September 9, 2003, Northern Today Extra

Former NIU president remembered
for strong connection with students,
commitment to opportunity

by Melanie Magara

Former NIU President Rhoten A. Smith, who presided over the university during a period of rapid expansion and student unrest, has died in Colorado at the age of 82.

Smith served as NIU’s sixth president from 1967 to 1971, presiding over a tumultuous period of rapid campus growth and Vietnam-era protests. The first NIU president to come from a non-teachers-college background, Smith brought a vision for a new, comprehensive university with high academic standards and full integration of teaching, research and public service missions. Among longtime NIU staff and DeKalb-area residents, Smith also is remembered as the president who stopped a campus riot by joining a student sit-in on the Lincoln Highway bridge.

“He was the right person for the times,” said long-time presidential secretary Sally Stevens. “He established a rapport with the students, and they trusted him.”

Former NIU President Bill Monat concurred, adding that Smith’s tenure was “a watershed in the university’s evolution.”

“Rhoten had tremendous vision – he said NIU was going to be a model for ‘the new university’ of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and he was right,” Monat said. “He was also a person of remarkable integrity and high standards, and a fierce supporter of students.”

A political scientist by training, Smith championed the rights of students to govern themselves. To that end, Smith decentralized numerous campus operations to eliminate red tape and increase student flexibility. He established a campus ombudsman to help students with personal problems, and often met with students in dining halls and other informal locales.

A weekly radio program, “Chats With Rhoten Smith,” often addressed student concerns, while important campus committees – including the Academic Planning Council – were expanded with new student members.

Smith’s inherent belief in students was sorely tested during a four-day period in May, 1970, when thousands participated in loud and sometimes violent protests following the student deaths at Kent State. Smith balanced support for no-nonsense police intervention with eloquent appeals for understanding and respect for the rights of students to express their grief and outrage.

“The current body of student opinion is too wide and too serious to be dismissed as the work of a few radicals,” Smith said at the time. “How we meet this expression of concern now, both individually and nationally, will have much to do with what happens in the future.”

Smith’s own college career had been interrupted by a three-year stint in the Air Force during World War II. Smith piloted a B-17 bomber through some 35 missions over France and Germany, learning firsthand about the devastation and personal loss of war.

Shortly before his death last week, Smith gave an interview to the Greeley, Colo., Tribune. A relative of a man Smith had served with in the war had presented him with a large plaque commemorating his service to America.

“Sixty years later, Rhoten Smith can still hear the noises,” the story began. “The flak bursts around the plane, the muffled explosions of the bombs below, and the sighs of relief and expressions of joy of returning to base safely.”

Asked which was more difficult, flying a WWII plane over Germany or being a college president in the late 1960s, Smith replied with a chuckle, “Well, I think I was much less likely to be killed as a college president!”

Smith was a native of Fort Worth, Texas. He studied at Texas Wesleyan College and the University of Texas prior to his military service, finally completing his bachelor’s degree at the University of Kansas after the war. He went on to earn a master’s degree at Kansas as well, and then a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Smith taught at the University of Kansas and later at New York University, then assumed the deanship of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Temple University, where he remained until coming to NIU in 1967.

Among Smith’s NIU legacies are two programs that have expanded opportunities for talented minority students: The Rhoten A. Smith scholarship fund provides financial awards to minority students seeking graduate degrees at NIU, while the newly named Deacon Davis CHANCE program helps undergraduate students from academically disadvantaged backgrounds. The endowment which bears his name was recently credited for helping earn NIU a national ranking among universities that award doctoral degrees to African Americans.

President John Peters expressed his sympathies to the family, and remarked that one of the first notes he received upon arriving at NIU was from Smith.

“Even though he had been gone from here for many years, he took the time to send a handwritten note, congratulating me and wishing me well,” Peters said. “From what I have come to know about the man, I understand that this was an example of his graciousness and character. He left that mark on this university as well.”

Rhoten Smith is survived by his wife of 60 years, Barbara, their two children, Susan and Tyler, and numerous grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Expressions of condolence may be sent to the Smith family at 3707 W. 16th Street, Greeley, Colo., 80634.

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