Young to retire from UCLA

Young to retire from UCLA

Resignation tendered for ’97 after 27 years as chancellor

By Phillip Carter

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Weighing a future fraught with political peril against his
27-year stretch as chancellor, Charles Young announced Wednesday
that he planned to retire and turn over UCLA’s reins to a successor
in June of 1997.

Young, who took over UCLA in 1968 during the height of the
Vietnam War, announced his intentions in an interview yesterday
with The Bruin. Citing mostly personal reasons, Young said the time
for him to leave had come.

"As chancellor of UCLA for the past 27 years, and as a faculty
member and administrator for nine years before that, I have
invested my heart and soul in this university," Young said.
"Nineteen ninety-seven is a good time for me, my family and the
university to make a change."

Though Young wouldn’t speak to it personally, at least one
member of the Board of Regents expressed concern that the debate on
affirmative action might have cost the university its elder
statesman.

"I sincerely hope his departure is not the price UC is paying
for the continuing turmoil over affirmative action," said Lt. Gov.
Gray Davis, a regent by virtue of his office. "I have never met a
university administrator with stronger convictions and the fearless
ability to defend them."

Young refused to comment on how much the affirmative action
debate influenced his decision to leave UCLA.

Regent Ward Connerly, who led the effort to scrap race-based
preferences, could not be reached for comment. But sources close to
the Board of Regents said that Connerly has been seethingly angry
at Young for months, beginning in March with comments published in
the Los Angeles Times where Young and Connerly traded sharp
words.

More recently, the same source said that Connerly blamed Young
for inciting UC President Richard Atkinson to defy Connerly and
Gov. Pete Wilson two weeks ago on affirmative action. Atkinson, who
proposed to delay the end of race and gender-based UC admissions,
was subsequently publicly rebuked by Wilson and several of his
appointees on the board.

Despite this and other controversies, Young will leave a lasting
legacy at UCLA.

Since 1968, the number of students has risen a modest 22
percent. Nevertheless, UCLA as an institution has seen dynamic
change, from the southern branch of the main UC campus in Berkeley,
to a major research university in its own right.

Fiscally, UCLA has exploded from a $170 million budget in 1968
to a nearly $2 billion budget in 1996. Its faculty and staff have
doubled in size to 21,000, and the number of volumes in UCLA’s
12-library system have nearly tripled between 1968 and 1996. In
addition, Young’s signature adorns more than 62 percent of UCLA
diplomas ever issued.

Educational leaders across the country attributed that growth to
Young’s leadership.

"Under his leadership, UCLA has emerged as a major university –
it’s a huge accomplishment to have done what he’s done," said
Patrick Callan, director of the California Higher Education Policy
Center. "It isn’t unusual for someone to leave a job like that
after having put in as much time as he has and accomplished that
much."

Other education figures expressed awe at both Young’s
accomplishments and extraordinarily long tenure at UCLA.

"I’m still saddened by all this, because this man was a giant
among the giants," said Robert Atwell, president of the Washington,
D.C.-based American Council on Education. "Chuck (Young) is simply
looked up to by many of us in this business, not just as a role
model but as someone who made a difference in higher
education."

Young’s colleagues in California painted a similar picture of
the 64-year-old chancellor, who had become the elder statesman of
California college executives.

"Chuck Young is a friend, a mentor, a person whom I deeply
respect and admire," UC Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien said.
"He and his wife Sue have dedicated most of their professional
lives to the service of the University of California and we will
forever be in their debt."

Tien’s comments resonated with Atkinson, who added he was
"disappointed" by Young’s decision, but understood Young and his
wife’s desire to "move on to the next chapter of their lives."

"UCLA today is the epitome of a thriving, modern research
university, thanks in large measure to the indefatigable efforts of
Chancellor Young," Atkinson said.

Even members of the Board of Regents, with whom Young has
enjoyed a contentious relationship, expressed grudging admiration
for the irascible chancellor.

"Chuck (Young) has been a preeminent educational leader of the
world, and has served his (27) years so well that having served for
that period of time, it is understandable that he would want to
relinquish the chancellorship," said Regent William Bagley, who was
a state legislator at the time Young first came to head UCLA.

Though the political turmoil of affirmative action has
surrounded Young and the regents for nearly a year, one of the more
influential regents dismissed the idea that affirmative action was
responsible for Young’s retirement.

"He’s had a long and very distinguished career and maybe he’s
decided to hang it up," said Regent Roy Brophy, who headed the
search for a new UC president that ultimately picked Atkinson.
"Knowing Chuck, he wouldn’t retire over (affirmative action) – I
feel certain in my own mind it’s not because of that."

Nonetheless, the cloud of affirmative action and the political
storms it has caused dampened hopes for an easy search for Young’s
successor.

Callan, whose San Jose-based think-tank studies the UC system on
a continual basis, said that the affirmative action issue was
symbolic in many ways of deeper problems in the UC system.

"The ways in which the UC president and chancellors get caught
in these crossfires over governance issues in the university make
the job more difficult," he said.

More saddening, according to Callan, the problems of the regents
may come to overshadow Young’s accomplishments at UCLA.

"I don’t foresee any shortage of people who would like to be the
chancellor of UCLA," Callan speculated. "But the regents themselves
are not an asset to the university in recruiting top people – they
as a board don’t seem to be very effective in almost anything they
do."

Another educational leader put it differently, saying that
Young’s shoes will be hard to fill no matter what Board of Regents
is involved.

"I have a rule of thumb in this business, and it applies to
UCLA: you should never follow a winner," advised Atwell, a longtime
friend of Young who leads the 1,600-member American Council on
Education.

"You never want to follow a John Wooden, and you never want to
follow a Chuck Young – it’s much easier to follow losing people in
losing situations."

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