There aren’t very many organizational charts floating around the archives. For decades the place was so small no one could have possibly needed one, then after it started to get complicated I guess no one wanted to write anything down. So I was instantly alert when I saw one in an old “Policies” folder. There’s a date on it but I would have known when it was made even if there weren’t:
This was clearly made in the aftermath of the Masterson Crisis, when things were in a general state of confusion. It’s a clear statement by the Board of who is in charge of campus: Acting President historian Frank Vandiver and Chancellor Carey Croneis, the former Provost and founder of the Geology Department. What they replaced was very interesting. After President Pitzer resigned in the summer of 1968, Rice was managed by a committee of three faculty members. The head of this committee was Bill Gordon, then the Dean of Science and Engineering, and the others were Bill Topazio, Dean of Humanities, and Croneis. Gordon played a prominent role in the faculty rebellion against Masterson and so would not be allowed to continue. Cronies was a Masterson loyalist, as was Vandiver. I suspect Topazio just wanted out. And I don’t blame him.
Bonus:
Garside explained it to his Baker freshman group that fall as punishment meted out to the deans. Probably viewed as failing to have “a firm hand on the tiller”, rumored to be a reason for ignoring the input provided by faculty and students.
That’s essentially correct, although it’s a always a bit more complicated. And the punishment was meted out surprisingly far down the chain to individual faculty members as well.
Really sorry that I missed your talk on Masterson but I found out about it too late to attend. My “view” of this period was largely formed by Charles, a handful of upperclassmen, and what I read in the Thresher and The Houston Post. It was especially interesting to me because I had sat at a table with Bill Gordon and Warren Skaaren at a dinner for National Merit finalists in the Grand Hall not long before the incident occurred.
Interesting that Architecture and Music were under the Chancellor, along with ROTC and the Alumni Association. Of course, while there was a Shepherd School of Music it was mostly in name only and it was a service organization to provide music classes and ensembles to non-music majors. Music majors wouldn’t arrive until 1975. What exactly did the Chancellor do, and why did that need to be distinct from the President?
It kept all three deans from having a reason to be in the same room. 😀
I see you’ve been to Kay’s recently. Sad to see it go. I’ve heard that at some point in the 90s it quit being a regular hangout for Rice students, probably because the Ginger Man and other Rice Village bars were more convenient to campus.
Melissa,
My family had an unusual relationship with Frank Vandiver:
He was at North Texas when my wife attended there; he was at Rice after I had slipped through the Institute, he was at A&M for my son, daughter, and son-in-law.
I doubt that he knew any of us, certainly NOT me.
That’s really amazing! I met him after he retired from A&M. I used to drive up to College Station and talk to him up there.
While at Rice, Vandiver had a trumped-up aragument with another teacher in the History Department, hoping to stir up the Insstitute’s inmates. I have forgotten that teacher’s name but he favored the French Revolution. And he claimed that Vanviver only wrote about well-knwon people and events, when the opposite was actually the case.
Rice has always been somewhat weird.
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