With Michael Roth ’78 announced as incoming president, the campus is cautiously celebrating the choice of an academic candidate and reflecting on the occasionally controversial legacy of departing president Doug Bennet.

Though at present most only have an initial impression of Roth, his long intellectual background in art, history, and psychology has given many people high hopes for an era focused on core academic issues. As for Bennet’s legacy, most agree that the University has significantly changed under his leadership, especially due to the essential fundraising efforts. These helped pull the school out of a twenty-year economic slump, allowing for badly needed building projects. The real question, according to many, is whether the University has changed for the better over the last 12 years and how much of that change was caused by Bennet or by national academic trends beyond his control.

Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Professor Mike McAlear, a who served on the Faculty Interviewing Panel that helped select the new president, was very impressed by Roth.

“This new guy—he’s articulate, he’s smart, he’s thoughtful,” McAlear said. “If you were to sit down and meet him, you would think that this is a bright, engaging man. Very, very impressive.”

Holly Wood ’08 was pleasantly surprised by the choice.

“I was really expecting someone from a pharmaceutical or science background, given the push toward the sciences,” Wood said. “They really surprised me with this selection. He’s also coming in and telling the Hartford Courant that he wants to teach classes here, which is fantastic.”

Some believe that choosing Roth reflected the changing demographics of the Board of Trustees and the alumni network.

“Think about who is on the committee now,” said Brendan O’Connell ’08. “The alumni who are electing trustees and the trustees who are choosing presidents reflect a new Wesleyan.”

The Wesleyan that Bennet found when he took office in 1995 was a fund-starved institution reeling from the years under the unpopular Chace administration.

“They had done such a bad job in previous years,” said Joyce Jacobsen, professor of Economics and former chair of the faculty. “When I got here in ’93, they were still cutting positions.”

Over the years, bad investments continued to mar the school’s financial situation.

“In the ’60s, Wesleyan used to be the richest school per capita in North America,” McAlear said. “But that dwindled away and there wasn’t adequate fundraising afterwards to maintain that.”

And so one of Bennet’s first initiatives was to launch the first fundraising campaign in years—an extremely successful effort that, upon its completion in 2005, had raised $281 million and doubled the endowment.

“The faculty are very thankful for Doug’s fundraising,” Jacobsen said. “It has made us into a university that has not had to use adjuncts and TAs to teach classes.”

The new money has funded a variety of projects. These include 20 new teaching positions, 140 new scholarships, a number of economic developments in Middletown, such as the Green Street Arts Center, and, most significantly, a considerable amount of construction on campus. Renovations include the Center for the Americas, the Admissions building, the Patricelli ’92 Theater, Memorial Chapel, and Clark Hall. Some of the new buildings are the Fauver residences, Usdan University Center, Zelnick Pavilion, the Center for Film Studies, and additions to the Freeman Athletic Center.

But the manner in which funds are allocated has faced criticism by some.

“If you look at the total sum of it, at least some of that money could have been invested in libraries, faculty salaries, and the core academic mission,” McAlear said.

On Sept. 26, 2006, more than 20 faculty members signed a Wespeak that demanded higher faculty salaries and criticized the distribution of funds.

“The recent spending decisions have been unbalanced, and have undermined the fundamental strength of the university: the very professors that teach the classes, mentor the students, and conduct the research and scholarship,” they wrote. “Wesleyan wouldn’t be ranked sixth in its class nationwide for academic reputation without them.”

The faculty’s salary grievance seems to fit into a sentiment among some professors and students that characterizes Bennet as more focused on campus beautification than on the core academic mission and student concerns.

“The balance of priorities has shifted more towards services and facilities,” McAlear said.

Wood also had problems with the allocations.

“Bennet let there be no central campus space for ten years,” Wood said. “I don’t think it was intentional—I just think his priority was to get funds, which he did well. His priority was not to build solidarity among students.”

Many students were not as forgiving as Wood. In 2004, a crowd of around 250 students confronted Bennet and barred him in his office for several hours. The group, acting on behalf of a number of different student concerns, demanded greater transparency in Bennet’s decisions.

“It was a systemic critique of how the administration works,” said O’Connell, who participated in the protest. “It was a critique of how they were making decisions behind students’ backs, speaking through the WSA, and assuming that the WSA represents the entire student body.”

The action aroused controversy among faculty and students. In a disapproving Wespeak, Emily Frost ’06 distanced herself from the protestors.

“I am truly embarrassed by the way the student body was represented on Wednesday afternoon,” she wrote. “I felt as though one group of student activists appropriated my voice as a Wesleyan student by pretending to represent the entire student body. I hold some of the concerns that were raised on Wednesday, but I would never have treated President Bennet the way that a few members of our student body did.”

Bennet did not appreciate what happened, either.

“He was pretty upset about that,” Jacobsen said.

Other issues, such as the controversial chalking ban in 2003, have cemented among some a reputation of an administration that runs the school more like a corporation than a university. In response, groups such as the faculty caucus and the facebook group “Keep Wesleyan Weird,” which was recently featured on the front page of The Hartford Courant, have cropped up.

Yet most agree that stronger corporatist attitudes and a higher priority on campus aesthetics are signs of the times, as opposed to being attributable to the attitudes of an individual president.

“These are national trends, and I certainly don’t blame Bennet,” Jacobsen said. “Changes also occur as an institution gets older.”

Wood acknowledged that national trends played a huge role, but she still is not convinced that Bennet did all he could to stop them.

“Bennet let this stuff happen,” she said. “He could have done more to fight against it.”

Bennet’s legacy may become easier to assess further down the road.

For now, students and faculty alike hold high expectations for the incoming President. Professor of Sociology Rob Rosenthal has been a huge supporter of Bennet’s efforts in improving town-gown relations and helping improve Middletown in general, and he hopes to see more of that in Roth.

“Wesleyan has supported the town by revitalizing it without gentrifying it,” Rosenthal said. “I hope the new president will continue in the same direction.”

McAlear also hopes that Roth will learn a lesson from his predecessor.

“Things are going to be very different than they were under Doug Bennet and [former Vice President] Judith Brown,” McAlear said. “I’m hoping that this administration will be more consultative to the faculty.”