President Otis Singletary Birthday

Today, October 31 would have been President Otis A. Singletary's 97th birthday.

Otis Singletary led a most interesting life and career.  Fortunately, during the last years of his life we spent hours recording his oral history.  The interviews contains many serious moments as well as some very funny comments from the veteran educator and administrator.  

After winning numerous teaching awards as a professor, Dr. Singletary valued the close relationships he had developed with students over the years.  As UK president during the unrest of the Vietnam era, he had a hard time dealing with the changing student culture that seemed to distance him from the students.

President Singletary with students in 1975.

For example, the following is an excerpt from my interview with him recorded July 7, 1988:

Birdwhistell:  Students sometimes called you inaccessible.  Was there any way, looking back on it now, you could have done differently at that point to try and make the students feel that, as president, you were more accessible to their needs?

SINGLETARY:  Well, I've always had the feeling that that's what you use when you don't have anything else.  Just say somebody's inaccessible.  Matter of fact, I was accessible to anybody who came in there.  I guess, though, what I should've done is what most people do.  Make a public statement.  If I ever took another job, I would have made such a statement, "My door is open!"  I never bothered to say that because I think it's empty and bankrupt because your door isn't always open.  It's closed quite often because you've got work to do!

But, you should say that and then they'll forgive you.  Everybody will go in and say his door is open.  So, yes, I would do that as a matter of pure cynicism next time around.  I would say, yes, my door is open.

If you prepare a manual for new college presidents, tell them to always say to the students, "My door is open."