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The Canwell hearings...
The Canwell hearings. And those had just about run their course, but it really damaged and hurt the University and the University was in the process of recovering . … In those days, interestingly enough, there was pretty good support for the University. At that time, the whole idea in the Legislature was to provide sufficient support to the universities to keep tuition extremely low. And if they could have found enough money to do it, they probably would have gone back to the theme of the early days of statehood. When they moved to the new campus from downtown, the bill that authorized a new campus said, among other things, “that tuition for all bona fide residents of the state of Washington shall be free.” They understood the broad importance of higher education, I think, to a much higher degree than legislatures do today.
 Evans and his dad at the 1948 UW graduation.
The competition for tax money has grown extraordinarily. During the time when I was in the Legislature, we had prisons, but nowhere near to the same degree did we incarcerate people. We have gone on a binge. Everybody loves the idea of “three strikes and you are out” and being tough on crime. Sometimes they don’t understand the price you pay for being that tough on crime—incarcerating people who might be helped better by treatment or something else. Every dollar you put there, you have to take away from something else. For every person you put in a Washington state prison you could cover three tuitions at the UW. To me, that is a bad trade. The other thing is the cost of health care. It is just consuming tax money to the extent that everything else is in trouble.
As governor, you accomplished many things, but if you had to limit it to one thing in higher education, what would it be?
The most significant thing that happened in the 12 years that I was governor was the development of the state community college system. When I first became governor, there was a flood of war babies who were now going through high school and facing higher education. We did not have nearly enough space for them in the four-year institutions.
I might say that in retrospect, looking at where the community college system is today, I think we may have gone too far. The community college system is so big, so broad, so consuming of tax money. That has really kept back some of the necessary support of four-year institutions and post-graduate work that now is an economic necessity. So priorities have changed in 30 years and we haven’t yet responded.
One of my most vivid higher-education memories from my days in your office came during those antiwar demonstrations around 1970. You were in constant contact with the UW. Could you reflect on what was happening?
There was a growing tide of opposition to the war in Vietnam and it was primarily among the young. After all, they were the ones who were fighting the war. There were increasing demonstrations. When I see a demonstration today on the University campus and the students think it is a big demonstration, I just smile. It is nothing like the almost 10,000 students who one day marched to the federal courthouse downtown and used the freeway to do it. It was a massive demonstration, but one that was, for the most part, very peaceful. A couple of students at the end of the march threw bricks through a couple of plate glass windows downtown. The news that night made it sound like 10,000 students from the University trashed downtown.
 Evans as an ROTC cadet during World War II. Photos courtesy of Dan Evans.
Who were the leaders you were working with at the University of Washington in those days?
Charles Odegaard was president and I thought did an absolutely magnificent job. He was a medieval historian. And he could talk the leg off an ox, I’ll tell you, but he understood what was going on. He was strong enough, so he didn’t let students run the University, but he was wise enough to listen to what they were saying and make changes where changes seemed to be appropriate. … A lot of university presidents in those days really collapsed under pressure … or they reacted in the other way like at Kent State and tried to get tough without listening.
When you left the governor’s office after three successful terms with a national reputation, many people were surprised that you accepted the presidency at Evergreen State College. Why?
I had always been interested in higher education. I did not consider myself an academic at all, but at the time after about seven years of existence, Evergreen was beginning to prove itself as a remarkable educational institution. But it had not yet proven itself to the legislators, to many of the high school counselors and even to some potential students in the state. I figured, well, that is something that I can help on, and doing it was a real challenge. I think I helped save Evergreen. We had some great legislative support in building an institution that now has a national reputation.Web Special: Full text of interview between Gov. Dan Evans and Neil McReynolds
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