Reynolds Receives Vote of Confidence From CSU Board

California State University Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds, fending off an attempt to remove her from office, received a qualified vote of confidence Tuesday from the CSU Board of Trustees.

After a 3 1/2-hour closed-door discussion at the system’s Long Beach headquarters, the board released a statement that said Reynolds’ performance had been “noteworthy” since she took over the huge university system in September, 1982.

The vote to approve the statement was 17 to 6, trustees said later.

Her “accomplishments in providing educational leadership, instituting new academic programs, improving minority-ethnic access and raising the public image of CSU have been widely hailed,” the statement said.

There was no mention of flaws, but several trustees said after the meeting that the evaluation report on which the statement was based contained many criticisms of Reynolds, including alleged temper tantrums, mistreatment of subordinates and her inability to get along with some trustees and campus presidents.

“The chancellor was described as ‘bimodal’--everybody either loves her or hates her,” one board member said.

Reynolds replied to the criticisms in a 10-page statement of her own, according to several trustees.

The board agreed to meet again in a special session on June 17 to discuss the report in more detail.

In a brief meeting afterward with reporters in the trustees’ parking lot, board Chairman Dale B. Ride said Reynolds’ job was not in jeopardy, but he would not predict that she would still be chancellor five years from now.

“Somewhere in between” those extremes is where the 49-year-old biologist, one of the highest-ranking women in American higher education, stands after this review, Ride said.

Administrative Failings

For some time, a significant minority on the Board of Trustees, along with several campus presidents, have been critical of Reynolds for administrative failings, for being away from her office too much and for her blunt, sometimes abrasive, personal style.

These criticisms mounted after the death last February of Richard Butwell, president of Cal State Dominguez Hills, two weeks after Reynolds suggested that he find another job.

Several weeks ago it appeared that there might be enough votes among the trustees to oust the chancellor, but Reynolds mounted a spirited--and successful, at least for now--defense.

The trustees’ statement was based on a three-month evaluation by Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co., an accounting and management consulting firm, but apparently there was little discussion of the report during the long executive session.

“We never discussed the report,” one trustee said. “We spent the whole time discussing whether or not to accept the report and just put out a nice statement praising the chancellor.”

Political Clout

According to several accounts, strong support for the chancellor was voiced by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig, who are ex-officio board members.

Brown was attending his first trustee meeting in several years. Neither he nor Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, another ex-officio trustee who was present, participated in any of the board’s educational discussions earlier in the day, although Honig did.

Trustee Lynne Wasserman said outside the meeting room that she was “very angry that Willie Brown shows up for this,” and contended that he and McCarthy attended the meeting because Reynolds had “called in her political chits.”

The brief statement said the board would be “clarifying the overall governance of the CSU by reviewing and formally revising the roles of the trustees, the chancellor and the campus presidents.”

It was unclear whether the statement means that a significant change is in the offing in the way CSU policy is made, but it appeared to reflect a desire by Ride and other trustees for a greater voice in the affairs of the 19-campus, 335,000-student university system.