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Copyright & Permitted Use of Collection Search the Collection Browse the Collection by Interviewee About the Oral Histories Collection Oral Histories Home David T. Shufflebarger served in various capacities as Assistant to the President for University Relations and Governmental Relations from 1970- . The interview discusses his position at ODU, his involvement with the General Assembly, the lengthy political process of getting permission for dormitories and maintaining Foreman Field, and the financial and enrollment future of ODU.

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
with

DAVID SHUFFLEBARGER
Asst. to Pres. Gov't Relations

Norfolk, Virginia
April 21, 1981
by William Taylor, Old Dominion University

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Taylor: What is your name?

Shufflebarger: David Shufflebarger.

Taylor: What is your position at Old Dominion University?

Shufflebarger: I am the Assistant to the President for Governmental Relations.

Taylor: What does that mean?

Shufflebarger: It involves the relationship between the University, the federal government, the state government, the municipal governments around us. It involves specialized kinds of work in community relations and special projects assigned by the President. Basically, it is a staff job to support the President as he deals with those various external groups.

Taylor: So, you are actually the assistant to the President?

Shufflebarger: Right. In that respect, I am his staff person to get him ready to deal with governmental relations issues and developing plans, strategies and doing some of the leg work, but I'm really staffed to him for that purpose.

Taylor: How long have you been at Old Dominion?

Shufflebarger: I came here in the fall of 1970. So, that's coming up on 11 years.

Taylor: What is your background? What is...Where did you go to school?

Shufflebarger: Well, I was born and raised in Hampton, Virginia. Early on, during high school, I wound up on the newspaper there, the Daily Press, which is the daily--morning daily newspaper on the Peninsula. I had some experience on the newspaper then went off to Washington and Lee University on a scholarship program for a couple of years. I ran short of money and stopped out, as they say, to get in the service. I worked on the newspapers, as the service wouldn't have me. I had flat feet, a broken nose and was color-blind, so no one would have me in the service. I worked for a couple of years and started back at the Daily Press and then I went over to the Virginian Pilot. Went back to Washington and Lee and finished up, majoring in politics. I went to work in Richmond as a PR [public relations] director for a State agency and became the liaison with the Governor's office and got involved in some political campaigns. About that time Old Dominion, under it's new president, Jim Bugg, wanted someone in public relations and knew Richmond. Having done some political work, and worked in the Governor's office, I fit the bill and they hired me, basically as the PR man for the University, but later on, that expanded. 

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Taylor: So, ever since 1970, you have been kind of the liaison between the legislature and Old Dominion?

Shufflebarger: Exactly. When I came that was probably no more than ten per cent of my job. We weren't really doing anything at the federal level, and the contacts with city government were really nominal. But, over time, my job expanded two ways. One, in the governmental activities and two, with the assignments that the President gave me.

I started out with public relations and within two weeks, we added publications and printing operations. Within six to eight months, I think it was, I was assigned responsibilities for alumni and development. I think that it was in 1974 that I was made Vice-President of University Relations to manage all four of those operations; Alumni, Development, Public Information Services, and Printing and Publications. All four of those plus do the governmental work. But by then, the governmental work was up to about 50% of the job. It kept climbing so that by '76, when President Rollins came it was, I'd say, easily 75% or 80% of the job. And at that point, I was fortunate, he recognized that there were two jobs there, and say, "Hey! You are going to kill yourself doing both jobs. I don't think you do either one of them very well. You are just going to wear yourself out trying to manage that operation on one end and governmental relations. Take your choice of which job." The one that I enjoyed more was the governmental relations work. Which is what I have been doing full time now.

But you need to understand the bulk is at the state level, a significant amount at the city level, and a moderate amount at the federal level, and a fair amount in specialized community relations, (especially with the immediate adjacent neighborhoods where we are expanding the campus) and into the land acquisitions programs. I have worked closely with the adjacent neighborhoods every since I came.

Taylor: Do you feel that you have a pretty good relationship with the General Assembly and the city?

Shufflebarger: Yes, I do. I...obviously, I'm biased, but I think that we have a very good relationship with the Eastern Virginian Delegation of the General Assembly. There are 37 members from Eastern Virginia and I think that the recent General Assembly session had 20 some co-patrons on the bill to authorize the dormitory. This is an indication that there is solid regional support here in the General Assembly. The City of Norfolk has bent over backwards to help the University, every since it's founding in 1930. Without the support of the city, this place wouldn't exist. As President Rollins often says, "This University was created by the community-it wasn't an educator's idea or something to do. It was really a community demanding that it have an institution of higher education."

Taylor: Let's talk about the dorm issue a little bit. What was the problem with that? How long has it been ___ _____?


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Shufflebarger: It's--let me see, '81, '80, '79... We first proposed the dorm in the fall of 1978, just before the short session of 1979. And the Governor issued a call for any amendments to the budget for--to be taken up in the '79 session. VPI and Old Dominion put in a request (I think that there was an October deadline)and we put in a request. Now, this is a long story. Do you want me to tell the--there are two versions. I could tell you the quick summary version, but this is three years worth and it is a fairly long story. 5 or 10 minutes. Do you want that much?

Taylor: Well, that will be fine.

Shufflebarger: OK. I will tell you the whole thing. I don't know that I have ever told anybody the whole story... well that would take several hours, but I will give you a quick chronology of it.

We submitted--the Governor was ready to recommend those dorms. Indeed he did recommend them. The problem was about five or six folks came along (Christopher Newport, William and Mary.... oh gosh, I can't remember all the other institutions, Madison, UVA) with last minute requests. And because they were last minute, the Governor decided not to make them part of his formal budget recommendations that he brought in. Remember that in a short session, you're amending the budget that has already been passed for the biennial[?]. So, the '78-80 Appropriations Act had already been passed the year before. These were amendments to be taken up in 1979. The Governor presents a formal document that is printed up... its a bill... its his budget amendment bill. Because of these last minute ones from these other institutions, none of these requests were put in to that. About a week after the session opened, the Secretary of Administration and Finance, on behalf of the Governor, brought in these additional amendments. Well, the General Assembly was outraged. They said, "Why didn't you get these in before?" Word leaked out that some of the colleges didn't bring their amendments in until the day after the General Assembly convened. And it sounded like a last minute, hurry-up sloppy job and frankly that is what it was. As a result, the House Appropriations Committee, to whom these recommendations were delivered, was mad as sin. And said, "Hey! We don't want to deal with anything last minute like this. This is supposed to be short session. What is needed should come in in advance and we only ought to be considering emergency matters. Sounds like someone just dreamed up some somethings and threw them in!"

Well, this really hurt VPI and Old Dominion because we had done our homework, done our planning, met the deadlines. We got painted with the same brush. The House did two things. Number one, it put in an amendment that said "from now on out, we aren't going to consider any capital outlay in the short session and damn if we are going to take up these up!" Well, we went over to the Senate and there they understood that some mistakes had been made, but they were willing to try to correct them. And they support all of the governor's recommendations for these projects. But the Governor didn't recommend them in the Senate. He had recommended them on the House side but then he got burned a little bit so he didn't recommend them on the Senate side. But, we still got them approved. We then went to the Conference Committee and they compromised, as often happens in the Conference Committee. They said "Alright, you birds. Let's see how many of you are really serious about this. We'll give you planning money to begin the planning for these projects so that they won't be delayed if they are needed.

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But you are going to have to risk the planning money, we aren't going to give you any state dollars. You are going to have to take it out of your own private money to do the planning. And if you do that, then you can move ahead with the planning."

Well, that sort of separated the men from the boys. And, we did that. We were deadly serious about it and we moved ahead and began the planning. After this, the General Assembly adjourned in February, and that was it. We went on with our planning. Some folks backed off when they realized there was a risk involved. The risk being that if the projects weren't approved later for construction, you would have spent your private money and had nothing to show for it except some plans that you couldn't build. Dormitories are built with revenue bonds because--which just means you go get a loan and pay it back for the construction and operation of the dorms out of the rents that students pay. So, there are no tax dollars involved. The planning would be repaid out of that loan. So, you wouldn't lose any money if it is approved. Anyway, after that session, the State Council of Higher Education started to take a close look at this. Saw enrollments across the state leveling off, and noticed that several of the requests were from urban institutions and they first said, "You know, we are going to have to be careful because if the urban schools have too much housing, the students are going to stop going to some--when there is a limited number of students--they will stop going to the rural schools and go to the urban schools which have the housing and then some of the rural schools are going to default on their bond. They won't be able to make their bond payments and that is really bordering on bankruptcy." It really was a complicated bonding issue, but it is a legitimate concern. The State Council was right to be concerned about that. So, they said when we came back for the 1980 session-State Council of Higher Education-in looking at our request to get the authority to issue the bonds to construct the dorm... said, "We are not going to recommend it because we think that it would jeopardize some of the other schools. We are not going to recommend dorms in any urban area." And VCU and George Mason were considering some and Norfolk State by then, was considering some. The problem at Norfolk State was instead of bonds, they were going to do it with a loan from HUD, but they didn't ask the State's permission which made the State angry. They went and got the HUD loan or the authority for the loan by bypassing the State. I am not saying that this was done intentionally, but that is what happened and the people at the State level was mad as sin when they found out about it. So now, Norfolk State was in the game. The State Council refused to recommend any of those. The State Council is independent of the Governor and General Assembly and is charged by law to make a recommendation both to the General Assembly and the Governor and they recommended against authorizing the revenue bonds.

Well, the Governor accepted that recommendation and he refused to recommend it in his budget to the General Assembly. So, it went into the 1980 session with two strikes against us. We appealed the State Council's recommendation arguing that, "You're right to be concerned about this, because if you over-build the urban areas, you

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would draw students off. But, at Old Dominion, (I'm not saying for any body else), at Old Dominion we're not building for more students; we're building for the students that we have right now, who can't get housing. So, we are not trying to add students, we are just trying to take care of about half of the students that we already have." That was a persuasive argument and that is what finally won it for us. We went to the 1980 session and it was bitter on the House side. We lost it. The other projects were pretty much rejected out of hand. But we got down to an important sub-committee, the Capital Outlay Subcommittee of House Appropriations, and we lost 3-2 on this. Bob Washington was doing an incredible job of fighting it. That's how close we came. We thought we would pull it off in the Senate, but the Senate decided not to mess with it since it was that close in the House and they figured that it would be a real fight like we had before. So, we came out--the one good thing was because of that close vote, the General Assembly said, "There's a problem in Tidewater. We need to take a close look at it. Anything that we vote this tight on, has got to be an issue that needs more examination. So, the Appropriations Committee authorized its Capital Outlay Subcommittee to come to Norfolk and see for themselves what the problem was. Well, they came down in May, a year ago--almost a year ago and took a hard look at our situation. We had them down at the same time that Harborfest was going on. It was a nice time of the year. We brought them out to campus and really showed them what we were talking about. I think that from that day on, Bob Washington had a good lead-up in turning that Committee around and indeed we got out of that Committee 5-0. The following January, even though the Governor didn't recommend us, the State Council didn't recommend us last fall, we came into that session and Delegate Washington introduced the bill with a bunch of co-patrons to get it for us, we got it 5-0 in the subcommittee and 20-0 in the appropriations committee and 93-0 in the House, unanimously all the way through and the Governor signed the bill, even though he had refused to recommend it in his budget.

There is a lot more went in there--but that--it took us three sessions of the General Assembly to get it. Today, we have it and we are finishing the planning and we will be at construction soon. We hope to be out to bid early this fall. Forgive the long story, but it is a long story. [laughs]

Taylor: But it is an interesting story.

Shufflebarger: We had a heck of a lot of help from the General Assembly, the Mayor, the City Manager and other council members, the Housing Authority, Alumni, the Board of Visitors made some dramatic appeals and all kinds of folks were involved. It just didn't happen overnight. And atremendous number of people were involved in fighting for that dormitory and the results paid off.

Ricky Adams, for instance, the President of the student body made a splendid presentation for the Appropriations Committee, arguing for the dorm, and faculty, students, and alumni and friends of the University. We just had a heck of a lot of good help.

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Taylor: So the dorm issue is "go" from here?

Shufflebarger: You got it.

Taylor: Where in the planning of the--where is the dorm going to be built?

Shufflebarger: It is going to be down, behind... and as part of the dormitory and apartment complex off of Powahatan. So, there are two phases of the Powahatan apartments down there and this mid-rise 616 bed dormitory down there immediately adjacent to that. So, just like Rogers and Gresham are one housing complex, there will be another one down there so on both edges of campus housing will exist.

Taylor: Like the dorm issue, Foreman Field got a lot of publicity. There seems to be a lot of problems with that. First of all, what is the University's position on Foreman Field? What do they see Foreman Field as?

Shufflebarger: Well, now let me tell you... I'm afraid that this is an even longer story that the other one. Can you stand another long story?

Taylor: Yes.

Shufflebarger: Ok. It goes back to the '30s when the campus was fairly small. Part of the depression (1935-36) and the Works Project--Progress Administration, which was building the WPA projects all around the country to get people--it was a federal program to give people employment. Foreman Field was just such a project. They built it with 8,250 seats on each side so there were 16,500 seats--two big sides of it and a field constructed and a tract around it and it was first class. There was no time deadline and all the labor you needed--the more people that worked the better. And the tract was probably the best in the world, when it was built. My father was a student here then and he saw them building some of it. He said that they went down five or six feet with layers of clay, sand, cinders; you know-just perfect. He said you could jump on it and bounce like a trampoline, the tract was so good. The field was perfectly crowned and for the time, the kind of stadium 16,600 and some seats made a great stadium. I think William and Mary and Virginia had the first game there. So, it was a big, big thing.

Well, you need to understand that Old Dominion was not legal from 1930 when it was founded until 1946. As far as the state knew, William and Mary wasn't doing anything in Norfolk. William and Mary was in Williamsburg. But, for those 16 years, we were our own school down here. The city had given us a building in exchange for ten scholarships. There was a campus going on down here and things were going quite well, thank you, but none of this was carried on the books of the state. Anyway, there wasn't great demand for the stadium. There was some demand, but not great demand until the '40s and it really wasn't til the end of World war II and with the GI Bill and people coming back that the stadium began to be popular. What happened in the 1950's was that the City of Norfolk signed a lease with Old Dominion--then the Norfolk Division--signed a lease, leasing the field the field on the weekends from Friday night to Sunday night for a dollar a year. But, in exchange, they did all the maintenance. There was a 25 year lease and it expired in 1975. Well a lot happened within

those 25 years with the expansion of the campus. In 1971, shortly after I came, we did--there had been three campus master plans, but they really weren't accurate. One of them was a dream kind of thing. We were going to go all the way to 38th Street and have a 500 acre campus and 35,000 students. It just wasn't realistic and didn't turn out to be. The folks who did it, I'm sure, did it in good faith. But anyway, we did a real tough campus master plan in '71. And what that revealed was that this [Foreman Field] was prime property on the campus and it's needed. Without a football team, we don't need a stadium and unless there is a compelling need for it, our inclination would be to tear it down.

There was a lot of talk at the time for building a regional stadium for all of the cities, have a 50 or 60,000 seats, attract a pro football team. There were franchises looking; the NFL was looking down here and it was not too long after the Neptunes had been a moderate success here--the football team. Anyway, it looked like the region might build it's own stadium and there wouldn't be any need for this one. We'll probably tear it down. So, we said that and folks understood that but there was no threat to tear down. But our plan showed that we didn't expect to keep it on after it wasn't needed anymore by the city and the Oyster Bowl and others-Norfolk State.

When we updated the plan in '76, we committed to update the plan to keep it fresh no longer than every five years to keep it a good working thing. We're updating it right now. In five years, a lot had changed, dramatically changed. Soccer was catching on, we had some crowds, five, six, seven thousand. Women's sports had really come to the fore, field hockey... and other things. We decided when we looked at it that we needed a small stadium. And the architect looked at it real hard and said, "Well now, we are planning some athletic space down at the southern end of campus, but you can't afford to build a small stadium. They just cost too much. Even a small one cost too much. It's a lot cheaper to renovate a little piece of Foreman Field for what you need." We said that sounded OK and made sense. So, at that time, I developed a plan with President Bugg and President Rollins support. Go to the City and said, "Look, we're gonna fix up our share. It looks like a regional stadium is not going to be built. Why don't the city and the people involved in using it for football agree to fixing up the rest?" The city had looked at that possibility. The lease had expired in 1975 (let me back up just a little bit) and I had negotiated a new one year lease that automatically renewed itself to keep us in business from '75 on. The City was really sort of eager to get out of Foreman Field. We were using it a lot more. Their maintenance bill, which was not doing the job, was running between $70,000 and $100,000 a year, which really meant that they were subsidizing the Oyster Bowl, Norfolk State Football, the high schools, and covering our maintenance costs. But you could look at it another way and say that was fair rent by giving to them on weekends. Anyway... the City was subsidizing and things were getting tight in the city budget, they were ready to get out from under that subsidy and they--the staff was favorably disposed towards investing the money to fix up the rest and getting out from under it; turning it back over to us not leasing it from us then we ran it. So, they'd get out from under having to maintain it. It looked like a plan was going to come off to do that. Things got even tighter and the City tried to just get out of the lease and not put in any money. But we caught them on a technicality, I guess this was in the Spring of 1979. We said, "Uh, uh, you don't get out that quickly, you have to give us more notice than that. You can't just dump it on us to maintain it on that short a notice." So, a year later or six months later,

they gave formal notice that they wanted out and we let them out of it.

Here we were stuck with a stadium that we didn't need. We only needed the west side of the stands. 85--8200 seats were all that we needed and that we ever needed. We had already gone to the General Assembly and gotten support... for a revenue bond to renovate what we needed. The cost back in '77 when we looked at it was a million six ($1.6 million). A million of which we would be doing to fix up the field and the west side of the stands, $600,000 to finish up the rest.

Well, to make a long story short, here we were with our authority to go do a million dollars worth of fixing up and nobody could find the other $600,000. The city didn't want to do it; Norfolk State didn't want to do it; nobody came forward. We said, "Fine. If you don't want to, don't do it. We're just going to tear it down, because we are not going to leave it there in bad shape." Finally, late this fall, Norfolk State came forward and said, "Hey, we'll apply for a revenue bond just like y'all did' to fix up our part of it. We'll ask the city for some help because, by then, it was clear that the cost had gone up. The cost figures were almost four years old. We got new cost figures and frankly it had doubled. Instead of $1.6, million, it was now at $3.2 million. So, now our costs had gone to about $2 million, which the board just approved last week--the board meeting last week, they had approved the revenue--our request for the revenue bond to go up to $2 million. So, we'll fix our portion and the City has tentatively indicated that they will come up with $400,000 and Norfolk State $700,000 out of its revenue bonds... to finish up the rest of it and during the General Assembly, Bob Washington and I adjusted the authority to give the permission to do all of that. That's really all the State involvement is; a permissive legislation. So, the authority was there, but people had to choose to exercise it. So, it looks right now and it could change, we are right in the middle of it that we'll go by May 15, we'll have the final word that every body has put in their money to fix it up for football.

This is a long rambling story and there is more to it than that, but I don't know... it's hard to explain it. It's been going on for a good while.

Taylor: Mr. Shufflelbarger, how do you see the financial future of Old Dominion University?

Shufflebarger: It has been a long slow process over the last 10 or 15 years to try to catch up. This... we grew far faster. We started off behind giving out some of that history I was telling you about, that the State didn't know that we were around until 1946. And this place has grown so dramatically that it--and starting off behind, the State never could catch up with the funding. And that is not all the State's fault, it was a phenomenon all over the country on newer Universities that are coming along and growing like "Topsy". I remember 15 or 16 years ago, it depended on who flunked out more students as to who was the biggest school in the State. It was between RPI and Old Dominion College, whichever one flunked out a few more lost. They were in second

place. Each school was 8800-9000 at the time and the two biggest schools. We slowed our growth dramatically. Holding admission standards and this kind of things. Some other schools went more to an open admission and grew dramatically. But even with our slowing of growth, we've got over 15,000 now. The funding--it was difficult for the funding to catch up. It's been a long, slow battle in the last 10 or 11 years, but we are doggoned close to catching up. We are not there yet, but we we have closed a lot of that gap.

At the same time, things are tightening up on the national level, at the state level, at the local level. It was first felt probably most dramatically at the local level. But it is true at the state level too. Revenue is... demands for revenues are increasing and revenues aren't increasing as quickly. So things are going to be tight. They already are tight. It's one of those good news/bad news things. The good news is that we know now how to deal with tight budgets because we have been doing it for years, but the bad news is that they really are there and you have to do it. But, we are accustomed to that and we made adjustments; almost a million dollars worth of adjustments this year because of inflation. It drove up a lot of costs, but we really had no control over it. Even though we've got energy conservation going on a pretty significant basis, the utility bills are over $400,000 over budget. We have to go get that somewhere and we did just that and it was painful. When I came, I think that we were kind a 12 million-dollar operation. This year we are a $40 million operation this year and a $36 million dollar E&G budget. So that $1 million isn't quite as great a proportion, it still hurt like hell, don't get me wrong, but it is in the manageable range. You realize that you are not killing the place with a $1 million cut. It hurts, you know. A lot of your costs are fixed. You can't cut unless you fire people. 83 or 84% of our budget is people. That is the nature of education. [Inaudible sentence] Anyway, all of that is a rambling way of saying that we are managing all right now, thank you. Tight, but we're managing.

The future says that you are not going to be able to do a lot of new things and this is true all over. Any new things you do are going to have to be done out of the ashes of old things. If you want a new program, you probably are going to have to look down and look at your weakest program or your least strong program and cut it out in order to do something new. So, we are entering an area of trade-offs. The tough thing for us to do will be to try and finish the last of the catching up at the same time we face the leveling off. And that is going to be very hard to do. I think that we can do it. I'm optimistic because we do have good support for this university and I think it's only getting better. President Rollins wrote an article for the Alumni Magazine not long ago that said our growth and support has paralleled the growth and esteem in which the Eastern Virginia Delegation is now held. I think that they hold now 12 major committee chairmanships. So, there's a lot of legislative clout that has come to Eastern Virginia. Our fortunes have risen with them. So, I think we've got that support.

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But, don't--don't be deceived; things are going to be tight. I think we'll be in a good solid position. Having to make very tough decisions but in a good position compared to some places that are going to have to make terrible decisions. We may well face closing some institutions here in Virginia, but this won't be one of them and our decisions will be of a different kind. How do we keep the best programs going, and it may sometimes be at the expense of some of those that aren't as strong.

Taylor: Do you see the tuition rates steadily increasing over the years?

Shufflebarger: The State has adopted a 70/30 formula, which is a very, very good thing. Because it says that while a student is--will be expected to pay 30% for his or her education the State will look to fund the other 70%. And that is a very healthy thing. It's an attempt to establish equity. And Old Dominion has benefited dramatically from that. When I came here 11 years ago, I think that students were paying something like 48% of the bill. Okay, now we have gotten it down to 30% and I think that the student is bearing a far, fairer share of the cost. But let's talk about a budget. Let's say it's a $100.00 budget this year. With what inflation is doing and as we make progress on catching up so the budget goes to $200.00. In a sense, as I have told you, it's almost tripled over a length of time. Let's say that it doubles over the next five or six years. Well, instead of the $30.00 the students is going have to come up with $60.00. So yes, it is inevitable that there will be tuition increases. It gets far worse when you are in inflation like this because that inflationary cost is passed to the student and the student bears the same share as the university, because the growth in the place probably isn't doubled. You may have to double the budget to hold even. That is the tragedy of inflation. But you go double digit in inflation for five, six, seven, eight years and you can double the budget of the institution and have not a bit more money to spend on the programs. So in that respect, I am sorry to say that the news I think, continued increases of...of tuition. It is difficult to face--it's tough because Virginia has been one--has had a tuition higher than the national average, and among the highest in the southern states. The southern average is higher than the national average, but averages can be deceiving. The Northest is way the heck up from everybody. The Midwest and West lower than most places. Most of the educational institutions in the country are concentrated in the East.

Taylor: Do you see an increase in enrollment.

Shufflebarger: No, I think I told you about our campus master plan in '71. It pretty well plans for an institution of about 16,000 and we are rapidly getting there. I don't think you are going to see an institution of 20,000-25,000 here. I think that we are just about reaching the level that we think is appropriate for Old Dominion and we'll hold it there.

Taylor: Well, thank you for your time.

Shufflebarger: My pleasure. Its always easy to give a lot of hot air. But it is fun.

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