Quiet Declarations

Gee’s email to the student body

Press conference video part 1
Press conference video part 2
Press conference video part 3

Tennessean coverage:
Gee leaves legacy of VU innovation
Gee’s energy, leadership will be missed
Gee slideshow (an excellent summary of Gee’s accomplishments)

Implications for athletics:
Vandy athletes will stick to plan
Does this mean Gee’s ‘war’ is over?
Gee was good guy for Vandy

As you may have noticed, I have strong sympathies toward Dr. Gee.  He was hired during my first year of college and took the helm during my second.  My closest interactions with him were in student life, which it’s fair to say he completely revitalized — particularly for non-Greek students in search of a community.  If memory serves, in his first three years Gee improved the freshman retention rate from 76% to 95%, improved selectivity from a 68% to a 45% acceptance rate (while simultaneously increasing the yield each year), and increased the Homecoming budget from $4,000 to $110,000, to name a few examples.

I have my disagreements with the Chancellor.  While I wholeheartedly support the move to a residential college (now College Halls) system, I think the lack of communication with constituencies in the early stages of the plan was unnecessary and harmful, and I believe the process by which the initial plan was devised was frankly disingenuous.  I am firmly convinced that the decision to change the name of Confederate Memorial Hall was a very well crafted (and successful!) public relations stunt to improve diversity, in spite of the dubiousness of the University’s legal right to do so.  I also believe that Gee did very little to improve the abysmally low staff morale, and it could be argued that several key personnel decisions worsened morale significantly and drove several beloved employees from the University.

That said, I believe many of the critcisms of Gee are wholly without merit.  Gee never intended to use residential colleges to destroy the Greek system, he’s not a soulless person for standing his ground on paying employees a fair market wage as opposed to a charity living wage, restructuring the athletics department was an outstanding administrative and symbolic action, and I think the $400,000 renovation to Gee’s university-owned chancellor’s residence is a great investment given that Gee used the home as part of his efforts to raise over a billion dollars for the University.

Gee’s most important contribution, though, was to student culture.  He understood his value as the motivational public face of the institution, and he lived every day as an intentionally-crafted caricature of himself.  He understood his weaknesses and his strengths, and to that extent I believe he was a truly person-centered leader.  I don’t know the background behind his abrupt and frankly disruptive decision to move to Ohio State, but he was overall a tremendous asset to Vanderbilt over his several years, and I wish him well.