The Only Constant Is Change: A Bicentennial Reflection

My relationship with the Trinity College community spans more than five decades, through which I have gained valuable insights into leadership. An academic community requires more care than delivering a simple educational mission. We are a living, breathing collective reflection of the society at large. This I learned as a student, as a president, and as a trustee.

In the turbulent spring of 1968, I was one of a large group of Trinity students who took over the President’s Office to protest the lack of Black students at the College. It was a far different college in those years from what it is today: of the 1,100 students at the time, only a handful were students of color. Several of the Black students formed an organization called the Trinity Association of Negroes (TAN). They demanded change, and we knew they were right.

Trinity was different in other ways, too. Every one of those 1,100 students were men. A large number of them had attended independent high schools, and most of them were from the Northeast Corridor. It seemed almost all of us were from the middle class or above. As a Jewish student who graduated from a public high school in a steel mill town outside of Pittsburgh and who was raised for a time by a Black couple, I definitely felt like an outsider.

Trinity was a conservative place, both politically and educationally. It was rigidly liberal arts oriented. We had strictly enforced general education requirements, with calculus, a foreign language, English, history, philosophy, and a science course mandatory in our first two years. We also had to attend Chapel once a week.

The years from 1964 through 1968 were fraught with social and political conflict in the United States, largely centered around two major events in American history: the Vietnam War and the civil right movement. These were especially moral trials for those of college age. We felt more sympathy with the ideals of the civil rights leaders, especially the stirring rhetoric of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., than many of our elders did. And since the United States still had a universal draft with little chance to claim exemptions based on personal belief, we all faced the daunting possibility that we might be required to fight and perhaps to face death in a war in which we didn’t believe. As a result, we were far more interested in “questioning authority,” as a popular phrase went, than earlier generations of Trinity students. When King was assassinated, many of us felt especially angry and resolved to continue the fight for civil rights.

After two days of a student-led sit-in, under the threat of being evicted from Williams Hall and arrested for trespassing by the police, we left in an orderly fashion, and the administration vaguely promised to improve its efforts in recruiting Black students (as I recall, we were not thinking about other students of color or about women).

Feeling that our demands had been ignored, we decided to barricade the Board of Trustees in their meeting room on the second floor of Downes Memorial. We wanted them to invite us in to discuss our demands; they decided—not surprisingly—against that. I was sitting on the steps with my peers when Ted Lockwood, who had been elected president but had not yet taken office, asked to leave. He had broken his leg skiing and needed to fly home. After some discussion, we agreed. Shortly thereafter, we also left, our demands unheard.

The board was so angry that its members threatened not to allow the graduation of the protesters they could identify as seniors. You can imagine how upset we were about that. They eventually backed away from that threat, and we all graduated on a rainy day in early June.

Fast forward 50 years to 2018. Having just retired from the presidency of the University of Hartford, I was invited to join Trinity’s Board of Trustees. Yes, I was now (figuratively speaking) inside the room I had not been allowed to enter as a student, and I had just retired (again, figuratively speaking) from the office—albeit at a different institution—that I had protested a half century earlier.

Imagine my surprise, then, when in 2020 the Umoja Coalition, a group of Black student organizations, submitted a list of demands to the College leadership and the Board of Trustees. The then-recent killing of George Floyd and similar incidents had sparked national outrage and protests. Although the Umoja Coalition’s demands were different from ours in 1968, they struck a similar tone: the students wanted change, and they wanted it now. Without knowing many specifics, I prepared myself to convince my colleagues to respond sensitively to their demands. To my surprise and delight, I didn’t have to. President Joanne Berger-Sweeney led the discussion adroitly, and to a person my colleagues talked about how, as a board, we needed to lead the change. I volunteered to be among those drafting a response to the demands, an educational experience I found enlightening and fulfilling. I knew then that Trinity was changing for the better.

During the half century between my two experiences with student demands about race at the College, the world has changed dramatically—and so has Trinity! Women make up more than 50 percent of the student population, American students of color constitute more than 20 percent, and international students make up 13 percent. The College has shown a commitment to students of all sexual orientations and gender identities. The board’s makeup also has changed, and while we recognize the need to change even more, we see in ourselves a reflection of who and what the College is now.

Trinity’s curriculum also has changed while remaining devoted to the liberal arts. Myriad majors that we never would have dreamed of in my years as a student are among the most popular at the College today, including neuroscience, environmental science, and international studies: African studies. And the faculty is much more diverse. In 1968, the College had one female tenured faculty member; today women make up almost half the faculty, and the number of faculty of color is growing.

In our Bicentennial year, I am not only looking backward but also thinking about how thoroughly the College will change in the next 50 years. Certainly, the student body will continue to reflect the ever-evolving makeup of the country and of the world.

The curriculum will continue to change. I fervently hope it will remain centered on the liberal arts, yet I recognize that what defines the liberal arts may change, too. Some of the opportunities that Trinity students have to blend the liberal arts into real-world experiences, such as exploring entrepreneurship, pursuing internships in a wide variety of fields, and studying abroad, will expand.

Indeed, as science and technology improve exponentially, one of Trinity’s lasting traditions—studying on its beautiful campus, with architecture that has inspired so many of us over the years—may change dramatically. Within 50 years, it is possible, perhaps even likely, that Trinity may have campuses on other continents, and students may well become increasingly international. Population growth and increased educational systems worldwide may alter the nature of the student body in ways we cannot even imagine.

What I hope will never change is the close connection Trinity students have with the faculty. My relationships with professors (Paul Smith, Robert Foulke, George Cooper, and John Dando, especially) helped to define a liberal arts education for me and, far above and beyond that, helped to shape me intellectually and personally, and they remain an important part of how I define myself.

How, then, will future presidents, future faculty members, and future boards respond to the demands of future students? It is hard to predict, but I can say this: I hope they will remain open to new ideas while treasuring the values and ideals of a liberal arts education. I hope they will think boldly about how to ready young people for an ever-changing world. And I hope they will be prepared for protests and disagreements with students who will challenge the status quo, who will demand change, and who, from time to time, may take over their offices or board rooms to demand change and to allow new ideas to be heard.