MOSCOW — When Ernest Hartung walks away from his desk for the Christmas holidays, he will leave behind an eventful and productive 16 years at the University of Idaho.
UI president from 1965 to 1977, Hartung saw the university through those turbulent years, though they left Idaho relatively unscathed. And as UI Foundation executive director from 1977 until today, he has watched the foundation’s assets grow from $2 to $12.5 million.
Hartung turns 65 Jan. 20, and will begin taking accumulated leave time after the holidays. He has planned to retire in 1982 ever since he resigned as president in 1977.
Four-and-a-half years ago, Hartung made a clean break with his past as top UI administrator. Except for a few rare occasions, Hartung said he has not been consulted by his successor, President Richard Gibb.
“That was the only way it could operate,” Hartung said in an interview Wednesday. As foundation director, he spends much of his time away from campus. “I felt very strongly that the foundation was a means by which I could serve the university, without being a presence on campus.
“I really think Dick Gibb feels I’ve stayed out of the way pretty much, which was my intent and the only fair way to handle it as far as his administration.”
The achievements of his early years at the university are among his proudest. Hartung is known as the president who brought faculty governance to the university, and who also helped develop student government.
Across the country, faculty members had little say over student regulations or university matters, Hartung said. “That was a pattern in American universities and I think that was one of the things that led to the troubles we had in the ’60s.”
“There was no linkage. And so you had this terrible schism between the students on one hand because they felt neglected. And the administration was simply sitting there making rules. Students were getting the brunt of it, and the teachers were off here teaching.
“Faculties should be the ameliorating thing in there. After all, between students and faculty, that is what everything is about. The administration is just there to make sure things happen.
“When the shooting occurred at Kent State, students were not only shocked, but horrified that Americans soldiers would shoot American students. That was a tremendously traumatic thing.”
To help students and others vent their frustrations, Hartung’s administration organized a rally on the administration lawn. The day ended with a candlelight parade.
“If there hadn’t been a mechanism like that... if there weren’t those outlets available, I think we might have seen trashings,” Hartung said. “I think students were mad enough that they would have gone down to the gym where the ROTC was headquartered, and they’d have blown things up, they would’ve smashed things. It was that kind of feeling of rage and frustration.”
Hartung still does not believe a UI students was involved in the firebombing of the Navy-ROTC building in the late 1960s. The incident seemed connected to other such incidents in Lewiston, he said.
(On the night following the Kent State incident, trucks at the Lewiston National Guard armory were put to the torch. Joe Schock, a Washington State University dropout, was charged with the crime and fled the country when released on his own recognizance.)
Students in the late 1960s and early 70s had much muscle, Hartung said. If the students objected to an administration proposal, the Board of Regents would not approve it. “I don’t think many students understood that the students did have that kind of clout.”
When the Vietnam war ended, and the battle had been fought on the campuses, students were unsure of what to do. “There was a lot of diffidence there. They didn’t know quite What they wanted to do.”
By 1975, there seemed to be a revolution in student thinking. Jobs and careers became uppermost in their lives, Hartung said. But the students of the late 1970s were different from those in the 1950s in that the jobs they chose had to make sense; they had to fit in with the students’ values.
The four years Hartung has spent as the foundation’s director have been fruitful ones for the university’s fund-raising arm.
This fall, the foundation celebrated its 10th anniversary, but “for the first four or five years, the foundation really didn’t amount to much.”
“We spun our wheels for a long time before we could get down to business.” The UI Board of Regents was not certain of its responsibilities and obligations for handling the UI Consolidated Trust — the money that was raised — and it took several years to resolve all the ambiguities and legal questions, Hartung said.
In the meantime, the foundation lost some of its good initial directors, he said.
The UI Foundation in its early years asked for money for specific projects. That served two purposes. It enlisted the support of people with money for a novice foundation and it thwarted any legislators who might have considered the foundation money as a direct supplement to the state appropriation.
But the legislature now seems to understand the function of the foundation in raising extra money for the university.
“There is no question we are defeating ourselves if we let the foundation money be used as offsets, so the state legislature says go get it yourselves and we’ll cut your appropriation.”
The philosophy of the foundation is changing, Hartung said. “We’re all ultimately heading toward the day when the foundation can raise large amounts of unrestricted money so that there will be just a big kitty there,” for answering the needs of the UI president and deans.
The foundation must be able to hire a specialist to handle “deferred giving” and “estate planning,” contemporary terms in development arms of universities.
The economy is slowing things down, Hartung said. The forest product industry that was initially supportive of the Arboretum project, retrenched when times became difficult several years ago. That industry then gave directly to the college of Forest, Wildlife and Range Sciences, and now is having trouble doing even that, he said.
The assets of the foundation grew from about $2 million in 1974-75 to $12.5 million this year, partly because of the direct cultivation of UI supporters with money.
“It has taken a fair amount of individual visitation and cultivation... and trying to match up the interests of the potential donors with the projects we have.”
Investment manager Eugene Slade has invested the money in a way that has helped it grow, Hartung said.
The UI Foundation has a good footing now, and Hartung said he sees no reason to prolong his tenure as director.
His successor has not been chosen, and it may be awhile yet. UI officials recently offered the job to one finalist, but were turned down. UI officials have not yet decided whether to reopen the search, or choose from among the applicants they have. The search began last summer.
A number of buildings were constructed on the UI campus during Hartung’s tenure as president. They included the Hartung Theater, Art and Architecture Building, Buchanan Engineering Laboratory, College of Education Building and KIVA, Women’s Health Education Building, a new wing on the Agricultural Science Building and the University Classroom Center, the ASUI-Kibbie Dome, and the Law School.
Of those, the most difficult to build was the Law School because of a debate over whether to build it at Boise or at Moscow.
During Gibb’s tenure, building funds have not been as available. The east end addition to the Kibbie Dome now being built is the first major construction.
This is due to the fact that Boise State University, a new state institution in the early 1970s, has soaked up much of the money Hartung said. Also the state’s permanent building fund is about the same as it was in 1969, said Hartung.
When he retires, Hartung plans to stay in Moscow. He plans to work in a new UI mentor program as a volunteer, to help design and plant trees in the Arboretum and to continue taking care of UI students horses, on his land near Moscow.
Hartung also owns about 60 to 70 acres of wilderness in the Selkirks north of Sandpoint, and plans to develop a tree farm to leave to his children. He also plans to update a 1944 book on “Statutes and Decisions Relating to the University of Idaho,” written by former UI President Harrison Dale.
This story was published in the Dec. 10, 1981, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.
