Epilogue

Living institutions possess, of course, a history that has not yet ended, but continues to unfold, often in unpredictable directions. This circumstance creates enormous difficulties for historians as their work approaches the present. The documentary record from which they must work may not yet be fully accessible, and the events that they must recount are too recent to be viewed readily in historical perspective. Certainly by the mid-1980s, if not a bit sooner, William and Mary had reached that point in its development, and beyond it historians tread cautiously. Yet, it may seem remiss not to bring the history of the College that one short step to the end of its third century, even if only by highlighting a few recent developments that appear significant.

The selection of Paul R. Verkuil as president at the end of 1984 marks a convenient starting point. Verkuil was an undergraduate alumnus from the class of 1961, who had received a law degree from the University of Virginia and had taught law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before becoming dean of the School of Law at Tulane University from which he came to the College. He took office at William and Mary in the summer of 1985 and was formally inaugurated on October 12. From the first his statements on policy emphasized an expansion of research and graduate and professional education at the College, reaffirming what had been a marked trend for at least the two preceding decades. However, the new president was especially explicit in stating his commitment to such plans, although he also recognized the tension likely to arise between teaching and research in a smaller, predominantly undergraduate institution. He pledged continued support for the undergraduate mission of William and Mary.

This focus on advanced study and research took concrete form in a number of ways. New doctoral programs in American studies, computer science, and applied science began. Several new study or research centers were either founded or brought to completion, taking their place alongside such established centers as the Institute of Early American History and Culture and the Institute of Bill of Rights Law. The additions included the Wendy and Emery Reves Center for International Studies, the Commonwealth Center for the Study of American Culture, the Roy R. Charles Center for undergraduate honors and interdisciplinary studies, and the Thomas Jefferson Program in Public Policy. Also, the observance of the fiftieth anniversary of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science called attention to its increasingly close association (after the legislation of 1979) with the College, especially with the graduate programs of the School of Marine Science. The formation of a Faculty Assembly, a faculty governing body composed of representatives from all the professional schools and the faculty of arts and sciences, reversed the rejection a few years earlier of a faculty senate. Its establishment reflected the increasingly complex administrative structure of a college that was more and more often referred to as a “university.”

The half dozen years or so after 1986 proved to be another of the periods of major physical expansion of the campus that occurred at intervals throughout the twentieth century. The scope of this one was less immediately noticeable, in part because no identifiable new section of the campus was created and also because a significant portion of the work involved renovation of existing structures. In the end, however, expenditures totaled almost $56 million, and plans for a new science building and the renovation of James Blair Hall were under way when an economic downturn forced a halt to such projects. Washington Hall, Ewell Hall, Blow Gymnasium (converted for use for administrative offices and the Graduate School of Business), and the former Tyler dormitory (remodeled as the Reves Center) received major renovation. Additions were made to the Swem Library and the Muscarelle Museum. A new recreational sports building replaced Blow, and a graduate dormitory complex, the Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Residences, opened near the Marshall-Wythe School of Law. New smaller buildings included an art studio and the Sarah Ives Gore Child Care Center. The latter construction brought to fruition the efforts over a number of years of a group of faculty members to secure a larger and more modern day-care facility. Also scheduled for completion in 1993 was a student center, much larger than the old one, which was in turn slated for conversion to administrative offices.

Another feature of the Verkuil administration was the president’s strong enthusiasm for highly visible commemorative and celebratory occasions that promised to attract wide attention to the College. Such efforts were, in any event, mandated by the approaching three hundredth anniversary of William and Mary, and elaborate plans soon began to evolve. The opening salvo was an observance by the College of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that brought King William and Queen Mary to the English throne and made possible the grant of the College Charter of 1693. College representatives served as the official American delegation to the parliamentary celebration that was held in London in the summer of 1988. The culminating event in a round of College-sponsored conferences, exhibitions, and concerts was the Charter Day convocation of 1989, attended by the Princess Margriet of the Netherlands. Also present as the British representatives were the Speaker of the House of Commons and the lord chancellor, the latter giving the featured speech.

Immediately thereafter work began on the more extensive tercentenary observance, which was to be marked by a series of activities stretching from Charter Day 1993 to Homecoming Week in the following October. A state-appointed commission, headed by Henry Rosovsky, an alumnus, distinguished educator, and former dean of the faculty of arts and sciences at Harvard University, gave broad oversight to the observance. Not unrelated to these efforts to give the College wider visibility was the earlier appointment in 1986 of Warren Burger, the former chief justice of the Supreme Court, to a seven-year term in the honorary post of chancellor.

Another consideration that played a major part in the projected tercentenary was the opportunity that it afforded to mount a drive to increase the private endowment of the College. Systematic efforts to build both annual and longer-term gifts had been in place for some years, but they were now accelerated. The professional development staff was enlarged and a goal of $150 million announced for what was designated as the Campaign for the Fourth Century. While far larger drives were commonplace at many universities, the projected sum was a record for William and Mary—and, at the time, for Virginia.

However important they may be, improved physical facilities, adequate funding, favorable public impressions, even the formulation of new academic programs, are for institutions of higher learning but means to accomplish the larger end of providing an education of high quality and of enriching the cultural and intellectual life of all who are part of an academic community. Success in meeting that goal is always difficult to measure. Based to some extent on selective admission standards, the College had by now achieved high ranking in a number of guides to American colleges. It was identified by one as a “public Ivy,” that is, one of a small number of state-supported institutions across the nation that combined relatively low costs with the educational advantages of more expensive private colleges.

It was also possible to gain some sense of the educational objectives, apart from its general and frequently proclaimed commitment to quality, that William and Mary had for some years sought to achieve. The new programs that came into being during the 1980s at both the graduate and undergraduate level emphasized interdisciplinary approaches that could integrate study across a variety of traditional academic disciplines. William and Mary continued, however, to staff such programs with faculty who were members of existing academic departments. President Verkuil also put great emphasis in many of his public statements on the need to achieve greater diversity in the student body, especially a stronger representation of minority groups. Such efforts, building on those of his two immediate predecessors, produced an increase in the number of minority students, who now constituted about 15 percent of total enrollment. Parallel attempts to recruit minority faculty proved more difficult. However, a combination of a growing number of faculty retirements and the establishment of several new endowed chairs, coming at a time when the number of academic openings nationally remained unexpectedly small, enabled the College to strengthen its faculty.

Many of the developments that took place during the late 1980s, including physical improvements, institution of new academic programs, and an increase in low faculty salary scales, came in no small part as a result of generally expanding state support for Virginia public colleges and universities. Unfortunately, as the decade of the 1990s opened, a deepening economic recession brought a sharp fall in tax revenues. Some five months into the 1990–91 fiscal year, the commonwealth mandated a budget reduction in both salaries and operating funds; and the crisis showed no signs of abating in the two succeeding fiscal years. The College quickly found itself facing the kind of severe financial problems that had typically characterized much of its history, both ancient and modern. It weathered the immediate crisis, although not without shortages in staffing, delayed maintenance of buildings and grounds, a severe drop in funds for library acquisitions, and the loss of much of the ground recently gained in bringing faculty salaries to a level comparable to that of similar institutions across the nation.

There was, however, an even more far-reaching effect of the shortfall in state funding. It became apparent that, even without a recession, state funds were likely in the future to constitute an increasingly smaller percentage of total College revenues. For some years appropriations from the state had been providing a declining percentage of overall revenue, falling from about 50 percent of the total earlier in the decade of the 1980s to a little less than 40 percent by the end. Some even spoke of redefining the College as “state assisted” rather than as a fully public institution. Obviously, to maintain, let alone improve, the quality of its educational programs, the College would have to increase even further the growing amount of private support that it was already receiving. In common with many other American colleges and universities, tuition increases also came with some frequency.

With plans for the 1993 tercentenary observance moving closer to completion, President Verkuil, who had been a prime mover in formulating those plans, took the College community by surprise in announcing on September 25, 1991, that he would leave William and Mary early in the next year to accept an appointment as president and chief executive officer of the American Automobile Association. Melvyn D. Schiavelli, who had served as provost since the beginning of Verkuil’s second year in the presidency and had taken a central part in the management of the recent budget crisis, became acting president at the beginning of 1992. He also emerged as one of five finalists for the presidency. Another candidate who came from within the College was Timothy J. Sullivan, an alumnus from the class of 1966. He had returned after study at Harvard Law School and military service in Vietnam to join the faculty of the Marshall-Wythe School of Law in 1972, becoming its dean in 1985. Ultimately, the search narrowed to the two local candidates, and at its April 1992 meeting, the Board of Visitors made its decision in favor of Dean Sullivan.

Assuming office on June 1, 1992, the new president in some part found his immediate agenda set for him by the necessity of completing final arrangements for, and carrying through, the observance of the tercentenary. Nor had the budget crisis entirely abated, although voter approval of a bond issue for educational needs in the fall of 1992 made it possible to proceed with, among other projects, plans for the new science building, the James Blair Hall renovation, and a major addition to the library. In both the tone of his inaugural ceremony on October 16, 1992, and in his formal inaugural address, the new president pledged a strong effort to strengthen a sense of community among all the constituencies of the College from students to faculty, staff, and alumni. Without attempting as yet to outline specific proposals, he also proclaimed his high ambitions for the College in its fourth century.

Then, during the week of February 8, 1993, the tercentenary observance began with a week-long program of conferences, lectures, concerts, and other events. It drew to its climax on February 13, in a much-expanded version of the annual Charter Day convocation at which the Prince of Wales delivered the principal address to a capacity audience in William and Mary Hall. Later in the spring, the Board of Visitors chose the former British prime minister, Lady Margaret Thatcher, as the new chancellor, at the expiration of the term of Chief Justice Burger. By the end of June, the College was able, as well, to announce a successful completion of the Campaign for the Fourth Century. Other tercentenary activities were to follow in the fall, concluding with a celebratory Homecoming Week from October 18 to 23.

Another major undertaking, in this instance initiated by the faculty of arts and sciences, also came to fruition in the first half of 1993. After two years of careful planning and lengthy discussion, faculty members agreed upon a full-scale revision of the undergraduate liberal arts curriculum, which was scheduled to take effect at the latest for students who would enter in the fall of 1995. Potentially far-reaching in their implications, the new requirements were in some respects innovative, while in others they reaffirmed traditional standards. For example, the plan created a new General Education Requirement. It enlarged the number of introductory courses that all students would be expected to complete but defined that requirement not by specific disciplines or courses but in terms of major areas of study that could be pursued by selecting courses offered within several departments. Those areas of study included not only the conventional one of western civilization but also an area of non-European culture. The new curriculum also sought to provide a seminar with small enrollment for all freshmen and to allow flexibility in the number of credit hours awarded for courses throughout the curriculum. Other innovative features included a stipulation that all students take at least one course in which they participated actively in a performing or creative art. Implementation of the new curriculum would take place under a new provost, Gillian T. Cell, a historian who took office on August 1, 1993. Previously she had served as provost of Lafayette College and before that as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and of the General College at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

As the College prepared to embark upon its fourth century, the enthusiastic spirit of the tercentenary understandably fostered a degree of optimism. Yet, few could fail to recognize that, as always, uncertainties lay ahead. Some, like the poor state of the national economy and the likelihood of continuing erosion of public support for higher education, affected most, if not all, American colleges and universities. Moreover, given a traditional commitment to the broadest possible freedom of inquiry, American institutions of higher learning seemed especially vulnerable at a time when many observers found the nation increasingly locked in a crisis of cultural authority, marked by sharp division over such issues as cultural diversity and fundamental moral values. Another challenge that perhaps seemed more distinctive to William and Mary was its persistent problem of self-definition, of determining what balance it would strike between its status as an undergraduate college and as a small university.

Over the course of the last three decades or so of its third century, the College might well have appeared to resolve that question by moving firmly in the latter direction. Indeed, in his inaugural address, President Sullivan, after conceding that the College had grappled with the issue for a generation, went on to declare emphatically:

Today, for the sake of our common future, I wish to declare the debate closed; the contest concluded. We honor our past by retaining proudly our historic name, but we shall better serve our future if we embrace honestly the incontestable fact that we have become a university.

The president’s statement seemed decisive. After all, there were now in existence four professional schools and a number of advanced degree programs and research centers in the arts and sciences. On the other hand, undergraduates still comprised almost three-quarters of the total enrollment, and the national reputation of the College drew heavily on the quality of its baccalaureate programs. Perhaps whatever tension remained was healthy and mutually reinforcing, so long as resources proved adequate to the pursuit of both goals. And no doubt the College could be expected to go on defining and redefining itself into the fourth century—and beyond.

Certainly, the College completed its third century possessed of strengths that it had never enjoyed during most of its earlier history. Taking the longer view, the most dramatic turning point in the history of William and Mary had come with its entrance into the present century and its full incorporation into the state system of higher education. At almost any time from the burning of the first College building in 1705 to Benjamin Ewell’s heroic effort to keep the College alive in the aftermath of the Civil War, the ultimate question had always been whether William and Mary would survive at all. Time after time it barely managed to do so, even as in its better years it established traditions that the modern College would embrace. By 1906 survival itself was no longer in doubt. Instead, the central issue became that of the degree of quality and the definition of purpose with which the College would go forward. If William and Mary today seems utterly different from the little institution over which Lyon Tyler first presided, it is the consequence of a process of change and development that has occurred by stages throughout the twentieth century. Now, as the College enters its fourth century, a new chapter in its history begins.