ustxtxb_obs_1969_03_07_50_00007-00000_000.pdf

access to the official file.” McCrocklin said the entire Haitian file, including the Hart report, “was classified secret, and special permission had to be obtained to use it.” But afterwards Col. Frank C. Caldwell, director of Marine Corps history at the Naval Archives, Washington, D.C., was quoted as saying that to the best of his knowledge the Hart report never has been classified. So the Observer and San Antonio Express have been informed by Jim Green, an SWT ex-student who is now working on his doctorate at UT-Austin. Green says Colonel Caldwell told him this by telephone last week. In the passage of his statement dealing with Mrs. McCrocklin’s use of his material, McCrocklin said, “Mrs. McCrocklin acknowledged the facts in the first paragraph of her preface.” Looking up the reference, the Observer finds this the preface paragraph in question: “It is not often that a husband and wife find themselves interested in the same topic for writing a paper. However, because the husband is a professor of government and because the wife therefore came into more contact with the subject, she became vitally interested in this field of political science. Further interest settled on Haiti as a result of doing manuscript copy for a paper written by the writer’s husband. His paper on the Gendarmerie d’Haiti aroused her curiosity as to the complete picture of the American intervention in Haiti during the years 1914-1934. With this object in view, the writer undertook to prepare this paper.” There is no mention of the Hart report in Mrs. McCrocklin’s preface or bibliography. She has two footnotes crediting Hart, at pages 22 and 132; these are two of the three footnotes McCrocklin used to credit Hart. Neither Dr. McCrocklin nor Mrs. McCrocklin credits the other in their respective works \(except as noted in the As for the questions of possible impropriety raised about McCrocklin’s serving on the faculty committee that approved his wife’s thesis at Texas A&I, McCrocklin said, “I was not on the original committee . but was placed on the committee by the graduate dean upon the retirement of a faculty member on her committee. No other faculty member was available in the department.” AFTER READING his statement to newsmen, McCrocklin consented who wrote his work first, you or your with so much duplication in you and your wife’s documents, they still were academfaculty greet your statement? Rather well, McCrocklin said, noting the standing ovalife; if so, how many? There have been, he wouldn’t say how many; the authorities have been notified. He later added that the threats were in connection with the disserhalf months for you to explain about this? the Observer asked. “Have you ever tried to live in three different houses and have your papers scattered across all of them? We found some of them just this week,” McCrocklin said. There was a brief pause at this point. McCrocklin thanked the reporters and walked out of the room. Several reporters afterwards were heard to say they had wanted to question McCrocklin further and were surprised he had left, as they said, so suddenly. At two points in his prepared statement, McCrocklin referred to supporting documents he had recovered from his personal effects and had placed on file with the board of regents. One such document was, he said, one in which he and the graduate faculty of the government department at Texas A&I, which granted Mrs. McCrocklin’s degree, gave her permission to use her husband’s material in writing her thesis. The other document, according to McCrocklin, was one signed by Hart giving McCrocklin authority to use the Haitian file and the Hart report therein. Harold Marberger, executive secretary of the regents, tells the Observer the two documents are not in the regents office in Austin but are in the possession of J. W. Kellam of Austin, the regent who is chairman of the SWT local committee on the board. Kellam was unavailable during several attempts to contact him for permission to see the documents. The chairman of McCrocklin’s dissertation committee at UT-Austin in 1954 was John Lloyd Mecham, now retired, who then was a professor of government. Just after the Observer story broke last August, Mecham told veteran Capitol reporter Stuart Long that he was not aware of Mrs. McCrocklin’s thesis. Mecham recently told the UT daily, “All the [six] members of the committee felt that it was an original work or we would not have signed it.” FURTHER disposition of the matter now lies with two bodiesthe State Senior College regents, who govern SWT, and the Graduate School at the University of Texas, which granted McCrocklin his doctoral degree. Three days before McCrocklin spoke to the faculty and press the regents, meeting at Austin, renewed the contracts of six of the seven presidents of colleges under their control. They decided to wait on the question of renewing McCrocklin’s contract in order that three new members of the board could become acquainted with the case. “We want to emphasize Dr. McCrocklin is not being prejudged,” said board member Kellam. Some 30 persons from SWT, students mostly, sat in as the regents met. As McCrocklin departed, Kellam told him the board felt he is doing “an exemplary job” as president of SWT. The night before several graduate stu dents met with several of the regents, to tell them that some 30 SWT faculty members have said they would resign if McCrocklin could not clear the doubts about his dissertation. A letter signed by 74 faculty members was presented to the regents urging that McCrocklin’s contract not be extended until the question is cleared up. The Observer understands on good grounds that the regents voted privately on the McCrocklin contract before their meeting. \(Often in Texas, as perhaps elsewhere, college regents privately hash out their views on even routine issues voted to delay the matter, two favored renewal, one was absent, and the chairman didn’t vote. Those who are leading the challenge to McCrocklin at San Marcos regarded the regents’ delay as a moral victory of sorts. The regents next will consider the McCrocklin contract on May 9, according to Marberger, unless a special meeting is called before then. At the University of Texas in Austin Gordon W. Whaley, dean of the Graduate School, revealed last week to the Austin and UT dailies that the McCrocklin matter has been under investigation since last October, “on the basis of a number of questions raised in various places,” he said. “After a very comprehensive study of this dissertation and a whole series of related documents … in fact, a substantial number of other related publications, there seemed to be some questions that required elucidation,” Whaley said. “On Jan. 16, 1969, I recommended to the president’s office that a procedural committee be formed to take a look at what seemed to us to be the questions.” UT-Austin President Norman Hackerman appointed six faculty members to the procedural committee. Evidently this committee found some substance to the charges against McCrocklin, for according to Whaley, after the committee had studied “all the material we had assembled . . . it recommended that a procedure be evolved for looking at these questions further in strict objectivity.” Thereupon a second UT faculty committee was named, called a hearings committee, which Whaley says will “examine the evidence and make some sort of recommendations to the president’s office based on its findings . . . I choose not to repeat the evidence,” Whaley said. Whaley added, “The only question before this institution is [whether] this is a valid PhD dissertation and does it satisfy the requirements on which the awarding of that degree is based.” The university requires that a dissertation “must give evidence of the ability to do independent research” and that “it must constitute in itself a contribution to knowledge.” This last part of Whaley’s statement raised apprehension in some that the questions of the dissertation’s extensive verba March 7, 1969 7