1. Lloyd Elliott, 1918-2013
The magazine—GWmagazine—that alumni get from George Washington
University recently came,
and it had a memorial article on Lloyd Elliott, president of GWU from 1965 to
1988. You can see for yourself at the magazine Web site (click on the cover with Lloyd Elliott's picture), and there is
this additional site memorializing him. He died in January at age
94, which I only learned from this magazine.
As the copy and photos in the print magazine seem to
convey, he may have looked unassuming, but he had a firm enough hand on the GW tiller.
I think one thing he was known for (and criticized for, from some quarters, by
the early 1980s) was working to get GW built up as a little more centralized,
with new infrastructure (and bought old buildings) meaning the big university
was taking up more of its region of D.C. in order to be almost self-enclosed.
GW was spread over a good many blocks, originally in a scattered, motley array
of buildings. It was mainly in the sub-area of D.C. known as Foggy Bottom, and
stretched over to a more downtown-ish area to the east that was a few blocks
away from the White House. Thurston Hall, the big dorm for freshman and
sophomores, was at the campus's far southeast corner; you could jog several blocks to
the south from there and get to the national Mall. [Update: A further southeast building at the time was Mitchell Hall, a dorm building with single-occupancy rooms.]
I see that one picture in the
print magazine shows the Marvin Center
being built, in 1968. Dr. Elliott (he was a Ph.D.) is standing on a balcony of
what was probably Rice Hall, the building housing GW’s administration. The
picture, with him turned toward the camera, faces the southeast. The big
rectangle on the upper-right of the photo is the side of Lisner Auditorium,
which would be across H Street
(an east-west city street)
on which the MC would have a side entrance; Lisner was also, I heard, where the
1960 Nixon–Kennedy debate, shown on TV, was held. The part of the MC
foundation’s hole closest to Dr. Elliott is where the MC theater (and bookstore
underneath it) would be.
The street running, after an
intersection near Lisner Auditorium, over to the left of Dr. Elliott is 21st Street,
a north-south street,
on which the MC would front.
Seeing conservatively-suited Dr.
Elliott and remembering what it was like to do hard, honest work at the MC
makes it seem like the next few notes in subsection 2 are a little too crabby and off-point.
By the way, I never dealt with
Dr. Elliott directly in my work at the MC. For your info, the “pecking order”
of people—showing how low on the totem pole I was—was: Mr. Cotter (“Operations
Manager” of the MC) was directly over me; Mr. (Boris) Bell (“Director” of the
MC) was directly over Mr. Cotter; William P. Smith (in the more-general GWU
administration; he was Vice President for Student Affairs) was over Mr. Bell;
and Lloyd Elliott was over Mr. Smith. I don’t think I ever crossed paths with
Mr. Smith, either, though I did see him in the MC on occasion. Mr. Bell, who
was the highest in the pecking order who had an office in the MC, was very
cordial with me, but I had very little interaction with him.
2. A little more detail on my 1985 resignation
So much for trying to be summary
with the multi-subsection Marvin
Center story. I have
delved more deeply into reviewing my resignation letter and accompanying
papers; and what I said about my resignation in Part 13 was a good
thumbnail sketch. The fuller detail I found in the old papers is definitely
more elucidating.
All things considered, the
letters seem to occasion, in comments below, a bit more modern-day grumbling
(about matters involving some 27-year-old issues) than maybe we would like to
review now. But the situation shows how
seriously we workers took our GWU roles—and moreover, unlike at media
companies, where you (as a technician) often never know how your fussy work
will translate into any effects in the outer world, at GW the wrestling with issues that impacted service to students
usually had some real effects on a number (sometimes large) of people—whether
they knew there was behind-the-scenes difficulties in delivering this service
or not.
First, my resignation letter is
dated September 10, 1985, and I gave a full six weeks’ advance notice. My resignation
letter is a bit high-handed in one regard; but in looking at my original
complaint letter to Security (of apparently August 19), which went to Curtis
Goode (see Part 13), I find good reason for my showing offense at
Security guard missteps in my resignation letter. This even as I look at Mr.
Cotter’s follow-up of August 27, which attempted to mitigate what “ruffled
feathers” that I supposedly caused along with all else (and probably
embarrassed me, not entirely wrongly in retrospect, at the time).
As it happened, there were
several issues I brought up to Mr. Goode, not just the one of locking the doors
too early at end of night. Moreover, Mr. Cotter’s letter to Mr. Goode
acknowledged part of my points—that I had a right to complain—by saying that
the first and fourth of the four things I listed “have been concerns of ours
for quite some time and warrant additional discussion.”
Mr. Cotter’s letter tacitly
acknowledges that I was on the right track in pointing out deficiencies in
Security guards’ behavior when he says, “I am anxious that this discussion take
place as soon as possible[,] as I think we both need to review operating
procedures and understandings developed under previous [GWU? Security
department?] administrations for possible changes and/or new approaches to our
safety and security concerns.”
My letter to Mr. Goode—which,
curiously, I didn’t date—includes such shortcomings I cited as Security guards’
“stopping M.C. students at end of night and asking them for student I.D. cards,
which we have never distributed.” I’m not sure what I meant by this last
phrase, because GW did have ID cards; I still have mine. Maybe my allusion was
to cards the Security guards presumed were meant specifically for being able to
use the Marvin Center, which of course
the MC never instituted (I don’t even know if this was considered).
Another bullet-pointed problem I
list is “giving M.C. managers gratuitous or presumptuous advi[c]e on building
matters that are our business & our business only.”
This latter problem seems
familiar. The Security staff was quite a motley crew. All wore fancy
police-type uniforms—and I can’t remember if some of them carried guns, but these
men were more than “not-much-more-than-costume” Wells Fargo Guard Service–type
guards. But some were stupid and without personality; others had personality
and some intelligence but seemed a bit misplaced as a guard. Some engaged in maybe-questionable
activity, such as selling T-shirts or such on campus as a sideline (I assume not when on duty). I do know that some
were more desirable to have around at the MC (when a dicey event was going on)
than others; the lesser ones were dopes that trundled through the MC, maybe
preempting problems with their official-looking appearance, but likely to be not a whole lot of intelligent use in a
complex situation.
Does this fight, as my saved
letters suggest, seem sad in retrospect? See again the second paragraph of this
subsection.
