Mentors
Gus Gusler reflects on his experiences with Chancellor Caldwell and shares the advice former Student Body President Cathy Sterling (1970-1971) passed along to him before his first liaison meeting.
Interview on 2012-07-24 00:00:00 -0400
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Chancellor Caldwell had the biggest impact on me of anybody.
00:00:04.782
I worshipped the ground the man walked on. He was an amazing person,
00:00:09.166
probably one of the most amazing people I've ever met.
00:00:11.258
But there were some other professors there. Joe Mastro, who passed away a few years ago,
00:00:16.266
I stayed in contact with for years, who taught Soviet bloc foreign policy
00:00:22.264
at 3:00 on a Friday afternoon and the class would be packed.
00:00:26.150
No one would miss a class, and no one goes to class on a Friday afternoon.
00:00:29.356
He was amazing. He helped get me thinking about politics and stuff.
00:00:38.434
But Caldwell was the main [one].
00:00:43.830
We were constantly at each other's throats publicly
00:00:50.717
in meetings and stuff, completely disagreeing on an awful lot of stuff,
00:00:55.320
and it was very high energy disagreement,
00:01:01.430
and then that night I'd go have dinner with him at his house.
00:01:05.952
He was just a great man. We respected each other greatly but we would fight like cats and dogs the entire time.
00:01:12.282
I'll never forget-. I can't remember what the-.
00:01:17.303
The chancellor, once a month, has a thing where the heads of the faculty senate and the student body leaders
00:01:23.324
and different people come together. I can't remember what it's called,
00:01:26.072
and I'm sure they still have it,
00:01:28.704
but I'll never forget Cathy Sterling told me,
00:01:31.599
she said, "Now that first meeting, what he's going to do when you walk in,"-and it's a big room and there's about forty people there-
00:01:36.421
"He's going to save the chair directly beside him for you to sit in
00:01:40.220
in because he wants to-." He was so intimidating.
00:01:44.322
He was such a powerful figure that he wants you right there beside him,
00:01:48.067
and [Cathy said], "Don't do it.
00:01:51.552
Go sit at the other end of the table."
00:01:53.503
So that first meeting I walked in and I got there just before it started
00:01:58.357
and sure enough I walked in and there's a seat right beside him,
00:02:01.875
and the chancellor says, "Gus, come up here and sit beside me," and I went,
00:02:05.357
"No thank you, Chancellor," and I went down and pulled up at the end of the table.
00:02:10.061
He just smiled. I think he had an idea. He probably figured I'd already talked to Cathy who'd told me not to sit up there.
00:02:14.542
And we just went at it constantly.
00:02:20.861
I'm not sure whether Cathy liked him as much as I did.
00:02:26.474
I'm not so sure she did, and he was a bit of a-.
00:02:30.754
He was having a real tough time with all the stuff that was going on.
00:02:36.837
He'd never seen students in the street like that,
00:02:42.168
marching and doing stuff on civil rights and anti-war,
00:02:45.516
and we got into huge arguments over advances of the African American community and education,
00:02:51.278
where he thought things were just so much better than they were,
00:02:56.713
and they clearly weren't and I'm sitting there saying this is nowhere near where we need to be.
00:02:59.875
He just couldn't understand why I would get so angry about that, that we were moving in the right direction,
00:03:05.322
but a little too slow for me.
This video is an excerpt from a longer interview. Contact the Special Collections Research Center to request the transcript of the full interview.
