Word: ponderings
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Much of the credit, by all accounts, is due Henry Ponder, who took over as president in July 1984. At the time, Fisk was $4.1 million in debt, the price of bringing the dog-eared facilities back to minimum standards was put at $7 million, the creditors were beginning to feel litigious and the only remaining path appeared to be prayer. As Ponder recalls, "The morale was just in the pits, just in the pits...
...Ponder, brought up in a family of 14 children on an Oklahoma farm, was introduced to education in the 1930s in a segregated country school in which two teachers taught eight grades. Fifty years later, he had a doctorate in economics from Ohio State University under his belt and was a director of the United Negro College Fund. Riding high in academic circles as the man who had built the endowment of South Carolina's Benedict College from an inconsequential sum to $20 million, Ponder came to tackle Fisk. He found a faculty that deserved medals for even bothering...
...Ponder says he came to the task with a lot on his mind and not enough time to make a list of priorities. Like Mitchell, he was given comfort by the school's standing. "Academically, this institution had never been in trouble. If you have credibility, the credentials, you can get the money." Looking at the ledgers, he found that his predecessors had been covering shortfalls by reaching into the endowment, reducing it from a high of $14 million in 1968 down to the present $3 million. "There was no incentive to stop spending...
Activists like Menon believe that their cause has succeeded in forcing Dartmouth students to ponder political issues, but leftists still believe that the issues are unimportant to most students. "The majority of students have been apathetic, and the majority of students still are," says Michael R. Williams, a member of the Dartmouth Community for Divestment and former president of the Gay Student's Association...
...taken for granted and then forgotten: it must be an integral part of our democracy which is based on natural rights. Because war entails such grave actions, failing to consider the reasons for it and responding only to national directives is inhuman. If an individual doesn't ponder his reasons to go to war he loses something of his self...