we can look
- it up; my recollection of everything except my birthday is zilch.
QUESTION #3, VHS $1 (0-00-23-28) DO YOU HAVE A RECOLLECTION OF
WHAT THE UNIVERSITY WAS LIKE IN THOSE DAYS WHEN YOU FIRST CAME HERE?
ANSWER: Yes I do. It was a one-building university and it was
very similar to Boston College in 1940 when I went there. The only
building of any moment was Xavier, the whole operation worked out of
that and one former residence down in Bridgeport, but it was a
beginning. Everybody knew it was going to grow from that and for
those first few years when you'd go someplace and say I'm at
Fairfield, people would say, Fairfield, what's that? Where? And we
changed all that with the College Bowl about five years later.
QUESTION #4, VHS #l (0-01-13-05) DID YOU GO OUT INTO THE COMMUNITY
AND TALK ABOUT FAIRFIELD AT ALL?
ANSWER: No, very little. There were occasions but I really did
very little of that.
QUESTION #5, VHS #I (0-01-23-27) I GUESS THERE WAS A FAIR AMOUNT
OF BUILDING THAT WENT ON DURING THE FIRST FATHER FITZGERALD DURING
THE '50'8.
ANSWER: The building was very slow. After they built Xavier and
Berchmans, but half of that was Prep. Then there was no real
- building for a long period of time until they built Gonzaga and
Gonzaga was just about opening when I came here, so that's 10 years
and that was a lonely building in the middle of a hayfield. Not too
long after that, no I'm sorry. The first building was Loyola. Not
too long after that Canisius and Gonzaga went up as a unit and that
gave the semblance of something of a university, classroom buildings,
dormitories and laboratories, but it was still very small, but it was
a school of only 1,000 people or less.
QUESTION #6, VHS #1 (0-02-29-18) DID YOU KNOW BOTH THE FITZGERALDS
FAIRLY WELL --BOTH FATHER JOSEPH AND FATHER ... 7
ANSWER: Oh yeah, I lived with them.
WHAT KIND OF MEN WERE THEY?
r'
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 2
0 Saints, all of them, all Jesuits are Saints. They just happened to
be Saints in opposite mode. Joe Fitzgerald was slow-moving, with a
deep bass voice that you wouldn't believe and he would be able to say
"Emergency FireH in the slowest tone you could imagine. Easy going,
slow, unpressured and the other Fitz, the so-called Tower of Power
was tense, nervous and I think very fearful in a lot of ways. He was
timid, timid and afraid of making mistakes, things of that sort.
Fitz, W. Edmund had been Dean at Holy Cross for a long time and the
rest before he came
here, but he had learned the patterns of society and really
wasn't open to anything else. I don't say this negatively; it was
true of a lot of us, you know. When I became Dean and went into to - I talk to him about the AAUP salary scales, he never heard of them;
they had been around for years as a thing for faculty to earn
salaries on. Fitz never heard of them and when we get to salaries,
I'll tell you some interesting things on how Fitz established
salaries, so nice men, good men, well trained in the way of the
society, perfectly capable of directing Jesuits towards dealing with
the things that we ordinarily dealt with, but I don't think either of
them had any imagination to expand, to change, or to whatever and
McInnes was just the opposite.
QUESTION #7, VHS #1 (0-04-29007) YOU WERE GOING TO TALK A LITTLE
BIT ABOUT FITB'S ATTITUDE TOWARD SALARY.
ANSWER: When I became Dean, the first time we had salaries to be
r
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 3
fi up for the year. Harry Huss, that's the Treasurer and Jim Coughlin,
the Dean, were summoned to W. Edmundls bedroom because W. Edmund
would not have an office on campus. He ran everything from his
bedroom. Consequently, he saw no one. If anyone came to see him,
they had to go down to the parlor, but this was my first experience,
so I went into the bedroom to see the President, the President was
sitting in a big chair like this, Harry Huss marched over and took
the desk chair with his papers; there was no other chair in the room
so I sat on the bed and Fitz said, well, salaries, Addington, he's
done pretty good, give him 200, Arnold, I'm not sure he knows, but
let's skip him this year, Brogan, oh he's doing very well, up that
one 300. After about 20
of these, Harry Huss would say, too much, we've gone beyond the
total sum allocated. Well knock all those down one-half and we'll go
on, totally arbitrary, totally arbitrary, totally unconnected with
anything, totally unreal, not recognizing the salary scales, which at
that point, were the lowest you could get on AAUP, not by design, but
because nobody knew. They used to do it on letters and we were E,
slightly under UB, so I started to try to get that changed and
fortunately they were not against it, so we got salaries up to a
point now where we'd guarantee and compensation directors to be in
the top 3/4 of the AAUP salary scales and some condition, but that's
sort of typical of the way the familial school ran, big daddy said,
"This is what it's going to be."
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 4
0 QUESTION #a, VBS #l (0-06-49-01) DID TEE FACULTY COMPLAIN AT ALL?
ANSWER: No, Matt McCarthy was hired here as a full time Professor
at $2,000 and that was the going rate for faculty. Faculty got very
little money in those years.
QUESTION 19, VB8 #1 (0-07-04-24) HOW DID THEY LIVE?
ANSWER: The expenses, obviously, were a lot less in those years,
too. I'm talking about back then in the early '50's.
DID MOST OF THEM LIVE RIGHT AROUND THE CAMPUS?
Oh, in the environs, New Haven. (Telephone interruption)
QUESTION #lo, VBS#l (0-08-02-23) NOW, YOU, ACCORDING TO THE
RECORDS THAT I READ, BECAME ACADEMIC DEAN IN 1962.
ANSWER: I've had every job in the house.
YOU STARTED THOUGH IN THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION.
I came to fill in a year in the Department of Education so
could go on sabbatical and when he came back, they didn't want to
move me so I stayed teaching in the undergraduate department for a
brief time, got into the graduate department, then shortly after
that, became Dean of the Graduate Department, did that for a long ,
Dean and teaching of Graduate Ed., then they needed an undergraduate
/' dean and I became that for 16 years and then they added Academic Vice
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 5
If- President for 6 to 8 years, a brief sojourn as President, acting
between the ... retired, became Rector of the house, left that one
and became Minister of the House and here I am. So I've had them
all.
QUESTION #11, VB8 #I (0-09-05-29) WHAT KIND OF A PERSON WAS FATHER
MC PEAKE?
ANSWER : Absolutely lovely. Everett was one of my real good
friends. Good, old, New England stock, open, lovable, frank, to a
fault .
QUESTION #12, VHS #I (0-09-23-10) I GUESS HE WAS ONE OF THE PEOPLE
WHO HELPED START THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION.
ANSWER: They'd always try to have a Jesuit involved in this; the
real moving force on the Department of Education was Maurice Rogalin
but to give Maurice a Jesuit counterpart, they brought in Everett who
was studying Education and Everett was good and liked it and worked
well with them.
QUESTION #13, VHS /1, (0-09-48-24) WHAT WAS MAURICE LIKE? WHAT
KIND OF A PERSON WAS HE?
ANSWER: Well, he had been an ex-superintendent of schools in New
York, and retired when he came here and Maurice was knowledgeable and
dynamic, con man, entrepreneur, absolutely wonderful, the best thing
that could have come down the pike, never did anyone a bit of harm
r and he sold the place. He'd meet the first class of 10 and he said
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 6
6 next semester, don't come unless you have a friend on
each arm and he'd check to see they did and filled it all up.
QUESTION #14, VIIS #1 (0-10-30-16) HOW WERE TEE ACADEMIC STANDARDS
HERE IN TEE '50's AND EARLY '60'81
ANSWER: They were good, but no one gave them any respect. They
were good in this sense. The Jesuits have had a tradition for a very
long time so we were teaching the same stuff at the same level as
B.C. and Holy Cross but no one but a Jesuit would believe that. The
meld between the few lay people we had might not have been all that
perfect, but we were teaching excellent, top-flight, limited,
classical oriented value-oriented education, so it was not the place .
to come if you wanted to study Astronomy. You didn't even come here
for Fine Arts. We didn't even have a Fine Arts Program but we had a
tremendous respect for Fine Arts, but we didn't have the money to put
into studios and when we had it, we started them and ended up at this
point in the Quick Building.
QUESTION #15, VHS #1 (0-11-32-04) DID YOU WORK FAIRLY CLOSELY WITH
FATHER WLNDGUTH?
ANSWER: No, Larry had gone by the time I came here. He was Dean
before Bill Healey and I followed Bill Healey, I knew Larry for a
long, long time, but I never worked with him in this house.
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 7
If(
QUESTION 116, VBS 11 (0-11-50-18) THE BELF IMAGE OF THE UNIVERSITY
BEFORE THE COLLEGE BOWL. WHAT WAS THE SELF IMAGE?
ANSWER: Well, the self image, as far as the Jesuits were concerned,
you know, we knew what we were doing, we were satisfied with it,
frustrated to tears because nobody else accepted it and trying to get
students and the one big advantage we had, because of the time we
started, we did not have the ordinary experience of a new university,
of trying to drag in the first class from limited
kids who really didn't want to be there. It was a teaming part
of each of the students coming out of the Service, so though we were
small, we got a huge application of students. We started with a big
group of kids to pick from, so they were good students right from the
beginning, but there were few of them. We could only take a few, so
we never had a bad period, I'll say that solemnly from Day One. We
had good students, respectable students, on a high level, the highest
and it's gone up and it's still going up; it was never bad and now
it's getting to be pretty damn good -- people may disagree with that,
but 1'11 die for it. And so will Barons and these other people who
seemed to accept it.
QUESTION 117, VBB 11 (0-13-19-01) DID YOU TALK TO YOUR
COUNTERPARTS AT PLACES LIKE B.C. AND GEORGETOWN?
ANSWER: Oh, sure, all the time.
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 8
0
AND I MEAN, WHEN YOU'D GET TOGETHER, WHAT WAS THEIR OPINION OF
FAIRFIELD?
Fairfield, zilch. There was no discussion of is it real or isn't it?
Everyone knew what it was. Once the general said build a college in
Swahili-land, every Jeb knows what the Jesuit portion of it was going
to be; whether they could make it go was another question, so that
was never a discussion of what are you doing, how well are you doing
and they just ride you for what happened. As a matter of fact, one
mother asked her son, "what did you do, dear that he's sending you to
Fairf ield?"
- QUESTION #la, VHS #l (0-14-11-20) 80 YOU WERE SORT OF AT A CUT
BELOW B.C. OR GEORGETOWN, CERTAINLY.
ANSWER: Well, in fact or in theory? In theory, we were at the
bottom of
the heap worst college of the world should be closed up. In
fact, we were about the same as B.C., within the limited things that
we were offering.
QUESTION 119, VHS #1 (0-14-31-27) WHEN FATHER MCINNES CAME HERE IN
THE EARLY '6O'Bt HAD YOU KNOWN HIM BEFORE HE CAME?
ANSWER: Oh yeah, we'd been brothers in the Society.
WHAT KIND OF A PERSON WAS HE?
Riverboat gambler, delightful, lively, intelligent, charming; he's
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 9
fl got that Irish touch that if you meet him, you wouldn't trust him for
a minute. He's got the twinkle in the eye, but he was absolutely
great, talented, competent and willing to take a chance. Now he
could have gotten a real blackout from this place, but he saw what we
were and we had stagnated at a 1,000; it might have been 2-3 years
before we got 1,000 students in the school and 15 years later, we
still had 1,000 students in the school. Bill said, we have to move.
We can't move because there's not a building. 1'11 build you a
building. We don't have the money, 1'11 build you the building. He
started the building; I don't know where it all came from,
individually, but he did it.
QUESTION X20, VHS #1 (0-15-42-18) DID HE HAVE A WAY AS A
-
FUNDRAISER?
ANSWER: Oh, yeah. And he wasn't sitting on money. You know some
of these people you can't take a loan unless we have it guaranteed
four times back.
QUESTION #21, VHS #l (0-15-57-06) HE CAME IN THEN WITH A VISION, I
THINK.
ANSWER: Oh, yeah, Bill had a vision, but some of these others had
a vision, but they were unwilling to take the nervous means to
accomplish it.
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 10
QUESTION #22, VHS #I (0-16-13-09) REEN BE FIRST ARRIVED, HOW WAS
HE PERCEIVED BY THE JESUIT COMMUNITY?
ANSWER: Great. He looked the possibility of a real good
President. Bill was not trying to make waves with the rest, but if
Bill really said no, he meant it and that wasn't always true in the
Society. You could cajole or go around and get to the Superior, so
Bill irritated a lot of people as that type of person tends to.
QUESTION 123, VH8 #I (0-16-49-15) WEEN YOU SAY IRRITATED A LOT OF
PEOPLE, WHAT DO YOU MEAN?
ANSWER: They wanted to do something and he didn't want to do it.
WHAT DID THEY WANT TO DO?
I don't know. They'd go back to their room and say alright, you son
of a bitch we'll find a way of getting it, I'll go the Province, I'll
go to the General, I've got some friends, that was taking on a wild
cat, but if you didn't buck him, he was great.
QUESTION X24, VHS #1 (0-17-11-23) HE MADE TEE DECISION TO OPEN UP
THE UNIVERSITY TO A LAY BOARD OF TRUSTEES AND LAY COUNCIL.
ANSWER: Well, it's true that that was in the air at that time.
That was not something that really initiated with him. There were
great discussions going on about whether you could have a lay board.
There were arguments in the church that it was canonically forbidden
,- to have a lay board, that everything was owned by the church. If
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 11
fi that were true, then we were in default of our Supreme Court case so
there was an awful lot of nonsense going on, but it was breaking
traditions of three and four hundred years, traditions that really
didn't mean much. Jesuit schools don't have to be all male, but they
had been for so long that
people thought it's the end of the world if we changed it. Once
we let a layman in the board, then we're going to lose the school.
It'll go like Bowdoin and well, it might go like Bowdoin and the rest
but it will be because of Jesuits and the circumstances, not just the
laymen, so there was a lot of cultural drag in this operation, so
that Bill just said no I think its a good thing, and he fought for it
and the things that he was fighting for he got.
QUESTION 125, VHS #1 (0-18-29-29) WAS THERE A LOT OF OPPOSITION
FROM THE JESUIT COMMUNITY TO A LAY BOARD OF TRUSTEES?
ANSWER: Absolutely.
HOW WAS HE FINALLY ABLE TO GET IT?
I don't know. Force and maybe a little prayer. No, he just got,
somebody would object and he'd bang that point and ultimately, the
Rector has a lot of power, but there's no point in using power if no
one's going to go along with you, so Bill was a hell of a good
negotiator; he used power when he needed to and he persuaded when he
needed to. He was a great administrator, but he was constantly
getting in jams because of that. He had a big mess out in San
Francisco because he was good.
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 12
P
QUESTION #26, VIIS #l (0-19-17-28) WHO WERE SOME OF THE FIRST
PEOPLE WHO HE BROUGHT IN ON THE BOARD?
ANSWER: I am helpless bringing up the names. You know the old
timers like Dave, the banker down here in Bridgeport, Berkenstock.
The Board of Trustees in the past was all Jesuit. It met for 7
minutes a year outside the dining room when the Rector said this is
the official meeting of the board, we said 'aye, we're all here,
thank you, the meeting is adjourned." Then, Bill started running it
formally and he started getting in good people and by
the time Tom Fitz came along, we were getting top flight people,
real good people, best in the country, second level, second man in
G.E., second man and they still are, top-flight. The trouble with
lay boards is they tend to go along with the President. Ours do:
they respect Father. They'd be much better off if they said "Father,
you're wrong, damn it."
QUESTION 127, VHS #1 (0-20-32-25) THERE WAS A FAIR AMOUNT OF
BUILDING GOING ON UNDER FATHER MCINNES8 AS WELL.
ANSWER: Sure was.
SCIENCE CENTER, THE LIBRARY.
I don't know how many of them.
QUESTION #28, VHS #I (0-20-45-18) WERE YOU INVOLVED IN ANY OF THE
DECISIONS AS TO WHAT TO BUILD, WHERE TO PUT IT?
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 13
fi ANSWER: Almost all of them because by the time I became Dean, I am
the longest known Trustee: you had a set term but I was in there.
The Dean was traditionally the Secretary of the Board and they kept
voting me back as Secretary. If you check that record, I think I was
a Trustee from maybe '58 to '89.
QUESTION #29, VES #1 (0-21-15-27) SOMETHING LIKE TBAT. HOW WERE
THESE DECISIONS MADE? WAS THERE A LOT OF DEBATE ON THE FLOOR?
ANSWER: Once we got to that point, when the campus center was
Fitz's last building and that building was done by Fitz. He said we .
need a campus center, so he hired an architect. The architect would
bring the plans to Fitz and he would say I like them or I don't like
them and then to the architect build it. Now, he had people in. I
sat in on meetings with Fitz and so did a lot of other people, but he
could listen or not as he liked. He built that
building himself and the nice thing about the campus center the
architect designed the campus center and he brought it and Fitz said
I don't like this and he brought it back and Fitz said I don't like
this and he changed it and that happened about 5 times and Fitz
finally said, "We're building. Draw me a decent building. I don't
want a box. Well, Bob Mutraux was a great architect, but Bob was
being very conservative because he didn't think the Jesuits would
- spend the money so he said I'll show them, so he drew the building he i
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 14
r\ wanted to build and Fitz said "That's what we're looking for" and
that's what we got. The only major change that he made in the
building that was designed by Mutraux was the front on the patio was
a bow and Fitz said ''Won't that cost more money?" and he said yes, it
would and he said, flatten it and all the rest of it stayed as was
and I think it's a very lovely building. What that one was, was the
extraordinarily good imagination of Bob Mutraux who did some
wonderful things all over this state and a totalitarian President who
could say yes or no as he liked. After that, McGuinness encouraged
the use of the Board and everybody else so he allowed and everybody
else since then has allowed a sort of democratic process that
frankly, it is certainly no better and in many ways, it may be worse,
it makes people feel good; they all had something to say in it, but
.
when it finally comes down to it, who makes the final decision, it's
the guy who's gonna pay the bucks. Who's that? President and
Trustees and the Trustees would never buck the President unless it's
a lawsuit or something, so after listening to all sorts of
discussion, fighting like crazy
someone of the Trustees always says and what do you think Father
and if Father says yes, they say yes, and if Father says no, they say
no.
QUESTION 130, V118 11 (0-24-17-27) DID FATHER MCINNES HAVE AS
STRONG FEELINGS ABOUT THE DESIGN OF THE BUILDINGS AS FATHER
FITZGERALD DID?
I,-
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 15
fi ANSWER: Oh yes, he let this process go unless it was something he
really disliked.
QUESTION 131, VHS 11 (0-24-29-27) IT WAS MORE OF A JOINT DECISION-MAKING
PROCESS...
ANSWER: Well, once we had broken through, Mutraux was a great
architect so when Mutraux designed a building, there wasn't a hell of
a lot to fight about except in style. Harry Huss was the one as
Treasurer who was always bucking things.
QUESTION 132, VHS 11 (0-24-50-04) YOU SAY YOU WEREN'T SURE WHERE
THE MONEY WAS COMING FROM FOR ALL THIS.
ANSWER: We would wait. We made applications for government loans
and the rest. It wasn't magic by any manner or means. We'd get a
government loan that wasn't 100%. Well, Harry Huss, the old-style
Treasurer didn't want to build unless he had 200% in the bank in the
case of contingency. Bill said go ahead, if we have something that
blows up, it blows up, so I'm not talking about being irrational, but
being a good entrepreneur and getting the most work out of your money
that you can get; that had not been the tradition before Bill.
QUESTION 133, VHS #1 (0-26-04-20) DID THE SUPREME COURT CASE HAVE
ANY IMPACT AT ALL ON THE DECISION TO BRING IN A LAY BOARD OF
TRUSTEES?
r ANSWER: No, I think we already had them before that, didn't we?
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 16
6
QUESTION 134, VBS #I (0-26-20-22) IT'S ABOUT THE SAME TIME
ACTUALLY.
ANSWER: The Supreme Court decision was meaningless as far as we
were concerned, but what it did do was give us a public relations
pitch that you couldn't buy.
THERE WAS ALSO, I GUESS, AN INCREASING PEELING AMONG THE STUDENTS IN
THE '60'8, DURING MCINNES' TENURE FOR A MORE RELAXED, OPEN
ENVIRONMENT, PEW RESTRICTIONS, ETC.
ANSWER: They wanted to impeach him (laughter
-
QUESTION #35, VH8 #1 (0-26-56-25) I READ ABOUT THAT. I WAS
STRUCK, NOT TO INTERRUPT YOU, BUT I THINK IN 1967, THEY DEDICATED THE
YEARBOOK TO HIM AND 2 YEARS WLTER, THEY WERE TRYING TO GET HIM OUT
THE DOOR. IT WAS REALLY QUITE SOMETHING.
ANSWER: Well, let me tell you what the basis for that was in my
opinion. Bill was very favorable to students, very easygoing,
compared with some of the old bucks we had around here; you couldn't
believe how easy he was. This was the time when the kids were
beginning to bust their britches all over the world and so they were
pushing here and maybe pushing too far and too fast, I don't know.
That was immaterial, but in the process there was a lot of tension
back and forth of what you can do and what you can't do. I'm paying
r my money, I can do anything I want, the hell you can, you break it,
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 17
fi you pay for it. They hired an exotic highly expensive rock group and
they signed the contract and everything and they were banking on this
rock group to bail their year out and they would add, it was a
nationally known group that would have drawn people like Woodstock,
but the fire department came
into McInnes and said "You've got to have a clearly designated
parking space for at least 1/2 of the cars you expect to get here"
and there weren't that many parking spaces in the Town of Fairfield
so he says no way we can do it, we can't run that concert here and he
went to the kids moderating and said concert's off. Fury; they never
believed that the fire department stopped it, they believed Bill
McInnes just got nervous and stopped it so he told them what and even
though they tried to argue it, but they believed he simply lied to
him, told them they could have it and then took it back and that got
them furious and then everything else attached to it and everything -
-tripartite again, tripartite was a symbol and a sign which really
meant nothing, but became a flaming issue that every decision on
campus should be made with at least a representative from faculty,
administration and students.
QUESTION 136, VHS 11 (0-29-28-14) WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THAT?
ANSWER: Junk. That's the one I used to argue against. Those were
the great years; that's when you could have a fight every night with
the kids.
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 18
fi QUESTION 137, VBS #1 (0-29-41-11) HOW DID THE FACULTY FEEL ABOUT
TRIPARTITE?
ANSWER : Split. Some of the faculty felt it was a great thing,
great democratic; there was nothing evil about it, just putting in 17
more steps for what was working along fine enough now. I can
remember when the kids took over a building in the first experience.
We had several building takeover experiences, but the first one, they
wouldn't get out until after a couple of days of struggle and the
Trustees and everybody decided they would
call in the law and order them legally out, which meant having
the Sheriff come down and make an announcement that the Judge had
ordered and they were contravening the law if they stayed. They did
that and the other students on campus were told that the National
Guard was coming in with orders to shoot to clean that building out
and this was at the shooting out there at the West and they were
likely to lose a lot of their brothers so these students bravely, I
think most of them very bravely, came over to join the strikers and
ring them around the building, so if they shot they were going to
have to shoot at the whole campus contingent and I went down to try
to explain that this was nonsense and practically all the school was
there. I remember getting up on the metal, the marble bench in front
of the door and starting to talk to the kids and I made my pitch and
said if there are any questions and the questions came fast and
furious and I'm going along talking and yakking and it was great and
when it was all over one of the Nuns on faculty came up to me and
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 19
A said I never knew you knew those words. Every time the kids were
giving me a "Mother Fuckerl', quite unconsciously I would just answer
in their jargon, but it was that sort of thing that was going on, a
lot of fun, not very real, but everybody, all the kids would take it
very seriously and it could do damage because they would take it
seriously.
QUESTION 138, VHS 11 (0-32-18-00) WAS THBRE EVER A TIME THAT YOU
FELT THINGS MIGHT HAVE GOTTEN OUT OF CONTROL HERE?
ANSWER: Honestly did not. And you talk with George Mahan. I
think he'll tell you the same thing. People did but you knew it
wasn't real.
- The end of that story I just told you. What the law did was they
sent a fat, little roly poly Italian with a bullhorn down to read a
court order to the building. There was no way of reaching all the
kids, but I would loved to have been able to say "See I told you so -
- no National Guard shooting."
QUESTION 139, VIIS #1 (0-32-57-02) FATHER MAEAN WAS SAYING THAT HE
RECALLED THE INCIDENT WHEN I GUESS THE WHOLE UNIVERSITY WAS IN W E
GYM AND I GUESS THERE WAS A BIG RALLY AND FATHER MCINNES APPEARED AND
WALKED RIGHT DOWN THE CENTER OF THE GYM.
ANSWER: Well the thing was that probably was the time when the
kids were at the most irate, steaming mad, everything they had tried
had failed; they were in the 181mpeach McInnes, whatever McInnes does
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 20
fl is evil1* mood and a lot of the faculty and all the faculty, including
me and everybody were afraid that some kid was going to do something
stupid like throw a can or a rock or really do something stupid to
the person of Bill McInnes. They could fight all they wanted with
the idea, so they were hoping that this would get over so that Bill
would be safe. Bill wasn't concerned about his safety, while
everyone else was in their room worrying, he went over in the midst
of the rally and stunned them by showing up. They were talking about
what they're going to do and what they're going to do to them and
then he walks out and *'what do you want?", faced them all down there.
It was just marvelous theatre.
QUESTION 140, VHS #l (0-34-25-05) WHAT WAS HIS FEELING ABOUT THESE
KIDS WHO WANTED TO IMPEACH HIM AND GET HIM OFF THE CAMPUS?
ANSWER: I think he loved it. You know, the only real loss in this
whole
business was the loss of school time and I'm not sure that they
didn't get a better education in those years with class time lost
than going to class, but it was frustrating if you were a teacher.
You never knew whether you had class or not.
QUESTION #4l, VHS #I (0-34-51-03) FATHER MAEAN MENTIONED, I GUESS,
ONE JESUIT WHOSE NAME HE DIDN'T MENTION, I GUESS QOT SO FED UP TEAT
BE JUST MOVED OFF THE CAMPUS. HE SAID HE JUST COULDN'T DEAL WITH IT
/-
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 21
0 ANY LONGER.
ANSWER: Yes, but that was a little bit different; that was a guy
in the dorms who was very, very close to the kids all the time, still
was very close to the kids but these kids to whom he was very close
and whom he loved and who loved him were doing such stupid
things, no matter what he told them, he said "the hell with you, I
just don't want to see you" so he moved off, his nerves were just
getting all tight at the futility of the whole thing but it was not
fear or anything else, it was frustration, just to get some peace.
r QUESTION # 4 2 , VHS #1 (0- 35- 40- 06) DID THE JESUITS WHO WERE HERE
FEEL, IN GENERAL, THAT FATHER MCINNES WAS TAKING THE RIGHT TACK WITH
THE STUDENTS?
ANSWER: No way. I'd say probably more than most of them, probably
did not. I should probably not even have guessed at that because I
don't know. I haven't the vaguest idea and I wouldn't be surprised
if everyone was opposed to him or if everyone was for him, but I
think it was largely split.
QUESTION # 4 3 , VHS #l ( 0- 36- 10- 07) THEY THOUGHT THAT HE SHOULD
HAVE TAKEN A MORE, A TOUGHER POSITION.
ANSWER: Yeah, well some of this could have been alleviated if Bill
McInnes did, you know, second guess, whatever he did, someone
,-
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 22
0 had a better way of doing it after the fact.
QUESTION $44, VHS 21 (0-36-25-00) FATHER MAHAN WAS SAYING AND BE
ACTUALLY PAID YOU QUITE A COMPLIMENT. HE SAID THAT YOU AND FATHER
MCINNES REALLY ACTED AS A TEAM DURING TEE WHOLE PERIOD, THAT YOU
WERE, THESE WERE NOT HIS WORDS, BUT I'M WING TO USE TEEM, THAT YOU
WERE MORE THE MAIL FIST AND HE WAS MORE THE VELVET GLOVE.
ANSWER: That really didn't have as much significance as it sounds.
I thought my job as Dean was to deal with the kids directly and I had
no qualms about doing it, so that if something needed to be done and
we decided on it, I'd say "All right, Bill". And unless there was
some unique reason for him to do it, that's just the way it happened,
but there was no particular reason, one way or another, as to who
should do what.
QUESTION 145, VBS $1 (0-37-21-09) DID YOU FIND YOURSELF DEBATING
WITH TEE STUDENTS A LOT? WERE THERE PLACES WHERE YOU ALL WOULD
GATHER AND TALK?
ANSWER: Well the first time this ever came up, I was scared. I
had never faced in my life a mass of irate people and I had no idea
of how far the power of persuasion went with a mass of irate people.
Well, my first contact was a very tiny little mass. It was a group
of about 20 that took over the space in front of Bill McInnesl office
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 23
and refused to leave and they were there all day or something of the
sort and I talked to them for a while and I don't even remember the
context, but someplace in there said "Get out by morning or
else" and left, not knowing whether they'd pay any attention and, if
they didn't, then what would I do. George, I think George Gallarelli
or somebody over in the dorm heard the crowd about 20 minutes later
going back to
their rooms. "What the hell are they moving for that fuckin
Coughlin for? Why should we move? Let's go back. No, no, I'm not
going to buck him. They were still good kids, they were not really
revolutionaries, they really, under the power of persuasion, they
just needed someone to say "do it or else" and if it was what they
thought should be done, they'd do it; it might take a little time.
QUESTION #46, VBS #1 (0-39-01-21) THE SITUATION DID BEGIN TO
ESCALATE NEVERTHELESS.
ANSWER: Yeah, I guess, but we were putting on a mock Berkeley. It
was not real.
QUESTION #47, VBS #1 (0-40-42-09) THERE WERE SOME REAL CHANGES IN
TEE CURRICULUM A8 A RESULT OF ALL THISI OR WAS THAT AS A RESULT OF
SOMETHING ELSE?
ANSWER: It had nothing to do with this. The changes that the kids
wanted in the curriculum should have been made 50 years ago. It was
just society moving slowly. You will have heard about the forbidden
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 24
rn books episode.
QUESTION 148, V88 #1 (0-41-11-23) NO, I ' M NOT FAKILIAR WITH THAT.
ANSWER: Oh, is that right? The library was in the bottom floor of
Canisius, so it was tight to begin with. In the back corner of
Canisius is a great big, lobbylike room, but with no windows in it.
The end of that room, the Librarian, lovely guy, Frank Small, but
conservative, erected 2 x 4 and chicken wire cage into which he put
all the books on the index. Are you familiar with the index? The
index was a dead issue 700 years ago, but once the books were there
and you had to go to the Librarian to get permission to get them out,
that inflamed studentsg minds, as it should: they were dead right, so
one night they broke into the
chicken wire, took the books in the index and scattered them in
the library, no, they spent the night putting them in the appropriate
places in the library according to number. Small, of course, was
furious, many of us were hilarious, but it became an issue just
because of sort of disobedience, that sort of thing, but the kids
would be concerned that that was an issue on the index of untruth and
on the church -- bunk, so the curriculum that the kids opposed I
thought was great, I still think was great, is no longer possible, I
mean the straight classics curriculum as originally taught, I think
would still be a marvelous educational instrument, but it's not
possible to use in this day and age and there are a whole lot of
others, so they wanted to expand the curriculum which was perfectly
-.
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 25
!m valid. They blamed the classic curriculum as being dead,
devastating, unusual and the rest, which was untrue, so it was a
question of judgment and many of the things that they wanted them to
do were not being done solely because of money -- Fine Arts. We put
in a Fine Arts course, but a couple of Fine Arts course lectures are
meaningless. It patted them on the head, but until you have full
program with performance and the rest, there wasn't much point in
doing it, but we did it to keep people happy and eventually we got
other things -- the real -- the Science programs here had always been
immensely strong, but limited only to 3 major sciences. Well, we got
Astronomy, Geology, all these other things in, even though there's
still a long way to go in that area because the instrumentation costs
so damn much, things like that, so the growth of the curriculum was a
very normal, good, solid,
growth and if the kids want to take credit for it, God
love them, but they had little or nothing to do with it.
QUESTION 149, VHS $1 (0-44-28-10) WHAT WAS FATHER MCINNES' FEELING
ABOUT TEE CURRICULUM CHANGES? WAS HE...
ANSWER: The same thing. The Jebs all felt the same way, you know.
We liked the old curriculum, but we were willing to go the other
curriculum, but only if it were done well. We had to teach, to
placate or take a group, we were to teach a black African. There was
no way we could have taught a respectable course in any African thing
without spending a lot of money to get taught by people, no way we
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 26
n were going to do that, so we did something that ordinarily we
wouldn't like. We hired one guy to teach a Black course to kids who
didn't want it, who didn't learn anything from it, but that left them
happy, so that changed the Language Curriculum, got in those Black
Studies.
QUESTION 150, VHS 11 (0-45-20-18) HA8 TEAT PROGRAM STAYED HERE?
ANSWER : Oh, no, no, no. As soon as the urge disappeared, out the
window, because the Blacks didn't want it.
QUESTION 151, VHS 11 (0-45-34-12) WEAT DID THE BLACKS WANT?
ANSWER: Nothing. What the Blacks want everywhere; they wanted to
- be respected for themselves so that that was true everywhere and we
weren't doing it any more than anybody else, but the specific thing
here in which it came about could be anything.
QUESTION 152, VHS 11 (0-45-55-29) I READ THAT FATHER MCINNES MET
WITH THEM AFTER THEY SAT IN AT A BUILDING AND SAID THAT HE WOULD TRY
TO BRING IN MORE BLACK STUDENTS AND MORE BLACK PROFESSORB AND SO ON
AND SO FORTH.
ANSWER: They wanted more Black Professors, Black Professors, Bill
McInnes said, you'll have him here tomorrow if you get the
name of the one you want to hire. They weren't to be found. We've
been looking for them for years. We wanted them. We wanted Black
Professors. We still do and can't get them. You know the
r
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 27
fi respectable Black Professor is not going to come to Fairfield when
any respectable Black Professor can go to Yale or Harvard, or
Stanford or the cut above us; he can take his pick.
QUESTION 153, VES #1 (0-46-37-04) WEAT THE LAY FACULTY'S ATTITUDE
TOWARD THIS? WERE THEY GENERALLY SUPPORTIVE OF MORE BLACK PROFESSORS
AND EXPANDING THE CURRICULUM?
ANSWER: Some were. During the early days, up until very recently,
a couple 2-3 years ago, I think you could say that the lay faculty
thought like Jesuits (oh, they'd kill me for saying that) and because
they thought in many ways they were always fighting the Jesuits.
They were here because they wanted the same things the Jebs did and
they may want them in a different way but there was never, to the
5
best of my knowledge, any true issue of essence that we clashed on,
lay and Jesuit faculty -- fought like cats and dogs over everything
and the lay faculty, like the Jesuits, are split all over the place.
We should do this and we should do that, you know. You know what the
best curriculum is?
HAVEN'T THE FAINTEST IDEA.
Neither does anybody else. (Laughter)
QUESTION #54, VHS #1 (0-47-42-22) I READ SOMEWHERE ELSE THAT THERE
WERE SOME FINANCIAL PROBLEMS TOWARD THE LATE '60'8, THAT TEE COLLEGE
STARTED RUNNING A DEFICIT.
ANSWER: Well, the Bill McInnes llshoot from the hips syndrome" put
,' us $700,000 in the hole. Now I think Bill had it all figured as to
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 28
e how he could get out, but you know, it was itchy. I don't think
he planned on that deficit getting that big, but as a consequence,
now that the Province got very nervous and that's when they decided
they wanted to get Bill in there, not Bill, the other Fitz, Tom Fitz
and Tom was just the opposite of Bill, had just as much vision and
all the rest, but Tom is a pedantic, let's be exact, no swinging from
the hip, so then he worked on that budget and chopped and chopped and
chopped and drove you absolutely crazy because he'd make broad
sweeping statements, understandable ones like "Steady state staffing
--there'd be no more staffing than there were last year." Well,
there'd be a number that he and I would be dealing with. Then I'd
ask for this man to be hired and he'd say that he doesn't fit in with
F the steady state staffing and I'd say yes he does and he'd say that
you only had so many last year, but I add 5 on studies, on
Sabbaticals, time-out, which you didn't count, sorry, steady state
staffing is the number we talked about. And I'd say, that's stupid,
you can't do that, steady state staffing is the number we talked
about. I think Fitz said it is stupid, but that's the number and
that's what you're going to live with. Ultimately, you could break
him down, but it was tiring, but he was equally good for the place,
to provide a solidity and a fiscal basis as secure and it was with
Fitz that we got the top flight trustees who are doing top flight
advising for us and pulling all this stuff together. The two of them
would make a terrific management team; they might kill one another,
but if you could combine McInnes and Tom Fitz, you'd have the best of
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 29
rn all
possible worlds.
QUESTION 155, VXS #1 (0- 50- 27- 04) TEE DECISION IN 1 9 7 0 TO GO CO-ED,
WAS THERE AWY, I MEAN, WHY WAS IT TAKEN IN 1 9 7 0 1 WERE FISCAL
PROBLEMS AT ALL INVOLVED?
ANSWER: Yeah. The pool of desirable students was getting too
small for us to dip into it. There were a lot of students available,
but the ones that we wanted to get were being sucked off by the
larger schools and we were still growing, so we weren't getting them.
That was one reason, I think -- finances, to enlarge the base. It
had been talked about and desired for a long time, but every Jeb was
,- opposed to it, every Jeb figured once you provide a girl on campus,
everybody's going to be in bed fornicating every night ... not a lot,
but in the back of their mind, that really was what they think --
making problems that these kids would never encounter if it wasn't
for us going co-ed. These kids are going to encounter them if they
go to a convent, so when the first, a little aside from your
question, so when the first group of co-eds came in were housed on
the first floor of Loyola and George Gallarelli had the Prefect's
room on the corner of that floor next to the outside stairwell and as
soon as the kids arrived, it turned out that the outside stairwell
was going to be the meeting place and the trysting place and George,
in the somewhat, heard all the conversations that were going on. So
one night, they were there for the orientation with the Juniors
i/-
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 30
fi directing them, a bunch of these innocent little co-eds, one night,
George comes bombing up to the top floor of Gonzaga with a bunch of
Jebs and says "Don't worry about the girls and co-eds." "What do you
mean, George?" "Just listened to a conversation down there; There's
this
sweet, little innocent girl and one of the toughest men that's on
campus, a Junior, is cultivating her and he's really giving her a
smooth talk and at the end of it she says, "You know, I've had such a
wonderful time and enjoyed it so much and I don't even know your
name." She says, ''Oh, my name's Doreen whatever." #'And I don't even
know what room you live in." "1 don't know why you'd ever need to
know that." So George says the girls have it under control, "Don't . - worry1*, which was true.
QUESTION #56, VHS #l (0-53-20-21) IIAB THERE A LOT OF DEBATE AMONG
THE TRUSTEES ABOUT QOINQ CO-ED OR WERE THEY BASICALLY IN FAVOR OF IT?
ANSWER: Oh, I think all the Trustees were in favor of it. They
really didn't care. They listened to all the arguments, pro and con.
I don't think they ever opposed it. There were some of the die
hards; some of the die hards -- Jesuits, largely, a lot of the die
hard faculty thought we lost some style when we went co-ed. There
was a benefit to an all-male school, which there probably is, but
it's hard to realize any more.
QUESTION #57, VHS #1 (0-53-59-27) IF YOU HAD TO SUH UP FATHER
c
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 31
fi MCINNES' LEGACY TO THE UNIVERSITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? DID HE LEAVE IT
A STRONGER PLACE?
ANSWER: Absolutely. Bill McInnes started the almost dead heart of
this institution and got it going at such a pace that no one would
ever stop it because it had been lethargically pooping along until
Bill McInnes came. And no one knew it was all that lethargic until
Bill stirred it up. That's why I think he was just fabulous. There
weren't many who could have done it. It would have happened
eventually, but there weren't many who could have done so much, so
quickly, he threw up buildings, he
increased enrollment, he doubled faculty over and over again --
all the things that we needed to do that couldn't be done according
-- to Harry Huss because we didn't have the money, Bill did in a year.
QUESTION #58, VHS #1 (0-55-01-06) WERE YOU INVOLVED IN LOOKING FOR
NEW FACULTY? WERE THEY EASY TO FIND?
ANSWER: No. Easy to find faculty, but not easy to find the
faculty you want.
QUESTION # 59, VHS #1 (0-55-12-15) HOW DID YOU FIND THEM?
ANSWER: You advertised in the journals and you might 100 - 200;
when we first started we might get 4 applications and now you
advertise, you might get 100 applications and you look through them
and you might not want any of them.
f-
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 32
* WERE THERE PARTICULAR DEPARTMENTS...?
You'd only be hiring for a specific job at a specific time.
QUESTION #GO, WiS #1 (0-55-44-13) FATHBR FITZGERALD, NOW, REPLACED
FATHER MCINNES AND YOU WERE STILL DEAN WHEN HE CAME. SOMEONE WAS
TELLING ME THAT HE WAS SO CONCERNED ABOUT THE BOTTOM LINE THAT HE
WOULD GO AROUND TIJRNING THE LIGHTS OFF IN THE CLASSROOM.
ANSWER : Absolutely true. Absolutely true. And he had a little
trick which he was very proud of and which I felt was demeaning and
infuriating and I despised him for it. He'd walk around to
administrator's offices and if the man wasn't there, he'd just drop
his card on the desk. Come on, Fitz, which maybe could terrify a
layman, just infuriate one of the Jebs. But Fitz was good, he was a
r
real good man. He used to claim I've lost a lot of battles, but I've
never lost a war and that was true. He'd
ask you to do something and nothing happened. He'd ask you to do
it 5, 7, 9 times with increasing anger until finally you'd do it. He
only lost one battle that I know of. He focused one time on the
Security Department and they had just acquired all the accouterments
of being policemen, including guns and he did not want guns for bad
guns which was easy to do and they weren't going to fight and he
didn't want the lights on top of the police cars because they looked
too much like police cars and he did not think that was appropriate
and for whatever reason the Chief of the Police not only thought they
were appropriate, but that they should not go and Fitz again and
,- -,
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 33
fi again and again attempted to remove thoselights, but the lights
never went -- the one loss I have ever known in his life. They're
still on the cars, still were on the cars all through his regime,
although he opposed them bitterly.
QUESTION 161, VHS 11 (0-57-46-03) JUST TO JUMP BACK FOR A MINUTE -
- DID FATHER MCINNES LEAVE ON HIS OWN VOLITION OR WAS HIS TERM UP?
ANSWER: Yeah, his term was up, I guess. I have to stop and think
because what you do is end up confusing rules for Rectors and rules
for Presidents. No, the President didn't have a term. I don't
really know the motive. No, he wasn't thrown out if that's the
question. I don't know whether he, I guess he had an invitation to
go out to San Francisco and he wanted to take it and I think that was
.- -
1 it.
QUESTION 162, VHS #l (0-58-34-07) I UNDERSTAND WEEN FATHER
FITSGERALD WAS HEREI THERE WAS AT ONE POINT, AN OPPORTUNITY TO GET A
LAW SCHOOL HERE ON CAMPUSI BUT I GUESS HE DIDN'T WANT IT.
ANSWER: It was nonsense. It's the one that's down at U.B. The
bottom line, the first letter came to me so I know the basic details.
It was a local little law school that was closing up, had no
reputation, no faculty, but it had a Law Library; the Law Library
wasn't all that bad, wasn't very good either. They wanted to give us
the school. What would we get? A Law Library, which we'd then be
committed to spend thousands of dollars into building up to
respectability and a librarian and a faculty; it would have been like
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 34
starting a school on our own. You weren't getting a school, you were
getting them off the hook, so Fitz took one look at it and said
"Thank you, when I get ready to move into the field, we'll go..."
QUESTION $63, VBS $1 (0-59-41-07) DO YOU THINKt IN RETROSPECTt IT
WOULD BAVE... ?
ANSWER: It would have been ridiculous for anybody in his right
mind to think of it for more than ten seconds. That was one that was
no problem whatsoever. You know, with different circumstances like
at U.B. it might have fit in to what they were trying to do, but not
for us. Even now, starting a Law School would be horrendous.
QUESTION #64, VBS $1 (1-00-04-16) THE DECISION TO BUILD THE
RECREATION COMPLEX --WAS THAT A DIFFICULT DECISION TO MAKE, OR WAS IT
SOMETHING TEAT ABSOLUTELY NEEDED TO BE DONE?
ANSWER: Yes, it did. There was nothing for the kids to do during
the winter so you know what they did -- they demolished the
dormitories year after year after year and got into trouble and
mischief and fights. They were just like prisoners. We provided,
you could list all the beautiful things like the Chess Club, the
Photography Club and the Felt Making Club, but there was nothing for
a kid to do during the course of the winter. Can you play
basketball? Well, there's a post outside! Everybody knew we had to
provide some sort of facilities for the kids to blow off steam and
even putting up that first gym, it was inadequate before it was
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 35
completed and everybody knew that, but at least it was a step
forward. Even the present two, I think, are inadequate, but they're
pretty close too.
QUESTION #65, VHS 11 (1-01-14-14) WEERB DID TEE MONEY FOR TEAT GYM
COME FROM?
ANSWER: You know, government loans, largely. We had a certain
amount of I don't think you'd call it profit of the trade, but I mean
there was a surplus from income, but nothing like the monies needed
to build, but at that time you had a lot of government funding around
and that's where John Barone was absolutely fabulous. 'People hate
John's guts and there's no one on this campus who has argued more
bitterly and more deeply than John Barone, but he knows I love him
and he loves me. Whatever you say about the man, he's devoted to
Fairfield and he raised money and funds and worked to get these
things done. Once he got them done when things didn't have to be
done, sometimes his exercise of power is overwhelming but at that
time, there was no question about what we needed so John could go off
on lobbying expeditions to Washington for a week to ten days. No Jeb
or no professor ever did that here before and at that time, unless
you were doing it,
you weren't getting anything, so John knew nothing when he
started. He went down and he poked around and he found out how you
did it and he was the biggest bandit of them all, so and in a few
- short years, John became great and became well known all over the
/
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 36
m place.
QUESTION #66, VHS $1 (1-02-49-21) WHEBE DID HE W THE LOBBYING?
ANSWER: Wherever there was a buck. He got out the books. John
works 18 hours a day for us, so if John wanted to lobby, he would
spend 18 hours reading the small print in manuals about where money
is that's hidden and not everybody uses and all of a sudden he would
have winkled out $17 million of funds that were not expended and he'd
go down and bang the doors and see if he could get some of these,
where everybody else was just putting in the big ones and getting no
place. One of the world's great hustlers; a little bit of a crook,
absolutely marvelous help to this place.
- mRE THERE ANY PARTICULAR CONGRESSMEN...?
ANSWER: I guess. John would cultivate the devil himself if it
would make a buck for us.
QUESTION $67, VHS $1 (1-03-47-28) THE DECISION TO PUT THE BUSINESS
SCHOOL IN HERE, WAS THAT I UNDERSTAND SOME OF THE FACULTY WERE
OPPOSED TO THAT BECAUSE IT WAS TO0 MUCH LIKE CAREER EDUCATION.
ANSWER: Yeah. We had a Business Department from the very
beginning with the basic courses, like Accounting and Economics and
the rest and why isn't that good enough? What's this crazy expansion
business? You're getting away from the Classics, you're getting away
from Culture, you're making pencil pushers out of them, none of which
was true; it took some doing. What it really took, I
/-
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 37
e guess was enough stability in the other departments so you could
focus on the Business without really threatening them totally, so
once that was done, we gradually started building the Business
Department.
QUESTION #68, WiS #1 (1-04-42-09) THIS WAS ALSO FATHER FITZGERALD,
I GUESS. THIS WAS BEFORE FATHER KELLY?
ANSWER: The desire would have been shared by all of them. I don't
know who actually began the thing. I think probably again, the
motivation to get it going was Bill McInnes, although its growth came
in Fitz, but that could happen you know. That's a 12-year, 14-year
stand.
QUESTION 169, VHS 11 (1-05-13-25) WAS THE DIRECTION, THIS IS KIND
OF A GENERAL QUESTION, WAS THE DIRECTION THE UNIVERSITY WAS GOING IN,
WERE YOU SATISFIED WITH IT, HAPPY WITH IT, WOULD YOU HAVE DONE
ANYTHING DIFFERENTLY?
ANSWER : Oh, incidentals, but the direction of the university was
going great and it still it as long as they hold to a Catholic
Christian commitment then all the rest they can play games with; you
know play games, I don't care what variation or type of education or
curriculum or methodology or whatever you want to employ; they're all
good, they're all interchangeable, but the one thing that's very
easily lost because it's not common and not everybody is rooting for
it is that Catholic, truly catholic tradition in the place and it
requires more than 2 Catholics to hold it and as a consequence of
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 38
fi
that, values, morals has the major function in life. That doesn't
mean that you have to learn how to play in 17 languages but that it
is the central part of
your being and that's a tough thing to inculcate in kids.
IS SOME OF THAT BEING LOST, DO YOU THINK?
No. It changes, but it's still there.
QUESTION $70, VBS $1 (1-06-31-18) IS THE INFLUENCE OF THE JESUITS
AS STRONG AS IT WAS?
ANSWER: No, but the influence of the laymen takes up for it,
unless the idea dies out in our area, it isn't that it has to be a
Jesuit who does it, but is someone who begins in the ideals that the
Jesuits enunciated, it could be done just as well by laymen, but if
there weren't Jesuits there, the laymen would probably pretty soon
drift away from it.
QUESTION # 71, VBS $1 (1-07-02-09) WAS THE, THERE WAS DURING THIS
TIME, TOO, AN INCREASING EMPHASIS, I'VE NOTICED, ON ATHLETICS -- THE
BASKETBALL TEAM, THE DESIRE TO WIN, TRYING TO GET THE BEST COACH
HERE, PAY HIM A TOP SALARY. I MEAN, ARE YOU COMPLETELY IN FAVOR OF
THAT? IS THERE TOO MUCH EMPHASIB ON THAT?
ANSWER: No. With the obvious limitations. We can't pay the top
salaries in the country, but we should realistically go as far as we
actually can to get the best possible coach and the best possible
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 39
team without buying. I don't want to get out and be a real buying
team, but if we're not getting kids because the coach isn't to good,
that he's second rate, then let's go up six steps even if that means
another $50,000. It's important to these kids to have something to
focus on and here, basketball is the sport. Now, I don't want to
eliminate the others, but if there's any preference given, it should
be to basketball; go as far as your needs be in that and as far as
you can in the others. I don't want to take money from anything
essential, but that
becomes a value judgment. What can you cut back to give to the
coach? There are a lot of people who would say you can't do that, or
I would say yes you can, so we could argue that endlessly. Right at
the moment, do we put enough money into athletics? No. Would any
other administrator dare say that, I doubt it? They probably think
we put too much in.
QUESTION 172. VHS 11 (1-08-55-24) HAVE THE* WHEN YOU RETIRED IN
1978, AROUND THAT TIME* AS ACADEMIC VICE PRESIDENT* WERE THE ACADEMIC
REQUIREMENTS AS HIGH AND AS RIQID A8 YOU'D LIKE TO HAVE SEEN THEM?
WERE YOU HAPPY WITH THEM?
ANSWER : Yes, yes indeed.
HAVE THEY STAYED PRETTY MUCH....?
We never got the praise for it but we have always been top flight at
gambling. Now that doesn't mean in every department, but
generically. I'd match our kids in school any place.
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 40
QUESTION 173, VHB 11 (1-09-35-19) WHY DID YOU RETIRE IN 19781
ANSWER: Pooped. The Dean's job generally lasts 7-8-9 years. I
went 16 plus time. I enjoyed every minute of it, loved every minute
of it, but really it wasn't a good thing for the school to have a
Dean that long. If they wanted to change earlier, that would have
been perfectly fine and so Fitz said, llShouldnlwte change?' And I
said It's all right with me. Fine." So they went looking for deans
and I went happily along my way.
QUESTION #74, VBS #1 (1-10-21-07) YOU WENT BACK TO TEACHING,
RIGHT?
,- ANSWER: I Id forgotten.
I THINK YOU DID.
Did I? So it was only briefly.
QUESTION #75, VHS 11 (1-10-29-18) AND YOU REMAINED ON THE BOARD OF
TRUBTEES I GUESS INTO THE '80'8, DIDN'T YOU, THROUGH PART OF FATHER
KELLY'S.. .
ANSWER: Maybe. You're probably right, I just can't confirm it.
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY TODAY?
I am madly, wildly, insanely in love with the place and everything
about it. Any other questions?
THAT SUMS IT UP PRETTY WELL. TEAT WILL DO IT. THANK YOU.
There have been times when I've cried, times when I've been
frustrated, there are times when I thought of shooting myself, but
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 41
In
this place I love, I think it's wonderful.
Oral History: James Coughlin, S.J. Page 42