The single person most responsible for the harsh, discriminatory campus environment that began at BYU in the 1950s was Ernest L. Wilkinson, a rabid anti-Communist and arch-conservative lawyer, who became BYU president in October 1951. He could be a vicious and tyrannical man (he himself admitted that he was "too blunt, not tactful with people, and impatient"), disliked by many of his faculty (who pejoratively called him "Ernie the Attorney" behind his back), and who especially delighted in humiliating women, harping ad infinitum on the length of their skirts. He was notorious for giving bone-crushing handshakes to young female students, bringing them to their knees in pain, as over-compensation for his extremely small stature. A child of his vice president Earl Crockett recounted to me in 2002 that sometime around 1970 Wilkinson and then church president Harold B. Lee were at a formal dinner in Hawaii. Wilkinson held out a chair for his wife, Alice, to sit on, and then as she started to sit, as a "joke" he pulled the chair out from under her so that she hit the floor and was thoroughly humiliated in front of all those important people in attendance. President Lee was "horrified and held it against him forever afterward" and Wilkinson in essence hit a "glass ceiling" with the church. When Wilkinson left BYU in 1971, the well-known lawyer expected to help set up the new J. Reuben Clark Law School on campus, but instead he was asked only to write a centennial history of the school. Wilkinson therefore privately retained three out of five of his BYU secretaries to help him write his memoirs and to keep "track of all the dirt on the general authorities that could be unearthed", ostensibly to help advance his own "career". Wilkinson obviously learned the power of keeping exhaustive files on his "opponents" during his years at BYU baiting homosexuals. While subsequent BYU presidents have later become General Authorities, Wilkinson tellingly never joined their ranks.
While I doubt that such behavior is currently wide spread at BYU, a couple of items caught my interest. First, is how Mr. Wilkinson rose to power and how he maintained that power, even in the face of pulling the chair out from underneath his wife at a formal dinner and initiating a spy ring. Would these not be fatal faux pas at any other major university? Finally that part about maintaining files about the dirt on the General Authorities really raised some red flags with me.
The single person most responsible for the harsh, discriminatory campus environment that began at BYU in the 1950s was Ernest L. Wilkinson, a rabid anti-Communist and arch-conservative lawyer, who became BYU president in October 1951. He could be a vicious and tyrannical man (he himself admitted that he was "too blunt, not tactful with people, and impatient"), disliked by many of his faculty (who pejoratively called him "Ernie the Attorney" behind his back), and who especially delighted in humiliating women, harping ad infinitum on the length of their skirts. He was notorious for giving bone-crushing handshakes to young female students, bringing them to their knees in pain, as over-compensation for his extremely small stature. A child of his vice president Earl Crockett recounted to me in 2002 that sometime around 1970 Wilkinson and then church president Harold B. Lee were at a formal dinner in Hawaii. Wilkinson held out a chair for his wife, Alice, to sit on, and then as she started to sit, as a "joke" he pulled the chair out from under her so that she hit the floor and was thoroughly humiliated in front of all those important people in attendance. President Lee was "horrified and held it against him forever afterward" and Wilkinson in essence hit a "glass ceiling" with the church. When Wilkinson left BYU in 1971, the well-known lawyer expected to help set up the new J. Reuben Clark Law School on campus, but instead he was asked only to write a centennial history of the school. Wilkinson therefore privately retained three out of five of his BYU secretaries to help him write his memoirs and to keep "track of all the dirt on the general authorities that could be unearthed", ostensibly to help advance his own "career". Wilkinson obviously learned the power of keeping exhaustive files on his "opponents" during his years at BYU baiting homosexuals. While subsequent BYU presidents have later become General Authorities, Wilkinson tellingly never joined their ranks.
While I doubt that such behavior is currently wide spread at BYU, a couple of items caught my interest. First, is how Mr. Wilkinson rose to power and how he maintained that power, even in the face of pulling the chair out from underneath his wife at a formal dinner and initiating a spy ring. Would these not be fatal faux pas at any other major university? Finally that part about maintaining files about the dirt on the General Authorities really raised some red flags with me.
This guy sounds like J Edgar Hoover -
(the irony was intentional)
And crawling on the planet's face Some insects called the human race Lost in time And lost in space...and meaning
The above quote is a very harsh and one sided view of Ernest Wilkinson. I don't know where it came from. Prince's McKay book does a decent job with Wilkenson. And, yes, this kind of power control and one-upsmanship occurs at almost every major university.
Wilkinson did a lot of great things for BYU, moving it from an unaccredited college to a major university, building a major football stadium, fieldhouse and many classroom buildings. He was a driven man fueled by a powerful ego. But, I didn't like him much. For a lot of different reasons.
rcrocket wrote:The above quote is a very harsh and one sided view of Ernest Wilkinson. I don't know where it came from. Prince's McKay book does a decent job with Wilkenson. And, yes, this kind of power control and one-upsmanship occurs at almost every major university.
Wilkinson did a lot of great things for BYU, moving it from an unaccredited college to a major university, building a major football stadium, fieldhouse and many classroom buildings. He was a driven man fueled by a powerful ego. But, I didn't like him much. For a lot of different reasons.
I agree. The book was great. It was fair and balanced when looking at Ernest Wilkinson. He did not seem like a very nice man and was very ambitious. But you give a good summary of some of the very good things he did as well. Another book, A bio of Lowell Bennion, I think give further insite intro Wilkinson and is again I think fair and balanced. One thing I think we need to understand is that the 1950's was a very different world from the one we live in today.
rcrocket wrote:The above quote is a very harsh and one sided view of Ernest Wilkinson. I don't know where it came from. Prince's McKay book does a decent job with Wilkenson. And, yes, this kind of power control and one-upsmanship occurs at almost every major university.
Wilkinson did a lot of great things for BYU, moving it from an unaccredited college to a major university, building a major football stadium, fieldhouse and many classroom buildings. He was a driven man fueled by a powerful ego. But, I didn't like him much. For a lot of different reasons.
I agree. The book was great. It was fair and balanced when looking at Ernest Wilkinson. He did not seem like a very nice man and was very ambitious. But you give a good summary of some of the very good things he did as well. Another book, A bio of Lowell Bennion, I think give further insite intro Wilkinson and is again I think fair and balanced. One thing I think we need to understand is that the 1950's was a very different world from the one we live in today.
Indeed. Wilkinson didn't seem too out of place with his anti-communist and anti-homosexual stance; that stuff was heard all over the U.S. I remember as a little boy seeing my neighbors build bomb shelters; the red scare was huge. I remember following the HUAC hearings as a little boy and hearing Cronkite talk about them as if they were no big deal.
Ernie just took it into the 60s when it no longer was all that fashionable.
Wilkinson therefore privately retained three out of five of his BYU secretaries to help him write his memoirs and to keep "track of all the dirt on the general authorities that could be unearthed", ostensibly to help advance his own "career". Wilkinson obviously learned the power of keeping exhaustive files on his "opponents" during his years at BYU baiting homosexuals.
Finally that part about maintaining files about the dirt on the General Authorities really raised some red flags with me.
Man, I'd love to take a peek at those files.
Derek Zoolander: Where are Mugatu's secret files?
Hansel: They're *in* the computer.
"And yet another little spot is smoothed out of the echo chamber wall..." Bond
