What's the big idea?

The president was the last one to be convinced.

Ronald E. Carrier never really said he was against changing Madison College's name to "university." But, on the other hand, he never really said he thought it was a particularly good idea either.

The name-change subject would invariably come up in the mid-1970s at meetings of the president's cabinet - Carrier's vice presidents and a few other key administrators. When the possibility of a name change was mentioned, Carrier wouldn't reply right away. He'd walk over to the front of the smoke-filled conference room in Wilson Hall, take a drag on his cigarette, look out the window toward the Quad and say, almost to himself, "Do we really need to do that?"

Carrier wasn't convinced. And why should he be? Things were going great as "Madison College." It wasn't broken, so why fix it?

In many ways, he was right. Madison was indeed doing just fine as a "college." Enrollment was nearing 7,500, and that was almost double what it had been in 1971 when Carrier became president. Nearly 6,000 students applied each year for a spot in an entering class of less than 1,500. SAT scores of entering students were on the increase. Madison athletics teams were prospering; the men's athletics programs were poised to move to NCAA Division I.

While each of these achievements reflected the college's success, they were also the very reasons that most members of Carrier's cabinet pushed relentlessly for the school to seek university status. What these achievements added up to was that Madison was really a university, not a college, and that its name ought to reflect that.

Ray Sonner, Madison's vice president of public affairs, was at the forefront of the movement to change the name. With his pipe adding to the conference room haze - in those days, smokers were the rule rather than the exception - Sonner backed his argument with facts.

For example, Madison's enrollment in the mid-1970s was 25 percent greater than Old Dominion's and three times that of George Mason's when those two colleges became universities.

A quarter century after the name change, Sonner vividly remembers the prime motivation for going after the "university" designation: prestige. "There's no question that the name 'university' would bring more prestige to the institution," he says. "Teaching at a university sounded more prestigious than teaching at a college."

As the person charged with presenting Madison's image to the public, Sonner knew there was a lengthy list of other good reasons for the name change: It would make the school more attractive to high-quality faculty members and students; enhance athletics scheduling; provide better job and graduate school opportunities for alumni; and increase opportunities for government and foundation grants. Sonner and others argued that it would also forever eliminate the lingering perception many Virginians still held of Madison College as being an all-women's teachers college.

After weeks of cajoling and coaxing by Sonner and others, Carrier finally relented - sort of. Carrier called on his staff to convince him: "OK," he said, "go out and prove that Madison College really deserves a new name." "I wanted to make sure the name change was really warranted and that it wasn't just a product of our public relations program," Carrier recalled recently.

Just prior to the opening of the 1976-77 school year, the first step in the process of convincing the president was taken at a meeting of academic department heads. Carrier asked them what they thought about Madison's becoming a "university."

Finding any issue at any time anywhere with which any faculty would unanimously agree is virtually unheard of, yet the response was about as close as you could come to unanimity: There was no real opposition. The only question raised at the meeting was the appropriateness of having a university with no doctoral programs. Sonner's staff, however, had already thoroughly researched that question, and he quickly pointed out that a huge number of universities did not offer doctoral programs.

By the time classes began in the fall of 1976, the bandwagon for the name change was going at breakneck speed. In its first issue for the school year, The Breeze carried an editorial titled "Madison University: we're already there." The Breeze editorial made it very clear that students felt Madison should be a university. The editorial included a statement that would soon be true: "Welcome the Class of 1980 to James Madison University."

Sonner and his staff knew that it would take more than an editorial in the student newspaper to totally sway Carrier and the group that would ultimately have to request a name change, the Madison College Board of Visitors.

During September, Sonner's Division of Public Affairs polled the student body, faculty, staff and a 25 percent sampling of alumni. The survey simply asked if Madison College should be renamed with the new name using the word "university." Those who answered yes to the first question were asked to choose between "James Madison University" and "Madison University" or to write in another choice.

The results of the balloting surprised even the most ardent name-change proponents. There had been some anxiety that a sizeable number of older alumni might chafe at renaming their school. Not so, as 88 percent of the alumni voting - the highest percentage of any group - supported the name change. Even the class of 1914 weighed in favorably, with both of that year's graduates voting in support of the name change.

The returns were overwhelming in each group: 87 percent of the students, 86 percent of the staff and 83 percent of the faculty endorsed becoming a university. The name "James Madison University" was favored by a 4-to-1 margin over "Madison University."

With that type of support, the board of visitors moved swiftly and, at its October meeting, asked the Virginia General Assembly to change Madison College's name to James Madison University. (In Virginia, and in all but two other states, no formal criteria or procedure existed for a public college to become a university. The only requirement was action by the state legislature.)

No one really anticipated any difficulty in winning approval from the legislature, but Ray Sonner didn't want to take any chances. A political firestorm had erupted in Maryland when Towson State College wanted to become a university, and talk of Mary Washington College changing its name had created a furor among that school's alumni.

Sonner expected that Madison's name change would sail through the legislature. But that wasn't enough. He wanted a unanimous vote.

The major tool used by Madison College in presenting its name-change argument was a no-frills, 16-page booklet titled The Case for James Madison University. Produced with private funds to avoid criticism of using public funds for a lobbying purpose, the booklet outlined all the reasons for changing Madison's name, countered any potential arguments against the name change and listed a number of governmental and civic groups that had endorsed the change.

Copies of the booklet were sent to education writers and editorial page editors at newspapers around the state, resulting in several supportive editorials. A copy was even placed on the desk of each member of the General Assembly when the legislature convened in January 1977.

Two local legislators, state Sen. Nathan Miller of Bridgewater and Del. Bonnie Paul of Harrisonburg introduced the legislation in their respective chambers. Dozens of other legislators agreed to co-sponsor the legislation.
Carrier and Sonner lobbied for passage of the bill, but their efforts were probably unnecessary. The General Assembly action was almost anticlimactic. The bill passed unanimously after sailing through both the House and the Senate without opposition.

The next step was the third floor of the State Capitol. On March 22, 1977, Gov. Mills Godwin Jr. - husband of Madison early elementary childhood education graduate Katherine Thomas Beale Godwin ('37) - signed the legislation creating James Madison University, six days into the institution's 70th year of existence.

Carrier, Sonner, several board of visitors members, student leaders, legislators and one very special guest - Althea Loose Johnston, a member of the first faculty when Madison opened in 1909 - attended the bill-signing ceremony. (Johnston Hall is named for Mrs. Johnston and her husband, James C. Johnston, also a Madison faculty member.)

On the evening of June 30, the JMU Women's Club threw a big party in Chandler Hall to celebrate the new name. At midnight - the exact time of the name change - they poured champagne and cut a huge cake bearing the name "James Madison University."

By July 1, 1977, much had changed on campus and in Harrisonburg as well. New signs bearing the name "James Madison University" were in place at campus entrances. Departments had stocked up on new James Madison University stationery even though faculty and staff members had promised -with their fingers crossed, no doubt - not to use any of the new stationery until the old "Madison College" supply was exhausted. Everyone seemed to magically run out of "Madison College" materials on July 1.

There were other names that changed on July 1. The College Market on Port Republic Road became University Market, College Motors became University Motors, the Warren Campus Center became the University Union, and Sonner's Division of Public Affairs turned into the Division of University Relations.

A 16-page special section appeared in the July 1 edition of the Harrisonburg Daily News-Record heralding the arrival of the nation's newest university. Extra copies of the special section, with its main story, "James Madison University Is Born," were printed and mailed to JMU alumni and donors.

Twenty-five years later, Carrier and Sonner are in complete agreement that the name change was much more than cosmetic. "We wouldn't have the multipurpose institution that we have today if we hadn't added the university designation," Sonner says.

Carrier was even more adamant: "Once the change was made, it allowed us to move up in programs that put us on a par with other universities. It wasn't just a title. We had truly arrived."

Story by Fred Hilton ('96M, '95P, '98P)
Photo by Wayne Gehman