Healing Sought At Ewu As School Year Opens Speakers Do Ladle Best To Sweeten Relations, Make Up At Pancake Breakfast

Sat., Sept. 20, 1997

Grayden Jones Staff writer

With the student body president singing “We Shall Overcome” and the university president admitting he made mistakes, employees at fractured Eastern Washington University buried their differences Friday three days before fall classes begin.

“Put your (throwing) stones away,” pleaded Associated Students of EWU president LaShund Lambert as he directed 700 faculty and staff to hold hands inside the Pence Union Building.

“When we have a strong family, the kids will come around.”

An annual fall tradition, Eastern’s community pancake breakfast drew an attentive crowd that hadn’t been together since university President Marshall Drummond resigned in June. The faculty turned down a pay raise a month later to avoid more layoffs.

While workers rebuilt the campus mall outside the PUB, officials focused on mending their own emotional fences torn down during a tumultuous year of falling student enrollment and lost revenue.

“We haven’t been kind to one another,” said Drummond, who is leaving office at the end of the school year. “We have had problems at Eastern and, heaven knows, I’ve had my shortcomings. But this is a beautiful place and the campus is becoming more vibrant.”

Drummond found hope in new figures that showed higher-than-expected student enrollment through Friday. He said 6,935 full-time students were enrolled, up from the expected 6,892.

However, enrollment is still under the 7,084 full-time students enrolled a year ago. Other students may enroll as classes resume Monday, with final figures available in two weeks.

Drummond said the university’s problems can largely be traced to an 800-student gap between current enrollment and the level at which state legislators fund the university. If not for that gap, he said, the school could have avoided painful staff cuts and hard feelings.

Officials said student recruitment and retention will be helped by scholarships from the EWU Foundation. Scholarship money will increase from $250,000 in 1996-97 to $450,000 this school year.

Faculty president Sandra Christensen called Drummond’s decision to resign “courageous.”

“This opens the way for a new direction and new leadership,” she said. “The sooner the transition, the better.”

Eastern trustee Jean Beschel said it may be six months before a search committee and the trustees can hire Drummond’s replacement.

, DataTimes

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