Final presidential candidates visit campus;
decision from Board of Trustees expected soon
Daniel Fleishman
NEWS EDITOR
A 12-person search commit
tee recently winnowed down the
pool of potential presidents from
eight to two. Remaining are a suc
cessful businessman with roots in
education, and a successful edu
cator with considerable experi
ence in finance.
Each candidate visited cam
Historian John Hope Franklin reads from his
forthcoming autobiography
Casey Creel
ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR
Historian, activist, spokes
person, scholar, inspirer of jus
tice.
These are the immediate
words to describe John Hope
Franklin, a man who has af
fected the world in countless
ways and who spoke in Dana
Auditorium Wed., March 6.
The eighty-seven-year-old
Franklin, professor of history at
Duke and recipient of honorary
degrees from more than one
hundred colleges and universi
ties, had been courted by the
Guilford history department to
speak here for the last two years,
and last year agreed to read from
his upcoming autobiography,
The Vintage Years.
"We were surprised he ac
cepted," said Sarah Malino, chair
of the history department. "He's
elderly and incredibly distin
guished; it was a very big mo
ment for Guilford."
Franklin read from his au
tobiography highlights between
infancy and his departure for
Harvard graduate school. Begin
ning with an anecdote of his
mother's denial of a leave of ab
sence to give birth to him, and
ending by saying that a SSOO
loan sent him to Harvard,
Franklin illustrated story after
story the challenges in his jour
ney through youth.
The centerpiece of the
evening was the story of the Dec.
'33 mob castration and lynching
in Nashville of a black teenager
who had been acquitted of rape
because of insubstantial evi
dence.
"It could happen to any of
y^^THE
GUILFORDIAN
Greensboro, NC March 22, 2002
pus this week so the college could
learn about him and, alternately,
so each candidate could deter
mine if Guilford is a good fit for
him. Regardless of whether one
candidate is ultimately offered the
job, he could decline it, in which
case the search would resume.
The search committee will
read and summarize the evalua
tion forms that were handed out
to all who attended the candi
us," Franklin said of the realiza
tion of students at Fisk Univer
sity in Nashville, where he was
an undergraduate student at the
time.
He and fellow student lead
ers considered a street demon
stration, but decided instead to
petition President Roosevelt to
attend to the issue during the
president's visit to the school in
1934. The students were asked
to refrain, and Franklin agreed
when Fisk's president offered
him the chance to meet
Roosevelt separately in Georgia.
Franklin arrived for the
meeting, but the president never
showed; he had been lied to, and
the meeting was never arranged.
Throughout the speech he
repeatedly emphasized the im
portance of "education as a gate
way to change," both in his own
experience and in having a na
tion that fulfills the potential of
democracy.
"I have never worked in an
environment more conducive to
learning, more beneficial to the
development of self confidence,"
he said regarding his formative
studies at Booker T. Washington
School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He
shared the challenge of his most
nurturing teacher and principal,
Mr. Woods: "Can't you do better?
I believe that you can."
This no-nonsense, practical
but optimistic approach to life
probably goes far to explain
Franklin's success in changing
the world. He is a person who
sees every situation, from race
riots in Tulsa, to the lack of ex
tensive black history, to the
apartheid in South Africa, and
asks, Can't we do better? His
life and body of work are an as
surance we can.
dates' on-campus presentations.
That summarized input of faculty,
staff, and students will be deliv
ered to the Board of Trustees,
which will convene on Sat., March
23.
Ellen Hamrich, who chairs
the search committee and reads
all evaluations personally, said
that a final decision might come
from the Board of Trustees as
early as Saturday. She stressed,
' : J(B^
SX Sj ~ AakttX. - ;
• idfe •. .iH §SF^
■■■ LIIL
HP : f
jfl |L jl
Franklin read from his autobiography in Dana Auditorium March 6th.
Please
Recycle
This
Paper
however, that an official public an
nouncement might not come for
a few weeks, giving the adminis
tration time to negotiate a contract
and clear up all other minutiae
surrounding the induction of a
new college president.
The Candidates
Andy Sharpless, the first can
didate, most recently worked for
See Candidates, p. 3