On March 5 the ISU Faculty Senate voted 55 to 10 to rescind the naming of the new honors building, the “Martin C. Jischke Honors Building.” The Faculty Senate is the official representative of the faculty and senators were asked to consult their constituents as to how they felt about the issue.

Why was this vote so overwhelming? Martin Jischke was a very unpopular president with many faculty, students and some administrators.

Putting his name on this building is a slap to the face of Iowa State University. Jischke was a micromanager who had an unpleasant leadership style of brow-beating, intimidation and threats; he had a very low regard for academic freedom and free speech; he was quoted as telling some of his administrators that if they have someone they don’t like, they could get rid of them by making life miserable for them.

In his 10 years as president, the university had the largest number of lawsuits on record; it had a high turnover of administrators; Jischke directed the sale of WOI-TV and the ISU Press and terminated the Fire Institute that for many years had trained fireman from throughout the state in the University Extension Program.

He told the public and the Regents that undergraduate education had a No. 1 priority at Iowa State, yet he allowed the number of tenure and tenure-track faculty to drastically decline and he indicated to the university community that teaching and the liberal arts were not valued.

He was not even supportive of research as he presided over the elimination of library holdings and the loss of journal subscriptions.

Some have said Jischke was a good fundraiser, but even this is questionable. Much of the money had already been promised to Iowa State when Jischke arrived. He counted every penny brought into the university from professors’ research grants as money he raised; he counted the money he obtained from the sale of WOI-TV and the ISU Press as money he raised.

In some cases, he probably lost money by his tactics and by the way in which he manipulated the use of the money that was given to Iowa State. Jischke was party to the sale of the Powers’ farm, in direct conflict with the conditions of the will.

The initiative to put Jischke’s name on the building was a rush job. Then Vice President for External Affairs Murray Blackwelder, made the nomination to the Committee on Naming Buildings and Streets, which was chaired by Jischke’s appointee and presidential assistant Rob Mukerjea (both Blackwelder and Mukerjea were personally hired by Jischke). This was in June 2000, when most of the students and many faculty were gone and the committee never met to consider the nomination.

The five-year rule to wait to name a building after the individual had left the university, was simply waived.

Many faculty and students do not see that Jischke made any significant contribution to the honors program to warrant putting his name on the building.

The Board of Regents is a very insular body that will not permit any faculty member to make a request or presentation. It has to be recommended by the university president. This unfortunately has put President Geoffroy between a rock and a hard place. He doesn’t want to offend the faculty but equally doesn’t want to offend the Regents. At least two members of the Regents have publicly stated that they will not consider the naming again.

So, Iowa State will have an unwanted monument to its thirteenth and worst president and every time we pass by this building, we will be reminded how lucky we are to have gotten rid of him.

John Robyt

Professor

Biochemistry