Rift Began Early, Glynn Says Fired Gonzaga President Points To Board Of Trustees’ ‘Inner Group’

The fired president of Gonzaga University said Thursday he fell victim to an “inner group” of big-money donors who dominate the school’s board of trustees.

“They did not share the values I’ve talked about since I got here,” said the Rev. Edward Glynn, who was forced to resign last week after only nine months on the job. “Those were a shared commitment, shared governance and shared responsibility.”

Glynn said he struggled “from the first meeting” with some trustees who had “their own ideas of how this university should be run.”

He said the inner group of four or five members formed a “de facto executive committee who decided they owned the university” because of large donations of money and the amount of time they had served on the board.

The group exercised undue control and influence over other trustees, said Glynn, 61.

One of the trustees Glynn said belongs to that group, current board Chairman James Jundt, denied those accusations.

He insisted that Glynn’s removal resulted from “a gradual realization by the board that Father Glynn did not have the managerial skills needed to run Gonzaga University.”

Glynn’s previous experience as a university president was a 12-year stint at St. Peter’s College in New Jersey that serves about 3,400 students. Gonzaga’s enrollment is about 4,500.

Jundt said Glynn misunderstood the relationship between the board and president. “He would not accept the fact that the president worked for the board. He made clear, from early on, that he would try to change the way this board operated.”

Beyond Jundt, Glynn said the inner group includes former board chairmen Donald Herak and Duff Kennedy and board member Harry Magnuson. All are longtime board members and all have been significant donors to Gonzaga’s endowment and other programs.

They can continue serving on the board indefinitely because trustees no longer have a term limit, thanks to a change in bylaws agreed to nine years ago.

After a nationwide search, GU’s 29-member board chose Glynn last spring to succeed the Rev. Bernard Coughlin, who served for 22 years as president of the private Catholic university.

Glynn, who had served as vice president at Gonzaga 20 years ago, said he soon learned that GU’s current trustees engaged in “micro-managing” both minor and important decisions.

“I realized, from our first board meeting, that it would be hard for me to be president under these conditions,” Glynn said.

The initial flap was a dispute over where Coughlin, who had become the university chancellor, would work.

Trustees had not realized school officials were constructing an office for Coughlin in the Administration Building. Trustees preferred putting his office in the Foley Library. Jundt said they wanted to avoid putting Coughlin on the same floor as Glynn so he wouldn’t be working in the shadow of his predecessor.

The trustees prevailed, but both the Administration Building office and the one in the library have gone unused while Coughlin continues recovering from heart surgery.

The episode left Glynn irritated that trustees had intervened in a matter normally managed by staff and administrators.

Two months later, a more serious scrape erupted over how much the school would raise tuition for the 1997-98 year.

Glynn had worked with the trustees’ finance committee and said the tuition hike should be 6 percent.

Jundt took quick exception to that proposal during a board meeting, insisting the school could not keep raising its rates higher than the inflation rate.

Glynn regarded Jundt’s treatment of the finance committee as dismissive and domineering. Jundt said Glynn didn’t realize that trustees, for several years, have hotly debated tuition hikes during their meetings.

The tuition topic was so important that Jundt felt all board members needed to debate it at that point, not just vote on a recommendation from a five-person committee.

Jundt insists that the smaller tuition hike was the right choice “so that we don’t price ourselves beyond the means of many families.”

But the meeting left Glynn feeling angry that the board members were challenging his efforts. “He let it be known that he thought we had acted beyond our authority,” said Jundt.

Jundt said he and others hoped to reach some reconciliation with Glynn right up to last Friday’s board meeting.

“But officially, Ed lost a lot of support among the board because he didn’t show much interest in those efforts,” said Jundt. “In fact, he only showed interest in the five days before the board meeting.”

Glynn said he learned from other Jesuits on campus a week before the recent board meeting that his job was at risk.

He said he called Jundt to ask if a no-confidence vote was going to be taken on his performance.

“He told me he didn’t expect that to happen. But if it did, the majority of the board would ask for my resignation,” Glynn said.

“I knew he hadn’t talked to the other board members by that point, so the poker game was on.”

Jundt’s version of the call goes this way: Glynn asked if the rumors of a vote on his future were true. Jundt told him he wouldn’t discuss rumors.

Jundt also told Glynn over the phone he had not conducted a poll or lobbied other trustees on a decision affecting Glynn’s future.

But he told him at the time he had been receiving comments indicating Glynn’s job was not secure.

“The truth is,” Jundt said, “I never did have a sure sense of how the trustees felt about this question until about 15 minutes before the vote was taken.

“I want to make it clear this decision was not done precipitously,” said Jundt. The discussion leading to firing Glynn lasted four hours.

“The vote was not close. It was not 13 to 12 against him. There was a very large margin in the vote.”

Jundt said a recent condemnation by GU faculty members of the action would not likely prod the board to rehire Glynn.

“Speaking for myself only, I’d say the chance of that happening is zero,” Jundt said.

Glynn, who plans to leave campus Saturday, said his plans are uncertain. He will return first to the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus.

“And eventually this summer, I’ll just take it easy sitting beside the Jersey shore.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo