The Regents' Choice

Lorene Rogers, a biochemist and former professor of nutrition, is an unlikely center of campus controversy. Yet last week Rogers--quiet, petite and slender at 61--was indeed the focus of protest at the University of Texas at Austin, as many of the faculty and students demanded her resignation. They did not particularly object to her academic qualifications or her performance as an educator; after all, she has been on campus for 26 years, including stints as associate graduate dean and vice president. Rather, the campus anger was directed at the board of regents, which had ignored the candidates offered by a student-faculty committee and appointed Rogers president by a 5-to-3 vote.

Professor Rogers, a widow, had been interim president ever since the regents last fall abruptly fired Stephen Spurr, a former graduate dean at the University of Michigan (TIME, Oct. 28). But few on the 42,000-student Austin campus thought she would take over the job permanently. In fact, when the regents started searching for a new president, they agreed to work with a twelve-member student-faculty search committee. The committee screened 300 candidates and finally came up with five finalists; it specifically rejected Professor Rogers on four separate votes. Nevertheless, soon after the start of classes this fall, the regents in a breakfast meeting rubber-stamped the candidate of their own selection committee--and named Rogers to the job.

After the appointment, 700 of Austin's 1,700 faculty members attended an emergency meeting; they overwhelmingly approved a motion asking Lorene Rogers to resign and protesting that a person "found wanting" by the student-faculty committee "should not be thrust upon it." The Austin chapter of the American Association of University Professors called the appointment "a profoundly ill-considered, arbitrary and ugly action." The faculty senate voted not to participate in any university council meetings while Rogers is in office.

Students demonstrated their anger by staging a brief boycott of classes. Some 6,000 attended a protest rally sponsored by an organization called Students Helping Academic Freedom at Texas (SHAFT), chanting "Quit." "Quit."

Officers' Mess. Some of the opposition to Rogers is based on dissatisfaction with the way she ran the university last year. Critics charge that she acted too slowly in making needed appointments and did not communicate with the faculty. (Rogers can communicate well, however, when she wants to. Last year while visiting the Air Force Academy as a member of a review committee, she was denied the hospitality of the officers' mess at dinner because of her sex. She promptly stamped off campus rather than eat with the officers' wives.) But the overriding issue, in the view of the Daily Texan, the student paper, was not Rogers' qualifications but the high-handedness of the regents and the "need for academic freedom" on campus.

Rogers has stubbornly refused to resign and has urged students and faculty to accept the regents' decision. Says she: "If I thought that no one wanted me here I certainly wouldn't be bucking this thing." The prognosis: Rogers will stay on and, as one faculty member says, "won't rock the boat." The problem, he concludes, is that "the system doesn't want a strong president. The regents will eat Lorene for breakfast."

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