By Mark G. Michaelsen on 5.12.06 @ 12:06AM
The former president of Hillsdale College died last Friday. He was 71.
Former Hillsdale College President George C. Roche, III, died
last Friday, May 5, 2006, at 71. There are mixed feelings among
conservatives between those who remember him fondly and those who
were horrified by the circumstances which resulted in his
resignation. Sometimes those two sentiments alternate.
It's hard to remember now just how Roche stood the higher
education community on its ear. With a Ph.D. in history, he was
working as seminar director at the Foundation for Economic
Education when he was hired at Hillsdale. College trustees could
have made a safer choice but they threw the long ball. Roche was 36
and the youngest college president in the country when he became
Hillsdale president in 1971.
Roche changed the face of Hillsdale, both figuratively and
literally. He wrote books about the struggle between the forces of
excellence and mediocrity. He raised money. He created a seminar
series that brought outstanding scholars and people in the news to
campus so that students could learn from them. He built a mailing
list using the new flagship newsletter, Imprimis. He
attracted a generation of young professors and professionals who
were glad to help realize Roche's vision for the school, academia
in the larger sense, and the nation.
I went to work at Hillsdale College in 1982 to work in the
Administration. It was an exciting time to be there. The War of
Ideas was not an empty phrase. I worked with dedicated young
professionals who gravitated toward the magnetic president. The
lessons I learned from them about choosing the right words in
print, how to behave in television and radio interviews, and how to
deal with difficult people have stayed with me throughout my
life.
Ronald Reagan was President and Margaret Thatcher was Prime
Minister of Britain. Even though the Reagan Administration had a
fairly conservative cabinet, Hillsdale was watching the Grove
City v. Bell lawsuit with the U.S. Department of Education
over whether federal aid to any student made the whole college
subject to the full range of federal regulation. When the Court of
Appeals ruled against Grove City, Roche began raising money to
replace any federal aid to students so Hillsdale wouldn't be
subject to federal regulation over the admission and retention of
students or athletes. This raised little Hillsdale into a national
symbol of independence.
There were those who wanted Roche to run for U.S. Senate in his
native Colorado. I often used the back of "Roche for Senate"
letterhead as typing paper in my IBM Selectric.
In 1983, a delegation of us self-described "bomb-throwers" from
Hillsdale went to Bloomington, Indiana, to meet some fellow
"bomb-throwers" who worked for a growing tabloid magazine called
The American Spectator. That's when I met R. Emmett
Tyrrell, Jr. and Wlady Pleszczynski. At that time, I couldn't
imagine being published in a magazine such as TAS.
I left Hillsdale to run for U.S. Congress in 1984. Roche continued
to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for Hillsdale, including
capital campaigns to build needed new class buildings and a better
athletic facility. He increased the campus endowment to nearly $200
million.
In 1998, Roche filed for divorce from his wife of 44 years. In
the autumn of 1999, his daughter-in-law announced she and Roche had
been having an affair for years. Hours later, she committed
suicide. The liberal media had a field day pointing out the
inconsistency of Hillsdale's reputation of traditional values in
its curriculum and these accusations. Conservatives were appalled.
The scandal hurt college fundraising, admissions, and its national
image. The trustees let Roche go and hired Larry Arnn as his
successor.
Did Roche and his daughter-in-law have an affair? Maybe they
did. Maybe she just lost her mind or was angry because Roche was
involved with a woman other than her husband's mother. Father and
son were able to patch things up, which some think is evidence of
Roche's innocence.
Maybe we'll never know for sure. When I remember George Roche,
however, I prefer to think of him as on top of his game as an
outstanding scholar and college leader.
topics:
Education, Television, Books, Law
