Word: dillingham
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Good Product." The college's decision to explore every governmental source of money was taken at the urging of its horseback-riding president, Howard Irving Dillingham, 60. A Syracuse Ph.D. in education, Dillingham, although a Quaker, was headmaster of Georgia's Riverside Military Academy ("Though Quakers are pacifistic, I am not") when Ithaca summoned him back to New York in 1951, made him president in 1957. When he arrived, Ithaca had no accreditation and many of its students were Cornell flunk-outs who, insists one businessman, stuck around town "to enjoy the drinking life...
...Dillingham pared many elective courses to concentrate his staff to an unusual degree on interdisciplinary general studies, which attracted national notice. He raised tuition, upgraded faculty salaries (from a miserable median $3,900 in 1953, they now stand at $10,000). Then, on a summer day in 1959, Dillingham rode up South Hill, looked out over Cayuga Lake and instantly decided: "We will build our campus on the hill...
...million worth of 30-year tax-free bonds for music, athletic, library, science, fine arts and other administration buildings. All will be paid off, at the rate of $1,377,000 a year, from student dormitory fees and tuition, which total $2,800 per student. Modern buildings, insists Dillingham, help pay for themselves in lower maintenance costs: "If an act of God suddenly set one of those ivy-covered buildings down on our site, we would have it removed because we couldn't afford to operate...
...Unmitigated Blessing." Did Government money bring Government control? "With these two agencies it doesn't distort our picture one damn bit," says Dillingham. "We're just as free as we ever were. It's been a happy partnership." Adds College Secretary Ben Light: "The first time we went to present an application we took our lawyer with us. Since then he's stayed home." Says Architect Robert B. Tallman: "They check the engineering and the financing details, but I can't think of any major engineering or architectural feature they've suggested." Insists English...
That blessing has even inspired mighty Cornell to take notice of little Ithaca. "Dillingham's running a doggone tight little ship over there," says a top Cornell administrator. "Their aggressiveness makes us look a little foolish," concedes another...