UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #1014
SAFFIAN, STEVEN R.

SAFFIAN, STEVEN R (1938-)
Assistant to the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs; Assistant Dean of Students
At UW: 1968-2006

FIRST INTERVIEW

Interviewed: 	April 27, 2010
Interviewer: 	Charlene Tortorice
Index by: 	Stephen A. Pierce
Length: 	1 hour, 5 minutes

Abstract: In his April 2010 interview with Char Tortorice, Steve Saffian discusses his journey from his childhood and education in New York City to his almost 4 decades as a member of the academic staff of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Saffian highlights the changes going on in student services when he arrived at UW in the late 1960s and how he undertook research to try to meet the changing circumstances. He also emphasizes the role academic staff play at UW, the impact of new legislation following merger in 1973 on them, and his own role in organizing and advocating for academic staff. This interview was conducted for inclusion into the UW-Madison Oral History Program.

Key Words: New York City; University of Wisconsin-Madison; Pratt Institute; Ely Meyerson; dean of students’ office; Joseph Kauffman; Vietnam War; 1960s; civil rights; Campus Assistance and Visitors’ Center; academic staff; Merger (1973); Academic Staff Council (ASC) Advisory Committee; Academic Staff Executive Committee (ASEC); Donna Shalala; Bernie Cohen.  

First Interview Session (April 27, 2010): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:12	Question: Talk about your educational background. Answer: Saffian talked about getting a BA from Brooklyn College, CUNY and a Master’s from Columbia. He discussed the importance, later on, of having John Hope Franklin as his undergraduate advisor in history. This gave him some credibility when he began working with multi-cultural affairs. Follow up: Did you go right to graduate school? Answer: Yes.

00:02:54	[no question] He talked about how he got to UW after first getting jobs at the Long Island Univ.’s Brooklyn campus and the Pratt Institute, where he served in residence halls. In 1968, he met Ely Meyerson while attending an ACPA meeting in Detroit that started the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. He recounted how, after being sequestered in a hotel with him for several days, Meyerson asked Saffian to interview at UW. 

00:06:04	Question: Your position? Answer: He said he came in as assistant to the dean of students, which became assistant to the vice chancellor for student affairs. Follow up: Were there deans of men and women? Answer: He recalled them just phasing out the dean of women’s office. 

00:07:30	Follow up: Family? Answer: He talked about being married young and having 3 kids before they got here; he related why moving out of NYC and to a prestigious university like UW was a logical choice.

00:09:12	Follow up: So your position didn’t change, but just evolved? Answer: Yes; this was a result of the times. He explained that his position was actually a replacement for Jack Cipperly’s, who was supposed to provide council for walk-ins, but in the 1960s, administrative positions like his quickly became “the enemy” and walk-in traffic essentially stopped. With these changes and further pressures from state legislators, the office developed into a “grassroots mechanism for engaging students” that started out as a kind of rumor control.

00:13:27	[no question] It was during this tumultuous period, Saffian said, when he met Joe Kauffman, who Cipperly introduced to Saffian and who suggested that he could be his advisor for a PhD program at UW. He talked about how he finished the PhD in this period on what prompts students to seek assistance from student services. A summary of this thesis was distributed to all student affairs workers and he presented some seminars and conferences on it.

00:17:49	Follow up: Did you continue this research? Answer: He observed that every time there was one of a succession of “movements,” the dean of students was right there trying to make the office more aware and responsive. But during the civil rights movement, they were never able to get participation from minority students to conti-nue the research. He regretted not pushing the boundaries of this, but at the time they were clearly administrators, and didn’t feel like they could traverse these boundaries.

00:22:10	[no question] Saffian quipped about how he waited until 1980 to graduate, though he’d finished the PhD in 1979, because he wanted to be part of the graduation. He shared a story about having to sit through a 4-hour ceremony after having been the first to walk across the stage.

00:23:41	Question: Did you serve during Vietnam? Answer: No; between his age, schooling, and being a parent, he didn’t have to. He’d applied for flight school as an Air Force ROTC, but couldn’t because he was colorblind.

00:25:26	Question: What was campus like when you came? Answer: He said that it wasn’t supported at Madison to get involved in research as an administrator, so one had to justify the work as well as do it. There was flexibility to do research within the office, but he wasn’t impressed with either the “hard-core academic” faculty or faculty-driven administration’s. He used the campus assistance center as an example.

00:30:46	Follow up: Has that changed? Answer: He responded by talking about the new Lucky building, wondering if (with its incorporation of spaces devoted to the kind of thing they’d promoted) the University was finally supporting these kinds of services. He suggested that things they had to fight for in previous years were now just assumed.

00:32:32	Follow up: Are service providers equal status with faculty? Answer: He didn’t know, though he thought they were headed in the right direction by the time he left in 1999. As evidence of this, he related how earlier, prominent administrators were sometimes given faculty titles.

00:35:15	Follow up: How did academic staff legislation get created? Answer: He recounted how, about 5 years after Merger with no enabling legislation for academic staff governance, awareness started to grow and legislation was created. He thought faculty were resistant to this at first, having the biggest stake in the status quo.

00:37:02	[no question] He also observed that the academic staff who fomented for more of a role tended to be people who had mid- to high-level positions in the university, were sitting on committees, and involved in decision making (but unevenly) without having part of shared governance. He gave examples of this, and also remembered that as academic staff in departments dominated by academic staff became aware of the issues elsewhere, they “came out of the woodwork.”

00:40:20	Question: What’s different between ASC advisory committee and the ASEC? Answer:  He observed, first, that he was the bridge between the two—he was the one who served through the transition from the one to the other.

00:42:09	[no question] Continuing to talk about the transition to ASEC, he recounted how, at that time when the next direction for academic staff was unsure, unions were urging them to unionize. As they were about to call a meeting inviting unions to make their proposals, the legislature suddenly inserted academic staff governance into an annual budget bill.

00:45:02	Follow up: What next? Answer: He continued by talking about writing the articles of organization, much of which was written by Tom Hoover, Bob Miller, and the committee. He couldn’t recall how the districts were created, but he and Tortorice discussed the implications of this clause.

00:49:20	Follow up: Would you do it again? Answer: He thought so; he took pride in it and realized it would be far-reaching. He talked about how what they did had an impact even further than just UW-Madison, but also upstate.

00:53:00	Follow up: How effective has academic staff governance been? Answer: He recalled how their first three concerns was a) building the organization, b) ensuring representa-tion on committees on which academic staff should be represented, and c) then the rest of the committees. He felt that the direction in these cases had been established by the time he left ASEC and that academic staff were involved in committees on which they should be represented. He answered the interviewer’s follow up about concerns that academic staff really don’t have fair representation.

00:57:55	[no question] He spoke to the “Donna Shalala phenomenon,” observing that she was the first chancellor to be chosen by a search committee including academic staff. She was supportive of academic staff thereafter.

01:00:50	[no question] Saffian talked about the “contradiction” that was Bernie Cohen’s views toward academic staff, though they thought this might have stemmed from a misguided association of academic staff governance with unionization.

01:02:51	Question: What are you most proud of? Answer: He listed three things: 1) achieving academic staff governance, and being part of the transition toward it; 2) the campus assistance center; and 3) the campus visitors’ center.

01:05:33	End of First Interview Session

End of First Interview

SECOND INTERVIEW

Interviewed: 	July 27, 2010 
Interviewer: 	Joe Corry
Index by: 	Stephen A. Pierce
Length: 	1 hour, 45 minute

Abstract: In his July 2010 interview with Joe Corry, Steve Saffian focuses on his role in restructuring the division of student services from the late 1960s to the late 2000s. Highlighting the changing relationship of students with administrators, he detailed how the dean of student services (later Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs) office coped with the changes and found ways to make campus assistance more student-centered. He also discusses several other projects in which he was instrumental, such as the Red Gym renovation and the creation of Merit house. This interview was conducted for inclusion into the UW-Madison Oral History Program.

Key Words: New York City; University of Wisconsin-Madison; Association of College and University Housing Officers (ACUHO); Ely Meyerson; dean of students’ office; 1960s; civil rights; Project Awareness; Campus Assistance and Visitors’ Center; Dow Chemical riot (1967); drug counselling services; Irving Shain; Martha Peterson; Merit House; Pleasant Frautschi; College Information and Visitors’ Services Association (CIVSA); Red Gym.

Second Interview Session (July 27, 2010): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:15	Question: How did you get to UW? Answer: Saffian reiterated his story about first coming to UW in 1962 for an ACUHO conference as the housing officer for Long Island University. He shared details about how each college would try to out-do the last conference host, which was delightful for him. During this visit, he got to know many of the housing officers at UW.

00:03:49	[no question] Continuing his narrative about coming to UW, he retold the story of his visit to Detroit, where he was sequestered with Ely Meyerson for several days, at the end of which they had “in effect interviewed each other.” Meyerson suggested that he come and interview for a position at the dean of students office, which he was offered.

00:07:57	[no question] He talked about being offered the job, which would have been quite a bit better situation than where they were living. He expressed his wife’s opinion about the move.

00:09:39	Follow up: Was a PhD part of the understanding of the move? Answer: He said it was in his thinking, having started to work on an EdD after his master’s work, but he didn’t know how his employers understood the arrangement. Ultimately, he transferred his EdD at Columbia to a PhD at UW.

00:11:08	Question: The Vice Chancellorship for Student Affairs was created shortly after your arrival? Answer: His recollection was that this occurred in 1970 as part of a major examination of the student affairs division.

00:13:31	Question: Turmoil on campus? Answer: Saffian said he often wondered if one of his credentials upon being hired was his being a Jewish person coming out of NY, from which it was perceived some of the discontent on campus was coming. He’d had some experience with these issues at Pratt.

00:16:23	[no question] He talked briefly about what job he’d been recruited to do, which he understood (before the Dow riot) as being an advocate for students. But because of Dow and Kauffman’s role, the dean’s office became an untrusted place. Corry contextualized some of these changes, though Saffian recalled this period as the “last days of the dean of women.”

00:20:28	[no question] Summarizing, he said that “the job that was described to me in my interviews really wasn’t there” when he got there, though he became essentially a staff person to the vice chancellor, coordinating activities for all of the departments under the VC, doing Project Awareness, and eventually creating the Campus Assistance Ctr.

00:21:40	Question: Bringing together very diverse units? Answer: He talked about staff retreats, which were aimed first at reconnecting with a student body alienated by the events of the late 1960s. The activities on these retreats included a lot of group-building training that tried to escape the “talking heads” model that wasn’t going to reach out to students in meaningful ways. He talked about reception and antagonism to these new approaches. 

00:26:22	[no question] In his estimation, the major product of the group meeting of the late 1960s and early 1970s was the Project Awareness report, which made recommend-dations for student affairs’ units across the campus. He “got into” this process, studying how information got transferred on a college campus—information that helped students succeed on campus.

00:28:31	Follow up: Explain what these interests were. Answer: Through his experience serving on a number of ad hoc “rumor centers” during tense periods on campus, he began to imagine the idea of the Campus Assistance Center as an easy access point for students to reach into the administration. After the temporary nature of the rumor centers, he suggested that a permanent location be set up to do the same thing, staffing it with students. They discovered that they couldn’t train their employees to know everything, but they could direct students toward answers. 

00:35:18	[no question] He explained the premise behind the Campus Assistance Center, which came from a book by Alvin Toffler which suggested that information delivery was moving from being broadcaster-driven to user-driven. The system of tape recordings (called DIAL) and other programs were thus cutting edge at their time. Beside this, CAC published a student handbook, The Wheat and the Chaff, and commented that while much of this kind of traditional material was gone (due to the Internet), it still existed in some way.

00:38:02	Question: Talk about student workers? Answer: He observed that, not being an ordinary student job and being more interactive, students liked working for CAC. Some thus stayed a long time (he cited the example of Steve Van Ess) and he observed that training programs helped to center services on the students.

00:41:27	Follow up: So this was really a shift from the agitation of the 1960s? Answer: Yes; he cited CAC’s phone usage and the fact that other university offices began referring students to CAC as metrics of how successful it became. This was part of the reason, he thought, that the name was finally changed to Campus assistance and Visitors’ Center, since campuses often became visitor destinations and the reception people got was important to the university’s reputation.

00:46:11	Question: Drug abuse counseling? Answer: He discussed ways in which he was an wasn’t involved, talking about how they brought in real experts on pharmacology in order to understand the phenomenon, but how they endeavored to maintain neutrality throughout dealing with the issue. Their object was simply to put out information about what drugs were and did, because often student would end up with drugs that they didn’t understand. Ultimately this program was moved to the county government because of the problem of funding and the relationship with UW.

00:51:39	Follow up: Student recruiting? Answer: He contextualized that during the Vietnam era, with public opinion sometimes blaming out-of-state students for fomenting the turmoil, there was pressure from the state to curtail out-of-state recruitment (faculty, on the other hand, encouraged out-of-state recruitment). Since he was not long out of NYC when he came, early on he was asked by Chancellor Shain to go on the recruiting trips to let NY students know they were still welcome. He recalled going to some of the best schools on the East Coast during these two years.

00:59:52	Question: Talk about your involvement with housing. Answer: He explained that as University Housing (which had previously administered on-campus housing but also inspected off-campus housing) cut back in the 1970s, there was a brief time when there was no connection between off-campus housing and the university.

01:02:55	[no question] Continuing to talk about housing, he discussed how a group of off-campus housing providers got together to request access to information about housing availability. This function the chancellor thought best to be handled by CAC, and he explained how this was provided.  This became more complicated when complaints about the condition of off-campus housing began to surface—these problems led to the creation of a campus-city housing committee chaired by Art Hove to set standards for private sector housing operators. Some operators met the standards voluntarily, while others needed to be “cajoled.”

01:10:31	Follow up: Is the focus still freshmen or does it include others? Answer: In terms of training resident assistants, it focused on freshmen, but their personal involvement was only with six major buildings close to campus.

01:13:17	Follow up: Merit House? Answer: He attributed this to serendipity; at a time when he’d become the “off-campus housing guru,” a former student came to him with questions about wanting to start a scholarship program.  After giving him some printed information, and at first skeptical about the offer, the young man later brought his father and grandfather back  (who’d been disappointed by some donations given to the Univ. of Chicago) with a proposal to donate $1.25 million for a subsidized housing dorm for student with good academic record.

01:18:43	Question: Redeveloping State Street? Answer: He explained that since his name had become associated with this house on State St., he became a part of the State St.-Capitol Concourse Operating Committee, though he said his involvement was limited to how the concourse area should be used.  As part of the committee, however, he was one of a few who Pleasant Frautschi approached with the idea of Concerts on the Square. This later led with a cordial meeting with Frautschi.

01:23:23	[no question] As an outgrowth of State St-Capital Concourse Operating Committee, he also got involved with the Convention and Visitor Bureau Board, to which he proposed the idea that the Red Gym be made a visitor center. He also was active in creating CIVSA (College Information and Visitors’ Services Association), which promoted the kind of campus-city relationships he championed.

01:27:16	[no question] Saffian recounted how Chancellor Shalala created an office of (mostly traditional) public relations, in which he had a joint appointment. 

01:28:54	Question: Remodeling the Red Gym? Answer: He discussed how he felt Shalala had a special relationship with members of the search committee who brought her to UW—thus Shalala bought into the idea that student services needed a new home and “gave” them the Red Gym, which hadn’t been used in 50 years. A study was done of the building’s historical significance, which determined the uses to which it could be put.

01:32:48	[no question] Continuing to talk about Red Gym, he noted that all this happened duing a period when “all of the things that I’ve talked about were past,” referring to the restructuring of a dean of students model with him in Bascom Hall wondering what the final stage of his career would be like. He thus volunteered to chair the Red Gym committee and determine the use needs of different student-related groups on campus. He talked about the day-to-day activity of the committee.

01:36:21	Follow up: What’s the most interesting on-the-fly change that had to be made? Answer: He said that there were some interesting things that had to be done (like creating a “more dense usage” of the original training space and making the original windows visible from the 2nd floor) but couldn’t think of any outstanding example.

01:39:20	[no question] Continuing to talk about the Red Gym, he shared an anecdote about how, during the 1990s, he got a request for a tour from a group of WWII veterans who’d been trained at the Red Gym. After being slightly disappointed by small donations after spending so much time with this group, the original couple who requested the tour came back and donated $50,000 for the renovation of the lounge that had views out the upper story windows.

01:45:56	End of Second Interview Session

End of Oral History #1014