Moore’s Opposition Splits ECC Trustees
This article describes the debate over ECC's push for independent university status. This and other articles may be found in the records of the Chancellor's Office, Record Group CH1050, Series 1, Scrapbook File, 1914-1978 in the University Archives.
Johnsey, Arthur. “Moore’s Opposition Splits ECC Trustees,” The Virginian Pilot, May 15, 1966.
RALEIGH - East Carolina College’s trustees were divided late last week over whether to push for early university status for the college at Greenville in the face of opposition from the governor.
Gov. Dan Moore asked for a lapse of at least two years before any major change in the system of higher education as requested of the legislature.
David Whichard, Jr., of Greenville, commenting on the governor’s statement, called for the establishment of "East Carolina University" at the “earliest possible date.”
Whichard is a trustee and a newspaper publisher.
“Trustees,” said Whichard, “are not named to be mute rubber stamps of the governor. . . "
He contended ECC is “in most respects already a university except in name. I believe it is in the interest if higher education in the state and in the Eastern area for the institution to be accorded its proper title of university at the earliest possible date.”
But James Whitield of Raleigh, one of ECC’s trustees and a member of the State Board of Education, took a different view.
Said Whitfield:“Governor Moore has asked for a lapse of time for at least two years before any major change in the system is requested,” he says he is convinced that the state’s success or failure in higher education will be related to the degree to which we can pool our resources, with no threat to the identity or vigor of any of us.
“As a trustee I agree with Gov. Moore that the best interests of North Carolina be served by concentrating on planning instead of a major change fight while the institutions are in the process of their planning.
Whitfield said he would not want “a desire on the part of ECC to become a university to become the nucleus for a battle that could disrupt the statewide plan so sorely needed by all of our institutions of higher learning.”
Whitfield said it seemed reasonable to assume that a lapse of two years on the part of East Carolina in pursuing its university status “will not depreciate its role in higher education that it has been building since 1907.”
ECC’s president, Dr. Leo Jenkins, who has advocated not only early university status, but the creation of an East Carolina University independent of the state’s consolidated university system, said he would have to await the outcome of a trustee’s meeting Wednesday in Greenville before commenting.
Meanwhile Irving Carlyle, Winston-Salem lawyer and one of the authors of a state higher education study that bears his name, stayed firmly behind the “university soon” concept.
Carlyle said he agreed with Governor Moore that ECC should stay within the system of the consolidated university, but felt ”early action ought to be taken by the State Board of Higher Education, the Consolidated University, and the next session of the general assembly on an application by the college to become a branch of the Consolidated University.”
The 1965 legislature gave the higher education board instructions to (devise) a statewide plan for university and college development.
The statewide plan cannot be ready for the 1967 General Assembly and that is the basis for Moore’s suggestion that no major move be made within two years.
The movement in Eastern North Carolina for independent University status has gained headway politically, becoming an issue advocated by candidates in legislative races throughout the region.
