THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 14, 1995 TAG: 9508140142
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Long : 104 lines
For a while last week, leadership at Elizabeth City State University vanished into a vortex of administrative confusion after the sudden resignation of Chancellor Jimmy R. Jenkins Jr.
Vice chancellors, department heads and academics huddled in seclusion off campus to sort out the events that followed Jenkins' Aug. 3 resignation letter to University of North Carolina President C.D. Spangler Jr., in Chapel Hill.
ECSU is one of six predominantly black schools in the 16-member UNC system, and Jenkins' resignation is the third to be submitted this year by chancellors of the African-American institutions.
Jenkins and a few aides remained in Hilton Head, S.C., where the ECSU chancellor spent the week attending a convention of Equal Opportunity proponents.. His resignation is effective Aug. 31.
In Chapel Hill, Spangler continued his efforts to paint in noncontroversial colors Jenkins' abrupt departure after 12 years at the helm of ECSU.
Spangler told the UNC board of governors Friday that Jenkins ``leaves the (ECSU) institution in far better shape than he found it, having helped to transform the campus and to attract much stronger students.''
But ECSU administrators and faculty members who are Jenkins' loyalists privately said a convulsion of change is ahead for the black campus.
``There's no one here - nobody - who can speak for the university,'' one of the harassed secretaries in the chancellor's office said Friday as telephones jangled incessantly.
``In fact there's no one here to make any kind of a statement,'' the secretary added. Even Yvonne Wagner, in charge of ECSU public relations, was absent all week.
Conspicuously missing in action was Paul F. Vandergrift Jr., the ex-Marine trouble-shooter from Chapel Hill who months ago was sent to ECSU by the UNC board of governors to act as ``assistant to the chancellor.''
Vandergrift moved into an executive office suite and it soon became apparent that he had a command-level job.
Disputes between Jenkins and Vandergrift have been widely reported, and a climactic argument between the two men seemed to precede Jenkins' resignation. Many faculty members at ECSU said privately last week that they expected Vandergrift to be named temporary chancellor.
``I will appoint an interim chancellor to take the job after Dr. Jenkins steps down on August 31,'' Spangler told the board of governors Friday.
The interim chancellor will be replaced by a permanent chancellor after the ECSU board of trustees completes a search for candidates. The candidate selection will be forwarded to the UNC board of governors, which will vote on Jenkins' permanent successor.
Joni Worthington, a spokesperson for UNC at Chapel Hill, said ``it will be months before this procedure is completed.''
Spangler told the governors that he had ``already talked with Mr. Stanley Green, chairman of the board of trustees at ECSU, about this process and the important roles he, other trustees and the search committee will play.''
On Friday the name of Janice McKenzie Cole, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, was added to the list of those who may be in line to succeed Jenkins. Cole, a former District Court judge in Elizabeth City, has had a notable career in law enforcement and government.
Others being considered are Ronald G. Penny Jr., a former attorney for ECSU, who is Gov. James B. Hunt's state personnel boss in Raleigh, and Vandergrift.
Under Jenkins, ECSU's payroll and economic clout in Elizabeth City have grown steadily and the departing chancellor has acquired noteworthy political influence because of his reliable production of mostly Democratic voters among his students and alumni.
Jenkins' administration at ECSU has often been in the news, and in recent years ECSU controversies have sometimes polarized the Albemarle community. Several years ago 26 of Elizabeth City's more prominent white leaders wrote a letter to Spangler, asking the UNC president to remove Jenkins from ECSU.
More recently, two white female professors charged Jenkins with running a racist administration that discriminated against white women on the faculty. One of the women, Professor Carol S. Kerr, a child-education instructor, was fired by Jenkins and then ordered reinstated by the UNC board of governors in Chapel Hill. Kerr subsequently quit, claiming that she was treated intolerably when she returned to ECSU.
The case of Kerr is before the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Raleigh. Her complaint was recently ordered restudied by the EEOC.
Meanwhile, Jenkins' most persistent critic opened a new attack on ECSU this month.
Professor Carol O'Dell, a mathematics professor whose contract was not renewed last year, on Aug. 1 filed a 35-page appeal for reinstatement with the UNC board of governors. She is now head of the mathematics department at Chowan College in Murfreesboro.
``Sure I want to be reinstated,'' said O'Dell recently. ``Someday I'd like to be a vice-chancellor at ECSU; I think I could make it a better school. ECSU can be a great university.''
O'Dell's appeal was hand-delivered to the office of the UNC board of governors as the first step in her possible reinstatement.
It was O'Dell's charge that Jenkins had made ``racist'' remarks at a faculty meeting two years ago that began the most widespread criticism of Jenkins and the ECSU administration since Jenkins took over the chancellorship.
In subsequent complaints to the ECSU and UNC administrations, O'Dell charged that her rights of free speech and other traditional academic freedoms were violated during her tenure as a mathematics teacher. She said her teaching contract was not renewed because of ECSU's racist and sexist attitudes toward white female teachers. by CNB