Since I joined the faculty in 1969, the college had grown enormously: from 1,500 students when I signed on as an English instructor to 13,500 when I retired as academic vice president 23 years later. But more had changed than the number of students and faculty. The background of administrators had changed, too. In the early days, most of them held academic degrees and had spent years in the classroom. By the later 80’s, however, the college was hiring men and women administrators whose only discipline was education, and whose doctorates were in educational administration.

Many of the hires were very bright and capable. But, without time in the classroom, some of them had no sense of what a college is truly for; and few had the analytical skills that come from broader education. By the time I retired, I was becoming a misfit among all those Young Turks. It was a good time to go, especially since the new managers also practiced a new style of management. It was borrowed directly from the corporate world.

Two years after I was settled into Fly Creek, I got word that my college’s new president, one in the new mold, had used a corporate model when firing a dean. The president, herself a woman, called in the dean and told her to clear out her desk and vacate her office. Then the president had security escort the shaken woman off the campus. The firing was deserved; the dean was a detriment to the college. But the manner of firing shocked me, so contradictory was it to the spirit of a college.

Now, just three miles from Fly Creek, that draconic model for terminating has been used at the Cornell Cooperative Extension Agency. Two employees were ordered away from their desks and out of the building by the day’s end. No forewarning, no help with preplanning or, in one case, with retirement arrangements. They were told to get out. To add insult to their injury, their computers were blocked and their office locks changed before they were out the front door.

Friends, that’s no way to run a non-profit organization.

And, especially, that’s no way to treat loyal employees. By all reports, these were good and effective workers, their value documented in their annual evaluations. The most outrageous firing was that of Richard McCaffrey, a 33-year employee who, because of his constant, selfless work in the community, has been the very face of the Extension Center for most of us. But Mr. McCaffery and agriculture specialist David Cox were sent packing without a hint of forewarning.

And why? Well, in the corporate world, abrupt dismissals are a technique for protecting the institution. Computers are closed down, locks changed, people rushed out the door_all to protect trade secrets, formulae, perhaps covert strategies. And maybe to save the corporation from sabotage.

But this is Cooperstown, for heaven’s sake, and this is our own small Extension Center, staffed by friends known to all of us! What secrets are to be guarded here? What’s to be protected from longtime loyal employees, even if you embitter them by mistreatment?

Because of its work through 4-H and through the Scouts, and because of the measureless support it has offered to farmers and to home gardeners, the Extension Center has come to seem truly ours. [an error occurred while processing this directive]