A Scandal and a Suicide Leave a College Reeling
Hillsdale president quits amid rumors of affair with his daughter-in-law, who killed herself
By MARTIN VAN DER WERF
Hillsdale, Mich.
For 28 years, Hillsdale College President George C. Roche III urged his conservative supporters to the barricades. The education establishment, he said, along with the liberals in Washington and in the media, would take away his institution's freedom unless donors generously supported his crusade to keep Hillsdale College free of all federal aid.
Last week, Mr. Roche himself hid behind a barricade, one stretched across the driveway of Broadlawn, the Hillsdale president's pillared mansion. Mr. Roche refused all requests for an interview. In the course of just three weeks, the storied career of this icon of traditional values in education had come crashing down amid lurid allegations of an affair with his daughter-in-law, Lissa Roche. She died, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, in the college's arboretum on October 17.
After initially refusing to do so, Mr. Roche resigned last week, saying simply, "I am nearly 65 years of age and have no wish to continue." The trustees accepted the resignation, saying, "the combined pressures of his personal health and private family life make this step necessary."
In a memorandum to students and professors, Robert Blackstock, the provost and acting president, said the college would not reveal more details. "To speak out on these things would not only violate Dr. Roche's right of privacy, but would be reckless in the extreme," Mr. Blackstock wrote. Hillsdale police officers have not closed the investigation into Lissa Roche's death, but Deputy Chief William Whorley said, "There is no evidence to lead us to believe it is anything other than a suicide."
As college officials try to move on, they are making it clear that after almost three decades of being linked to the mercurial Mr. Roche, the most-welcome sight imaginable would be a moving van backing up to Broadlawn.
"That chapter is really closed," Ronald L. Trowbridge, the college's vice-president for external relations, said of the Roche regime, less than an hour after the president's resignation was announced. "Everything goes from here in a positive direction. If more revelations come out about George, we will not speak about it. We will just refer the questions to him, though once he leaves here, I imagine he might be kind of hard to find."
At a campus convocation following the resignation, there was much talk of "sin" and "personal failings." But Hillsdale's leaders reminded students that the actions of one man could not destroy the reputation of the college, which advertises itself as a Christian institution that aims to build character in its students.
"This college will continue to stand for the values of family and faith and freedom that we all hold so dear," said Mr. Blackstock.
In his resignation letter, Mr. Roche wrote: "Together, we have built a wonderful dream. We have proved that integrity, values and courage can triumph in a corrupt world. Hillsdale College is a monument to those beliefs."
It was Mr. Roche himself who staked out those principles for the college. When he took over as president in 1971, Hillsdale College was "hardly worthy of the name," said James G. Juroe, an English professor who had arrived on campus a year earlier. "You can hardly imagine a more weak and pathetic institution."
Mr. Roche, with strong ties to political conservatives forged through his work at a free-market-economics think tank, saw an opportunity to create a niche -- a college that would go against the grain of most higher-education institutions by rejecting federal mandates.
In 1985, Mr. Roche declared that Hillsdale would accept no federal funds, and students would be unable to accept federal loans. That move has allowed the college to shun federal guidelines in such areas as affirmative action and gender equity in athletics. In the verbiage of Hillsdale fund-raising appeals, it has allowed the college "to maintain its independence."
Mr. Roche won for the college the attention of many prominent conservatives, including Malcolm S. Forbes, Jr.; Dan Quayle; William F. Buckley, Jr.; William Bennett, and Cal Thomas, the syndicated columnist. All have spoken at the college or at one of the national seminars it held on such issues as school vouchers and the separation of church and state.
The money has poured in.
Since Mr. Roche took over as president in 1971, Hillsdale's endowment has grown from $4-million to a reported $172-million. The college easily surpassed the $202-million goal of its latest capital fund-raising drive, which ended in 1996.
Hillsdale students universally praise the quality of instruction. The college is not particularly selective, accepting 82 per cent of applicants, but its reputation draws students from more than 40 states.
As the success of the college grew, however, critics say Mr. Roche assumed an almost unchecked power. He centralized authority in his office over all college operations, and brooked no dissent. With the college's growing reputation and wealth, they say, the Board of Trustees catered to his every whim. He traveled around the country, staying in luxurious accommodations, proclaiming the college's virtues. He hired family members to work at the college, including his son, George Roche IV, as a lecturer in history and exercise physiology, and his son's wife, Lissa, who was managing editor of Imprimis, the monthly newsletter of conservative thought that Hillsdale sends to nearly 900,000 subscribers.
When Mr. Roche's second son, Jake, was born about 15 years ago, the president persuaded the trustees to build an "academy" for elementary- and high-school students on the edge of the campus. Enrollment has lagged behind expectations, and Jake Roche does not attend the school. The elder Mr. Roche will never see the lavish new office being built for him in a new complex on the wooded campus in rural southern Michigan.
Mr. Roche was also one of the highest-paid college presidents in the country. In 1994, he earned $448,646 in salary and benefits, making him the fifth-highest-paid president of an American college that year. Forbes magazine reported that his total compensation had grown to $524,000 in 1998, though college officials could not confirm that figure last week.
College officials also refused to describe Mr. Roche's retirement package.
Several trustees said that during Mr. Roche's time at the college, they never had reason to question his management style, until now.
"There weren't any problems," said Frank Shakespeare, director of the U.S. Information Agency and ambassador to the Vatican under President Nixon, and a Hillsdale trustee since 1976. "By all objective measures, the way in which this institution was run has been superb. The caliber of the faculty, the quality of the students, the quality of the facilities, the money."
However, some members of the faculty have long chafed at their lack of authority on campus. Two years ago, the faculty voted to form a grievance committee, and elected Mr. Juroe as the chairman. Mr. Roche would not recognize its existence. "His exact words were, 'In my experience, faculty control leads to chaos,'" Mr. Juroe said. Similarly, the trustees vetoed the idea of allowing a faculty representative to appear at their meetings and update them on faculty concerns.
Professors contacted by The Chronicle said they like working at Hillsdale because of the classic approach to liberal-arts education, based on the study of Great Books. None reported that they had ever been censured for anything they said in a classroom. They praised the students as intelligent and highly motivated. But most declined to talk on the record.
Several of them said former faculty members had been punished for speaking out previously, and they did not want to jeopardize their jobs.
As events unfolded here last week, Mr. Trowbridge, the vice-president, sent a memo to trustees and faculty and staff members instructing that all media inquiries be directed to him.
"Media will likely be on our campus for any number of days," the memo read. "Some will be aggressive, persistent and devious. It would be easy for you to be tricked into giving information which you don't wish to give." To some faculty members, the memo typified the paranoia that envelops the college.
"In academe, there is nothing so precious as the free exchange of ideas and perspectives," said Mr. Juroe. "That is what has been taken from us by this regime. It has been a community of fear."
The search panel for a new president will include three trustees, plus William Bennett and William F. Buckley, but no professors. That's not unusual, said Mr. Trowbridge. "The governance of the college is in the hands of the trustees, with the power and authority of trustees vested in the president. That's always been the model."
Hillsdale students say they are attracted by either the college's conservatism -- the largest student group is the Christian Intervarsity Council -- or by its espousal of free-market values. Libertarian students, in particular, said they have been stunned by how close-minded the administration was.
"They may talk about freedom, but they sure don't practice it," said Marc Kilmer, who graduated from Hillsdale in May with a bachelor's degree in political science and history.
"The administration had final say over everything that went in the student newspaper. We were required to pay for the meal plan all four years we were in school, even after we moved off campus," he says.
"I would have spent a lot less than they were charging me for food, if I bought my own groceries. But they wouldn't hear of it. That sure isn't the free-enterprise model at work."
Brian Reuwer, who also graduated in May, said the administration threatened students who tried to investigate how their student fees were spent. Last year, when he was an editor of the Collegian, the student newspaper, he said a number of stories were stripped from the paper by the administration.
"I thought they [the administration] were two-faced -- do as I say, not as I do," said Mr. Reuwer, now a law student at Michigan State University. "Their attitude was, 'You are entitled to your opinions. Just don't tell us what they are.'"
A number of students have been expelled after challenging the administration. Two seniors, Jonathan K. Ellis and Joshua L. Sille, were kicked out in 1996, after they tried to obtain copies of Hillsdale's Internal Revenue Service Form 990, which gives financial details and lists the salaries of its five top-paid employees. All non-profit entities are required to make the forms available to the public.
The students were sent letters saying they were being expelled for threatening two women with bodily harm and rape. Mr. Ellis, through an intermediary, refused a request for an interview, saying he had reached a financial settlement with the college in which he had agreed not to talk publicly about the institution. Mr. Sille could not be reached for comment.
Other students do not see Hillsdale as shunning debate at all.
"I run a student organization, and I can say whatever I want. The students can say whatever they want," said Ryan Oprea, a senior from Detroit. "I've been in a number of meetings where the discussion was very much against the beliefs of the administration. The administration has never tried to control what is said."
Hillsdale started a new journalism program this year, and the program has taken over the operation of the student newspaper. It is now financed by advertising and student fees, and staff members said administrators exert no influence.
It remains to be seen how much damage the scandal will inflict on Hillsdale's reputation, or how long the repercussions might last.
After Richard Berendzen resigned as president of American University in 1990, following his admission that he had made a series of obscene phone calls to women from his office, it became the "topic of pretty much every conversation for 6 to 12 months," said Mary Gray, a professor of mathematics at American. "It certainly hurt admissions for a year or two. By the end of three years, there had been enough turnover of faculty and staff that it really ceased to be an issue."
Because of Hillsdale's ties to conservatives, Mr. Roche's alleged moral lapses might have more resonance, said some observers.
"George Roche has been moralizing for so long, there's no reason people shouldn't get bitter about this," said Mr. Oprea. "At the same time, I don't think you will see right-wing and libertarian America turn their backs on this school. George Roche is someone who has been embraced by more than just Hillsdale. There are a lot of people who really believed in what he tried to do here. To abandon it now would be to shoot themselves in the foot."
In the first week of news reports about Mr. Roche's fall from the presidency, officials at the college reported no signs that donors would stop giving.
A spokeswoman for the Castle Rock Foundation, which contributes to Hillsdale's Center for Constructive Alternatives, a lecture series, and to Imprimis, declined to comment on Mr. Roche's departure. But she expressed support for the college. "We have every confidence, at this time, that the program is still strong and viable, and we still have confidence in Hillsdale," said Linda S. Tafoya, executive director of the foundation, a subsidiary of the Adolph Coors Foundation. Jeffrey H. Coors, a Hillsdale trustee, also is a trustee and treasurer of the foundation.
Officials at Hillsdale said they were receiving many letters pledging to keep supporting the college.
"We have been getting letters from all over the country," said Mr. Blackstock. "It has been reassuring to see the breadth and the depth of that support. People say they still believe in Hillsdale's principles, its ideas, and its ideals."
John L. Pulley contributed to this article.
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