It's All About the U!

When I decided to come to UM in 1979, a lot of the "elite students" at my LI high school made fun of me for choosing Sun Tan U. I put elite students in quotes, since I didn't come from the most prestigious of high schools. Probably only 1/2 of my graduating class went to college at all. My friend Kenny, now a retired Navy captain and Pediatric Radiologist practicing in Miami, was our smartest student. His wife Joelle, a graduate of the prestigious Stuyvesant High in NYC, says that Kenny was the "tallest of midgets." She's right.

Still, I came to UM and fell in love. I was in the Honors Program, and my classmates were no dummies. Matter of fact, I was probably one of the slowest in the group. My friend Eric went on to be #1 in his med school class, and then Chief Resident at a Harvard hospital. Barry got into Cornell for HIS residency. My friend Jorge became a famous US prosecutor and then Circuit judge. Dave C, who lived below me, went to Harvard Law...

So there was a serious core of amazing students, even back in 1979...

And then, in the early 80s, there was a man named James Ash, who was brought in to head the Honors Program. He concinved the "new" (in 1981) president Tad Foote, that UM should become smaller and smarter. Foote agreed, and essentially the Honors PRogram criteria for students (high SATs, most accepted students from the top 10% of their high school class) became the criteria for the whole university.

And this week, US News came out with their rankings, and UM made it into the top 50 (47) for the first time. Today's Herald has a congratulatory article, and gives most of the credit to UM's gnome current president, Donna Shalala.

Shalala, who I've met and can report has one of the least pleasant personalities of any college administrator out there, HAS done a great job. She's raised money in tough times, and hired a stable of deans that are amazingly qualified.

But, poor Jim Ash, the true visionary behind this amazing improvement, is consigned to the dustbin of history.

Jim needs a book to be written about him. He's a small, handsome man from West Texas, with a golden oratory ability. He's a Presbyterian minister, but preaches like a hellfire and brimstone Baptist one. He can sell ice to an Eskimo.

He left UM to become president of Whittier College, Nixon's alma mater.

Around 1998, I checked into the Peninsula Hotel with my girls and niece, and ran into him. He was getting onto an elevator with a very effeminate looking fellow, and recognized me but seemed ill at ease to see me. He told me he was leaving Whittier to start up a venture capital company with a wealthy Whittier alum.

Thereafter, he became president of Sierra Nevada College, on Lake Tahoe. A few years later, in a scandal that makes the Ted Haggard affair look PG rated, Ash was arrested in a cheap motel, high on meth, with an 18 year old "nephew."

He was ruined, and apparently re-offended after he was released from prison. I hope he finally came out as gay, something many folks suspected, and is overcoming his addiction. As of 2007, the last the Nevada papers wrote about him, he was still in major trouble...

But, those of us who were at the U in the early 80s remember him, and what he did for the university. He advocated turning the dorms into "residential colleges," where faculty members live with students. We have to wonder now, given his creepy proclivities, if he had a bad reason for this, but nonetheless it became the way of the old dorms at UM.

Ash's vision has become, 30 years later, my beloved alma mater's reality.

So, best to you, Dr. Ash, wherever you are. And, most importantly, Go Canes!