Last week Dean Lee Paul Sieg of University of Pittsburgh's College & Graduate School accepted a call to the presidency of University of Washington. Few first-rate educators envied him the job.
For more than a decade University of Washington, sloping back from Seattle's lakes, has been the nation's prime example of the political meddling, jealousy and intrigue which bedevil most state universities. It came to the fore during the eleven-year administration (1915-26) of the late Henry Suzzalo. Able in politics as in pedagogy, he wangled generous grants from the Legislature, built up a maze of specialized colleges, upped enrollment from 3,000 to 7,000. But he made one major mistake. As virtual Governor during the fatal six-month illness of Wartime Governor Ernest Lister, he started to clean up lumber camps and trod on the toes of a lumberman named Roland Hill Hartley. In 1926 Hartley was Governor and Suzzalo found himself out of a job.
In 1927 the Hartley Board of Regents which ousted Suzzalo draped the presidential mantle around Matthew Lyle Spencer, director of Washington's School of Journalism, but put the presidential sceptre in the hands of a Hartley henchman named William Neal Winter, a practicing spiritualist with a "control" named Hugo. Asked Washingtonians: "Who really runs the University—Hartley or Hugo?" In 1932 Hartley (or Hugo), ostensibly for economy, smashed the Suzzalo system of Colleges, bore down on extracurricular activities, optional courses. That autumn Washington Alumnus Clarence Daniel Martin (Class of 1906) rode the Democratic landslide into the Governorship. President Spencer soon "asked" to be relieved of his job and given an English professorship. A new Board of Regents granted his first request, denied his second.
Washington deans rallied their cliques, brought their jockeying for the presidency out into the open. Least involved in the intrigue was gentle, popular Hugo August Winkenwerder, longtime Forestry dean. He got the job, as acting president. But no one felt that he would last long and facultymen were unruly. Apparently no Washingtonian could bring peace. The Regents decided to pass the word around that the job was open, wait for applications. They came in floods. Typical was one from a small-town high school principal who "had a knack of making himself liked and thought he would make a good university president." The Regents swung around the country, interviewed some 50 educators, found none both suitable and willing to put his head in Washington's political beartrap. University of Chicago's Dean George Alan Works was interested last autumn until Governor Martin vetoed a bill to help take the University out of politics by forbidding the Governor to juggle the Board of Regents.