UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #123
RENK, WALTER F.

RENK, Walter F. (1902-2000)
Member of Board of Regents
At UW: 1967-75
 
Interviewed: 1977	
Interviewer: Donna Taylor
Indexed (time code) by: Elaine Ayers
Length: 3 hours, 14 minutes

Background; Renk farm; Appointment as regent; Dow Protests and consequences; Changes in student regulations; Medical schools in state; Need for veterinary school; Formation of satellite campuses; Criticisms of UW in 1960s; Fred Harvey Harrington's resignation; Appointment of John Weaver; Governor Patrick Lucey and Merger; Problems of new Board of Regents; Role of Board of Visitors.

Tape 1/Side 1

00:00:02	Walter Renk's father, William F. Renk, graduated from the College of Agriculture's short course in 1898, and was the holder of a silver medal for proficiency in sheep judging at the University (George McCarroll Medal).

00:04:44	Harry Luman Russell conducted the state's first cattle tubercular test on the Renk farm in 1898.

00:08:53	William Renk and his sister lived with Professor Frank Kleinheinz while both were attending the University (UW).  Musical instrument playing anecdote in Kleinheinz home.

00:09:51	William Renk attended the UW at a time when Stephen Babcock, William Henry, and Harry Russell were prominent professors in the College of Agriculture.

00:10:16	William Renk formed with his sons, Walter and Wilbur, the United States' first farm family corporation--William F. Renk and Sons, Inc.--during the Depression.

00:15:13	In the middle '30s, the Renk family entered into the hybrid seed corn business.

00:18:35	The Renk farming industry concentrates in the production of seed corn, cattle feeding, and cattle breeding.

00:26:23	Richard and John Renk, Walter Renk's sons, and Steven Renk, his nephew, are running the farming business in the middle '70s.

00:27:29	Richard, John, and Steven Renk all graduated from the UW's College of Agriculture.  Richard Renk holds a master's degree in business administration from the UW.

00:30:04	Renk comments on the increasing acreage of and cost of the family farm in the 1960s and '70s--anecdote of Walter Renk helping a UW student from New Jersey enter into the farming business in Wisconsin.

00:43:12	Rudolph Froker, Dean of the College of Agriculture, maintained land values cyclically appreciate and depreciate, but each time they depreciate, they do so to a higher level, so that land is ever rising in price.

00:46:12	Renk feels the farming industry has failed to equate its cost of production with its wholesale and retail prices.

00:47:59	He feels the farming industry can make use of alternative fuels to save on the cost of energy, and that it must use chemical fertilizers and herbicides to survive. Organic farming.

00:52:58	Renk feels the benefits of food production are greater than those expounded by environmentalists.

01:08:18	End of side.

End of Mp3 File.

Tape 1/Side 2

00:00:03	Renk became a regent because of his interest in the UW; he did not become a regent for political reasons.

00:00:56	Renk's family, especially his mother, urged him to attend the UW. Gustav Bohstedt anecdote.

00:03:08	Governor Warren P. Knowles as governor appointed Renk as regent.  Anecdote concerning the appointment.

00:05:33	Renk became a regent at the beginning of the campus protest period--May 1, 1967.  Renk was on campus--but not as a regent--during the first major campus protest: the Dow Chemical protest of 1967.

00:08:17	Following the Dow protest, Renk was disappointed by President Fred Harrington's non-defense of Chancellor William Sewell and his actions during a meeting before the faculty in the Memorial Union concerning the protest.

00:09:03	In a second faculty meeting, Harrington did defend his chancellor. 

00:09:34	Following the protest, Bill (Robben) Fleming put up bail money for those protestors who were arrested, and some years later was forced to contact George Young (dean of the Law School) about recovering some of the bail money.

00:10:29	Fleming left the chancellorship of the University for the Presidency of the University of Michigan.  However, at the same time he accepted the Michigan position, he was offered the presidency of the University of Minnesota.  Minnesota regent anecdote falsely announcing Fleming as president.

00:13:36	Edwin Young as chancellor and Renk as a regent attended a black power protest and workshop in the Memorial Union and found they were both challenged and held suspect because of their administrative titles.

00:18:19	As a regent, Renk received many phone calls questioning his official position on numerous University-related subjects.

00:18:51	The relaxing of dormitory visitation hours, and ultimately the doing away with all visitation time restrictions, was an issue that aroused much concern on behalf of regents, faculty, administration, parents, and students--WSA president meeting with Renk anecdote on subject.

00:23:00	Many dormitory incidents are never made public or brought to the attention of the press--black, white racial confrontation, Ogg Hall heroin selling incident.

00:27:24	In the late '60s and early '70s, the regents believed the National Guard had to be brought on campus to quell the student riots.

00:28:10	Renk commends Edwin Young for his role as chancellor in not permitting students to close the University during the Vietnam anti-war protests.

00:30:45	Renk feels the bombing of Sterling Hall in late summer of 1970 was a catalyst which led to the quelling of student anti-war protests throughout the country.  Anecdote of Edwin Young and Renk touring the bombing site.

00:33:40	After the bombing, the Army Mathematics Research Center moved into the new Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation building on the western end of campus.

00:34:27	 J. Barkley Rosser, center director, is a mathematician of world renown.

00:35:04	The incorporation of the Medical School took place under the Warren P. Knowles gubernatorial administration.

00:35:25	Prior to the controversial incorporation, Knowles appointed a blue ribbon committee, headed by Donald Slichter, to study the situation, and the committee recommended having three medical schools--one at the UW in Madison, one at the University in Milwaukee, and one at Marquette University. 

00:36:07	About the same time, the Marquette School of Medicine ran into financial difficulty; the state placed the school under its auspices, and Regent David Carley raised some $70 million in funding to benefit the school.

00:37:29	The UW and federal government considered merging University Hospital with the Veterans Hospital, but the original agreement failed, and a second had to be negotiated.

00:38:57	The Medical School has been a controversial school within the University.  Controversy surrounded it during the deanships of John Z. Bowers, Robert Cooke and Lawrence Crowley.

00:42:02	Irving Shain, UW assistant chancellor in the late '70s, left the UW before he was named chancellor because, Renk believes, he wished to return to his home state of Washington and because, he believes, there existed a personality conflict between Shain and Cyrena Pondrom.

00:44:26	As vice-chancellor--before leaving the UW--Shain was well acquainted with the problems surrounding the Medical School.

00:46:20	Before leaving, Shain had been at the UW for twenty-four years, serving at one point during that period as chairman of the chemistry department and also as vice-chancellor under Edwin Young--first meeting as chancellor with the Madison faculty and Anatole Beck anecdote.

00:47:22	The new Medical School facility is expected to positively affect the number of practicing physicians in the state.

00:48:15	The Wisconsin Rural Rehabilitation Corporation financed fifty summer externships for first-year medical students to acquaint them with physician responsibilities within the state in the seventies.

00:49:20	When Renk was on the board of regents, the board approved the building of a Veterinary School, but the state refused to give its approval.

00:52:13	Medical School personnel need a Veterinary School to aid and assist them in their research.

00:53:28	Renk feels that Governor Martin Schrieber will ultimately be forced to support the building of a Veterinary School, because of the state’s and UW's great need for such.

00:58:27	In order to see the UW obtain its Veterinary School, Renk feels River Falls will be offered a state facility if it will support the building of a major school on the Madison campus.

00:59:21	Henry Pitot, after serving as dean of the Medical School, became head of the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research.

00:59:52	For years, William S. Middleton was the central figure in the Medical School.  Anecdotes concerning Middleton's faculty for recalling fact and detail.

01:02:17	End of side.

End of Mp3 File. 

Tape 2/Side 1

00:00:05	Renk believes anti-war protestors made a mistake in objecting to the presence of Dow job recruiters on campus.

00:05:12	Following the unexpected death of Conrad Elvehjem, Fred Harrington, who had been second to him as the regents' choice for president, was offered the position, even though he had informally accepted a like position at the University of Hawaii.

00:06:36	Harrington as president initiated the building of satellite campuses.  Renk feels this was a major factor in bringing about merger.

00:08:32	As the Harrington administration progressed, state legislators and citizens began voicing more and more criticism of the UW and the protest movement.

00:09:20	Unlike E.B. Fred, Harrington was not able to form amiable relations with state legislators.  To many, he gave the impression of being superior to or above them.

00:10:22	Renk and other regents, along with some administrators, sent out into the state to meet with parents and citizens to explain the protest situation.

00:13:13	Harrington did not like LeRoy Luberg--who many recognized served as an UW's ambassador to the legislature--and demoted him from his administrative position.  But when Harrington ran afoul of the legislature, he was forced to again send Luberg before it on the UW's behalf.  The regents, recognizing Luberg's value, gave him a salary promotion.

00:14:23	As Harrington's relations with the legislature, regents, and state citizens continued to worsen, the regents twice asked for his resignation.  Twice he asked for and was granted time extensions to consider the matter.  Finally, by a seven to three vote, the regents told him to resign immediately or be fired.

00:18:37	Harrington’s masterful resignation speech. Harrington agreed to resign, with the stipulation he be given a Vilas Professorship--$10,000 per year for life plus $5000 traveling expenses per year for life.

00:20:41	Renk feels if he made any mistakes in voting as a regent, it was in voting to give Harrington the Vilas professorship--such are to be awarded only to faculty for teaching or research and not to executives in administration.

00:21:32	After Harrington was awarded the Vilas professorship and after a second administrator, Robert Clodius, asked that he be given like treatment, the regents met with the Vilas trustees.  Both agreed the professorships would only be awarded to individuals who performed outstandingly as teachers or researchers but not to administrators. 

00:23:05	After Harrington's resignation, he accepted a Ford Foundation position in India and made a number of applications for presidencies at other institutions.

00:23:58	After the resignation, the regents formed a search and screen committee, headed by Gordon Walker, to look for a new president.

00:26:10	In a Milwaukee meeting, the regents decided to offer the presidency to John Weaver--then president of Missouri--who was their first choice.

00:28:01	Walker, Bernard Ziegler, and Renk met with Weaver in the hotel in the St. Louis airport to offer him the presidency.

00:30:24	Governor-to-be Patrick J. Lucey let it be known publicly that the selection of a UW president and the notifying of the public who the new president was should have been held up until he had taken office, so that he could have participated in each. 

00:33:23	Renk believes that Lucey declared in running for the governor's seat that he would affect a merger of the UW and the state colleges. Ultimately, merger succeeded by only one vote in the senate.

00:34:24	Both the UW's board of regents and the state colleges' board of regents were opposed to merger.

00:36:00	Renk is uncertain as to why the Lucey merger bill was successful; he does know that it has not saved the state money as Lucey claimed it would.

00:36:55	He does believe it has coordinated the higher educational system in the state and eliminated course and program duplication.

00:38:34	Renk feels that faculty unions and strikes may be two ill-effects of merger. 

00:40:05	Renk feels unionism is not desirable in a university because it recognizes everyone in a group is equal but in teaching he believes you have to differentiate according to ability.

00:42:00	The regents are a policy-making body, while the faculty is a governing body in the University.

00:46:59	Roy Kopp served as the first president of the twenty-two member merged board of regents, and Bernard Ziegler served as the first vice-president.

00:47:57	The initial problems the merged board faced concerned the organization and location of the new system's administration.

00:48:37	Leonard Haas of Eau Claire was brought in as the first vice-president to John Weaver; however, shortly thereafter he chose to return to his teaching on the Eau Claire campus.

00:49:28	After Haas left, Weaver organized the vice-presidential team of Donald Percy and Donald Smith, and the three formed a very effective administrative team.

00:51:06	In respect to regency meeting secrecy, Renk points out Robben Fleming, while he was still at the UW, was offered the presidencies of both the Universities of Minnesota and Michigan, that a Minnesota regent announced he had accepted the Minnesota position without knowing that he had accepted the Michigan position, and that this negatively affected their search for a new president.

00:55:21	Renk believed--in 1977--that merger was working well.Renk found that very few administrators in the newly created University System went directly to the regents with their problems; they took them to the president and his administrators --through the proper channels.

00:56:53	He found many objected to the quota system the Law School and Medical School used for taking in disadvantaged and minority students.  Anecdotes concerning fact.  Anecdote of local physician's daughter petitioning to carry a twenty-one credit semester course load.

00:59:07	Renk feels that Martin Schrieber as governor will come out in favor of a Veterinary School.

01:00:20	The state financed the building of the Animal Science Building on campus by placing a five cent tax on oleomargarine.

01:00:38	Renk further believes the UW needs a School of Veterinary Medicine because of the ever increasing frequency of plant and animal diseases.

01:02:57	He feels the UW's greatness is underscored by the noteworthy individuals it has created--Nobel prize winners, scholars, educational leaders.

01:04:16	End of interview.

END