RICHARD
DYER:
This tape recorded history of Columbia Junior College is a continuation of a
series of interviews with the administrators who had an influential part in the
development of Columbia Junior College. These interviews are being conducted by
Richard L. Dyer. This interview is with Dr. J. Kenneth Roland.
TAPE SPLICED HERE
DYER: Dr. Roland, what was
your position in Columbia and in the Yosemite Junior College District during
the formative years?
DR.
ROLAND:
Well, actually I was the dean of instruction at Modesto Junior College when the
first college program was offered in Tuolumne County as an off-campus center
from Modesto Junior College adult division. With the formation of the new
district, Dr. Garcia was appointed superintendent and I was named as assistant
superintendent and business manager in 1965. So from the time that the first
thought of putting a college in Tuolumne County, then, I was the district
business manager. I held that position until 1967 when I became superintendent.
DYER: Were you involved in
setting up some of the courses at Sonora High School before the (INTERRUPTED)
DR.
ROLAND:
I was only directly involved because at the time the dean of instruction was
primarily responsible for the classes during the daytime, and only seemed
directly concerned with the evening offerings. So that was handled through the
adult division and Doctor Rhodes and Mr. Haskins set the program up. I worked
with them on it but they carried most of the responsibility. Bill Haskins did a
lot of the legwork up here in developing these first classes.
DYER: Now when did the
first classes start? Do you remember the-
DR.
ROLAND:
It was in the early 1960s.
DYER: Now this was an
extension, then, of the Modesto Junior College program.
DR.
ROLAND:
Right. And prior to the development of the new district.
DYER: Then when did they
conceive of a separate campus?
DR.
ROLAND:
This came out of a famous administrator-trustee retreat at Strawberry, the
first fall after the new district was formed. And we had made a population
study and had a great big pin-map showing the residence of all the students
enrolled in the Modesto Junior College, and the residence and the location of
the college-age students in the district. We showed this to the new trustees –
it was a very graphic presentation of the fact that there is a cluster of
student population in Tuolumne County, and several clusters of population in
the Valley area. And out of that weekend retreat the trustees were convinced
that at some time in the future, it would be necessary to have a campus in
Tuolumne County. We studied the situation and it appeared that there were
enough high school graduates that we could expect to have enrollment of 2 or 3
hundred as plans were started. Sometime prior to that meeting, one of the staff
of the science department at Modesto had discovered that on the Bureau of Land
Management maps there was a small parcel of land off of Sawmill Flat, and we
applied for that and received a patent to it. And then when we started looking
for a site, for the idea of developing the college, we discovered another
parcel of Bureau of Land Management land just a little to the north of the
parcel that we already owned, and it had a spot on it called the San Diego
Reservoir. And that, after considerable thought, appeared to be a good
location.
DYER: Was Don Brady, as a
trustee at the time, influential in convincing the other trustees that this was
a good site for the –
DR.
ROLAND:
I’ll tell you, it was an interesting experience. Don Brady had an old
International station wagon, which he drove like an off-the-road vehicle. And
he literally drove us all over the top of this mountain, through the brush. It
was one of the wildest rides I’ve ever had! To get us in here
and show us some of the features of this site.
DYER: Well, I understand
it was rather primitive at that time. Were most people convinced that this was
an ideal location for the college?
DR.
ROLAND:
That first winter, or early fall, we had a trustee’s – administrator’s picnic
on the edge of the reservoir over here. And that was the first time that they
had seen it. And I think that was enough to convince most of them that this was
the spot. Of course, we came in the old road, the old PG&E road, and it was
sort of a harrowing experience over the rocks and the bumps!
DR.
ROLAND:
And we met Mr. Davis, and his little tumbledown building that he lived in here
where the learning center is now.
DYER: He lived here near
the lake at the time.
DR.
ROLAND:
He had a little house right at the top, just about where we’re sitting now. And
there was another little house with a stone fireplace closer to the lake, just
about opposite where the food service is now. And that was a squatter’s house
that was eventually removed. So after this first meeting then, it was decided
that there would be need for a campus at the same time an analysis of
long-range projections in enrollment – it was pretty obvious that the Modesto
campus, which was already getting crowded, could not hope to cover, to
accommodate the increased enrollment, which we could see coming down the road.
And so a determination was made that there was only one way we were going to
build a college here to bring Modesto, because of many of their buildings built
before the Field Act of 1940 had already been condemned. And ??? provide additional
facilities that were needed to take care of expected enrollment. We’d
either have to have a bond issue or some other way of raising money. See, this
was before the Junior College Construction Act. So we looked at the situation
and we realized that of course it would be nice if we had been able to have a
bond issue and build everything and complete it in one operation, but we didn’t
expect needing it. And the enrollment growth was a gradual, ongoing thing.
There was a need to get started here, but not to have the full-blown college to
accommodate 2,500 students. Looking at interest rates – remember bond interest
rates are right at the maximum – it would take a 25 or 30-year bond issue at
5%, and it would cost you twice as much to pay off as you could borrow. But we
estimated that it would take 18 to 20 millions of dollars at that time to do
what we needed to do. So to take the 20 millions of dollars due on a bond
issue, we’d have to raise almost a million dollars a year in taxes to pay it
off. If we went for an override tax, and raised a
little bit more instead of 20 cents or 25 cents raise 30 cents, we figured it
out, over 10 years that we could build the facilities we need and not have to
borrow any money.
DYER: Now, was it easy to
convince people in the counties that the override was better than the bond?
DR.
ROLAND:
I think the thing that really convinced them was that we could prove to them
that we were going to save them 18 to 20 million dollars to do the same job.
And that the tax rate would only be 5 or 6 cents more than an override, and in 10 years it’d be paid off and they wouldn’t
owe a penny. And they’d be signing up for a 25 cent tax rate for the next 25 or
30 years if they went for the bond issue. And the people saw that and they went
for it.
DYER: Well were the people
in the counties committed to the second junior college at the time?
DR.
ROLAND:
The people had – Modesto Junior College had an outstanding reputation and
tremendous amount of goodwill, both in Tuolumne County and Stanislaus County
and the area we serve. The people in the Valley – they weren’t even
committed. They realized enrollment was growing, and that they’d have to have
additional centers. See, the people in Modesto had gone through the business of
having to start a second high school and a third high school – it wasn’t hard
to convince them that eventually they’d have to start a second college and a
third college. It just made light. And when the new district was formed,
because of the fact that the people in Stanislaus County had not been getting
any state equalization, ???
out of district. But they were paying the full tariff.
They actually got a reduction in tax rate when they joined up with the new
district. Because the state was picking up a bigger share of
the cost that way. Now, Tuolumne County didn’t get that kind of a break
because of the relative assessed valuation in comparison to the number of
students involved. So that there was a very, a very strong positive attitude,
generally in the entire district, at all of the meetings that we had – and we
had meetings in every community, we’d go out to the community and call meetings
and try to meet with everybody. Only one person in every meeting that I went to
– one person ever raised an objection to the override tax.
DYER: What was the result
of the override tax? It passed by a comfortable margin?
DR.
ROLAND:
It passed by a very comfortable margin. It passed very well in Tuolumne County,
and I’ll tell you, I think one of the strongest factors we had, and one of our
best spokesmen in all the Tuolumne groups was Phil Swernge.
Phil had been very popular as a student in high school, became student body
president at Modesto Junior College – Phil is a big, tall, good-looking guy
with a great personality, and we’d go out to meet with PTA groups or club
groups and administrators, we’d always take Phil along and let him tell the
story, and you know, he’d tell it from the students’ point of view, and it was
a very pleasant experience. We just had a wonderful time.
DYER: Now, did you go from
service club to service club to try to sell the program?
DR.
ROLAND:
We hit every service club in this whole district. We had teams. We talked to
every group that we could get an invitation to talk to. We raised a fund of
money by taking donations from teachers and interested people, and we put
together information, and we mailed out to every registered voter. We didn’t,
you know, give it a hard sell really, we just said “Here are the facts, this is
what your district needs, this is what the young people and the adults need,
this is how we propose to provide it. Now we need your support to the fullest.”
There was not a single bit of organized opposition, a bit of objection from any
group any source. Nobody said a word against us. The newspapers gave us
tremendous support. The Modesto Bee had, a week before the election, pictures and
front-page headlines and stories every night for five nights. The Union
Democrat in Sonora gave us tremendous support, Turlock paper – every newspaper
in the district gave us their wholehearted support.
DYER: And that was a time
when many districts were turning down these ??? ???.
DR.
ROLAND:
We were lucky to be the only one in the whole state that made it that year. But
this – this was just very positive action, and it was just – Normally when you
have a collection campaign you got someone running against you. Or somebody who
says “Vote NO on Proposition One!” But not a single bit of organized
opposition.
DYER: Now that was – was
that in the spring of 1968?
DR.
ROLAND:
No, that was 1966.
DYER: Oh, ’66.
DR.
ROLAND:
If I remember right.
DYER: And if it was in the
fall, then November election 1966.
DR.
ROLAND:
Then it didn’t go into effect, you see, until ’67.
DYER: Until ’67, right,
the following year.
DYER: Now, at the time did
you envision support from the federal government or from the state?
DR.
ROLAND:
We built into our projections that we would – the fact that we would have 25
percent support across the board for everything, state and federal.
DYER: Did you receive that
much, approximately?
DR.
ROLAND:
Well, because of the fact that we got a very large share of support – state and
federal support – on Columbia because it was a new institution, and we got
federal support on the Forum building at Modesto, as of this point in time,
yes. We’ve had about 25 percent support. But because
of the rules that have been changed over the last, and the space utilization
standards and the fact that the federal program is sort of dwindled out of
money, it doesn’t look as if we’re going to get our 25 percent over the next
few years. But up to this point in time, we have just about hit 25 percent.
DYER: Dr. Roland, were you
involved in the master plan, all the detail that went into the – establishing
the classrooms, ??? the hardware, ???
DR.
ROLAND:
No, see, I was business manger of the district. I was
the financial “expert”. I could project on the basis of new information how
much money would be available each year down the line. I sat in on many of the
planning sessions with the architects and the engineers, first up at Twain
Harte Lodge we had a couple of weekend sessions
and then several sessions at Modesto. But I didn’t really get down to the
nitty-gritty of it, laying out buildings and plans and such.
DYER: What were the major
problems that you had in your part of the development of the campus itself?
DR.
ROLAND:
For a example, the Bureau of
Land Management was anxious to give us the San Diego Reservoir site. We thought
this was great. But they’re a bureau. And a bureaucracy has to work within its
rules and regulations. And so previous to our approaching them, the California
Beaches and Parks had approached them to take this over and add it to Columbia
State Park. And so they had had Washington declare this site for Beaches and
Parks classification. So then the state could have applied for it and had it,
but we came along and we wanted to use it for an educational purpose. So they
had to go back all the way through channels to Washington, and have the
classification changed from Beaches and Parks to an educational potential.
DYER: Educational
potential takes priority?
DR.
ROLAND:
Well, no, they just – it probably does take priority, but they could have had
it whatever they asked for it. But then when they did that they had to have a
series of public hearings all up the dynasty, to see if the people will concur
with this use of public land. And it was – everybody knew we were going to get
the site, but it just was a matter of going through about a year of this red
tape. And so we submitted our application and then after that was approved, we
couldn’t get the patent until the federal government could get clear of all of
the multiplicity of old mining claims that had been filed against this. And
there were literally dozens of people who had filed mining claims, and the
mining claims were on the records. So they had to go through a legal procedure
to sue these people to get quick-claim deeds to clear the mining claims. And
the squatter’s cabin that I mentioned by the lake, well, that poor lady bought
that site as a mining claim from her employer, and paid a good price for it.
Then found out that the government could throw her off. And-
DYER: Was it without
compensation?
DR.
ROLAND:
Yeah. Because she was a squatter. So she had – you had
to mine in mining claims in order to make it valid. And they hadn’t mined this
claim since like 1925. So the mining claim was invalid, so what she had been
sold was a worthless piece of paper. Now Mr. Davis had been a permanent
resident here, and he came under another section of the code that says if you
have lived on public land continuously since like, 1927, you have a right to
continue living for the duration of your lifetime, and you have a right to so
many square feet of public land. And so Mr. Davis has a
lifetime equity in a certain amount of space here for his own personal
residence. It does not pass on to his heirs. When he dies, that claim is
eliminated.
DYER: Now since Mr.
Davis’s home is not in the original site, was the transfer –
DR.
ROLAND:
We contracted with Mr. Davis. In return for permitting us to move him, we built
him a new house and garage, and because we took his garden, which was part of
his assigned land, for the playing field, we contracted with him – we have a
signed legal agreement – that in lieu of his garden we will pay him a retainer
fee which will compensate him for his loss of income from his garden. And he’s
been – he’s been very, very good to work with. Poor man, this was his home and
he lived here for so many years, and to be sudden inundated with –
DYER: I think he enjoys it
though.
DR.
ROLAND:
He changed his whole way of life. He’s cornered many of us, and we get the
stories about his plants and the dog and the animals in the golden yard.
DYER: He is a real amateur
horticulturist. Very, very interesting person. Well,
so we had all these difficulties with that, so that’s what delayed things so
long. But we finally got it cleared, we got the patent. Of course, we had
already started the feasibility study. And the ??? of the feasibility study – Feasibility
study was made, and a report was made, and the architectural firm estimated
what it would cost for the sewer and the water and the roads, and I must say
that the estimates made were very, very costly. Many, many times what the
estimates were.
DR.
ROLAND:
Because of construction problems, or-
FOLLOWING SECTION IS LOW QUALITY, MAY CONTAIN ERRORS
DYER:No, because the firm
that made the feasibility studies didn’t give us accurate information. And the
Board hired the same firm to do the engineering for the site work, and they
wanted the engineer for the site work to – things cost so much more than they
had told us they were going to cost. I would say the thing is that their
feasibility study was grossly understated, because when you build a road, or a
thing like the entry road, excavate the parking lots, there’s a tremendous
amount of earth to be moved, with this heavy equipment, and that’s an expensive
process when you have to build your own water system, build your own sewer
system. And these things – you know, you’re economically ???Safeway store, the household goods section
hikes??? These things up, engineer them, you got
specialiazed construction techniques, so it’s a – I
think that most of us tend to underestimate the site and utility preparation.
DR.
ROLAND:
It’s come back to haunt the district many times over.
DYER: That’s true. Returned to haunt the district many times over. In the
development of the west campus, we have a firm of architects and engineers who
have built more community colleges than anyone else in the world. We have I
think 11 or 12 community colleges in the United States and Europe. And they’re
built in all kinds of terrain. And they start right up, so you can on the size
of a campus as you’re planning to develop ???, you just might as well realize that you’re
gonna put about a million dollars into site
preparation and underground utilities, water and sewer and gas and grading and
drainage and things that you’re going to have. And it won’t much ever show but
if you do it right to begin with, then for the next 50
or 100 years you have a pleasant campus and you have minimum problems. So we
tried to skimp on this, and then we have to go back and patch it up because we
tried to do it cheap and dirty. When you try to do it cheap and dirty you wind
up paying more.
DYER: The master plan on
layout of the buildings was done with the architects and with the staff, and it
was done very well. But the architecture is the best part of it. The problems
that we’ve had in most of the ???
???? ???.
Buildings are basically ???
????.
DR.
ROLAND:
Now what was the national award that was won by the architect?
DYER: That was the award
that’s made at the American Association of Junior Colleges, and they pick in
two or three categories. One category was a master plan for an old campus, one
category is any building to fit into an existing campus and – there’s about four different areas. The architecture of the
building on this campus was ???
national ???. It was not the site planning, it was not the engineering,
but it was the architecture. And it was a well-deserved award.
DR.
ROLAND:
What do you remember some of the major innovations in the master plan and even
after the construction started?
DYER: Well, uh, this
learning resources building is kind of unique in that ??? when you start out to build a college, that
grows, as opposed to a college that’s been in temporary facilities and goes out
to build a full-grown college, to all of its size all at one time. You start
small and you build. You can do one of two things for a library. If you can
build a small facility and then outgrow it and convert that into something else
and build another one, and then outgrow that and we did that at Modesto, you
know, we’ve outgrown three libraries, so we decided here that we’d build the
library, or Learning Resources Center is the terminology now, for 2,500
full-time day students. But when you have only 2 or 3 hundred students to start
with you can’t possibly use all that space. So we put other things in it. We
put offices in it and we put the math and the reading and the speech room and
the presidents’ office and a lot of other things here. Now, all of these
petitions except one master petition are expendable. And as the need for the
learning resources center grows, gradually, piece by piece, these other things
will be moved to new facilities and so eventually this will be wound up, it’ll
be all learning resources center for 2,500 students. So we took the decision
that this is as big as the library building’s ever gonna
be. And everything else, everything else is inflexible.
DR.
ROLAND:
Is it realistic to think in terms of limiting enrollment to 2,500 students?
DYER: It’s realistic,
limiting enrollment, if you want to preserve the kind of an institution that
you love and enjoy here. See, I’ve ???
??? here at work in
this institution, 300 students to 6,000 students. Somewhere between 2,500 and
4,000, you lose the students. When Modesto, for example, was 2,500, it was a
pleasant place, you walk across the campus you can call practically everybody
by name. Somehow, when it got between 3,500 and 4,000, all of a sudden I
realized I no longer knew the students. I knew the students that I had daily contact
with, but you know, when you’re taking in 2,000 or 3,000 new students every
September, there’s just no way you can keep track of
all those. And so the flavor of the college changes, it becomes just another
big institution. And your college then becomes a series of smaller, you
identify with your own division or your own department, so you’re almost like a
university with a small group of colleges within it. Now the ag
program at Modesto is a good example, you see. It’s still a small enough unit
that the teachers know all the students, and the students know each other. And
so I say that ideally I would limit a college to 1,500 or 2,000 just for that.
Now, it may be that because of the pressure of enrollment, in time it will have
to, you know – the rate of growth in the area and if they get the new bridge
over to Calaveras, the Calaveras students come here and other students from
other parts of the state come here and ??? enrollments, the pressure may be on to expand. We would hope
that we wouldn’t have that kind of pressure because I think that it’s going to
be altogether a different kind of institution. You get through three thousand
students and it’s going to be just like any other college.
DR.
ROLAND:
Do you remember other major innovations during the formative years?
DYER: Oh, I don’t know so
many major innovations –
DR.
ROLAND:
Plans for dormitories or –
DYER: We went through that
whole dormitory bid, I think we’ve been down that road
sixteen times now.
DR.
ROLAND:
It’s a funny thing, you know, we first started out, we were going to have
dormitories that were the typical college dormitories, you know, with rooms and
a hallway and a house mother and a whole ???. In five or six years the whole scene has
changed. Students come over interested. The last go-round they were looking at
the possibility of putting in an apartment complex.
DYER: Actually the thing
that would be the best for this college would be a private enterprise that did
build apartments in the area that students could rent and keep the college
staff out of the housing business. Because, you know, you form so many services
that are peripheral to education, most student service programs and this sort
of thing. But then as you start having to take care of the mechanics of housing
and feeding, and develop a whole new thrust and staff time that could better be
spent on the educational process, is spent on the housekeeping process.
DR.
ROLAND:
Right, that’s true. Well, Dr. Roland, we’re running out of tape so I do want to
thank you very much for your informative comments about the formative years of
the college. Thank you for being with us.
DYER: Thank you.
END OF TAPE
General
Information:
Interviewer:
Dyer, Richard
Interviewee:
Dr. Roland, J. Kenneth (Assistant superintendant and
business manager at the Yosemite Junior College Ditrict)
Name
of Tape: (a section of) History of Columbia Junior College (CC_hist_4)
When:
Late 60’s early 70’s
Transcriber:
Alden (3/26/08)
Transcriber’s
Note: n/a