Hello, I'm Catherine O'Neill, and welcome to the Dorchester Connection.

And our guest today has a lot of Dorchester connections.

And he is the president of the University of Massachusetts President William Bulger.

And thank you, President Bulger, for coming back onto the Dorchester Connection.

I'm delighted to be here.

And now, I will say, I will open with this.

Tell our audience where you were born, sir.

I was born in Dorchester, in uh St.

Mark's Parish, where I was baptized.

And so uh I'm pleased to tell you I'm uh Dorchester right.

Well, we know.

W we we can see in Dorchester like uh the uh Mesopotamia, the land between our lives.

That's right.

All life began.

That's right.

And we knew that you were from Deutschest.

Uh and we let South Boston borrow you for a while.

Yeah, and I know how you know it.

You know it from my little m political memoir.

That's right.

That's right.

And I had told the um the world in that that I had been born there, but I never liked anyone to know in South Boston because we kind of um we don't mind if you were born in um I don't know, in Europe.

Right.

In uh some other part of the country, but another part of the city.

Hmm.

Particularly Dorchester.

Especially Dorchester.

Well, we're famous.

Dorchester is famous for being next to someone.

That's one of the things.

You were living in our uh reflected uh glory or whatever.

Now, the University of Massachusetts President Bulger has really played uh a pivotal role in your future.

Uh I mean your career.

When in 1978, you became president of the Senate because of a little scandal over at the Dorchester campus, the it accelerated the and now you're president of the uh University of Massachusetts.

Right.

Did you ever think that it wasn't?

No, never.

No.

No, I uh are you interested in just how it came about?

Yeah, absolutely.

Just very briefly, um the the uh the my predecessor, the president of the University of Massachusetts, one Michael Hooker, uh, came from down in uh uh Carolina, where he had uh gone to school, and uh he he um the presidency became vacant.

It was offered to him, and he desperately wanted to go there.

And and he did.

He just abruptly left.

And uh the people here were uh faced with the challenge of finding someone to succeed him.

And when Jim O'Leary, who was on the board of the uh trustees of the University of Massachusetts, called me.

I think he was just he had a had had a conversation with the members of the board, and he said, just on a long shot, what do you think?

I said, gee, I had never thought of it.

It sounds intriguing.

And um, you know, I after 35 years in the legislature, it may be time to disengage.

And uh so I uh I said, why don't you just let us just look at this for a moment?

I sort of watched uh to see how serious they were, and also whether they indeed they could uh achieve their uh you know, making good on their offer.

And they they could.

And so I said I would, and it was as easy as that.

It must have been quite something, though, to leave the Senate.

It was hard, you know.

Presidency of the Senate is a wonderful uh position, and you think can think you you're doing things that are so so worthwhile, and that um the whole the world of politics to my mind is uh important, attractive, it's good.

And uh I I think of uh I I was studied ancient Greek where democracy began, ancient Greece, you know, in Athens and I think of people like Pericles who said that uh those who are in the uh public business, he said we don't regard them as busybodies, but we do regard those who do not involve themselves as useless.

He would be shocked to see that we don't even involve ourselves to uh participate in voting.

Never mind offering ourselves as candidates for the public office.

But the democracy needs it, and not to be dramatic, it probably it doesn't need me, but it certainly needs people who who take it seriously and um who who feel it's uh fulfilling kind of um activity.

Now you're very proud of your working class background.

Is that one of the reasons that the University of Massachusetts that that system appealed to you?

Because a lot of people that attend the University of Massachusetts are first-generation college goers.

Yeah.

Yes, so that's that's exactly right.

We always the questions always asked to the graduates uh how many are the first in the family, and they all raise their hands and they're so proud of the achievement.

But yes, that's that's it.

It provides an opportunity for people who are serious about education.

And education is something we do for ourselves.

No one else learns it for us.

We educate ourselves.

And a good school, which the University of Massachusetts really is, for those who are serious about learning, they won't find a better place.

And they come and they're enriched by the experience.

They become educated, and it makes all the difference in their lives.

Whether in fact it puts another dollar in the pocket, although it usually does.

It means that they're eligible for better jobs than the rest.

But even so, if we didn't have one bit of that, why we have a fuller life if we uh better educated, if we have some sense of uh historical, where where we are in in the world and the progress of the world of uh what the gr the great literature.

We have wonderful uh things that have been written and spoken, and uh to have access to them, to be interested in them uh is uh it's it's transformative.

James Joyce um calls learning the serious work of life.

And uh you take learning very seriously.

Yeah, well I yes, I try to.

It's uh I'm happy to hear that James Joyce said that.

He shares my birthday.

He does.

Oh, well.

Yeah, although he um he says an awful lot of things that are not right, but he's but he's uh absolutely correct on that one.

So tell us, do you like being president of the university?

It's a wonderful job.

It's it's great.

The university itself is um a great institution.

It's um, of course, it's a public university in the midst of all these great private universities.

I think the largest concentration in the country is here.

Right.

And so it gets lost frequently in the um in the shadows of all these great institutions.

But those who come to know it and those who uh use it and go there are really pleased with what they find.

We have great faculty at on the at the university, and um and by the way, the students at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, I think their age um median is about twenty-six, and they're the most serious students.

It's not a prolonged adolescence for them.

They are there between uh between jobs, between uh taking care of their domestic uh responsibilities, doing all these things, and so they're very serious about this whole matter of learning, and they have they're very purposeful about it.

But the result that um the school is a uh a very, very good school.

They contribute to it by their own uh uh seriousness and their approach to their learning.

So it's a great place, and I didn't have to do much in my uh several years as president to transform it.

It has the substance, it says that place has a great Chancellor and Chancellor Sherry Penny, and she's been doing a marvelous job there.

What what we did have to do is let more people know about it.

So if you've noticed we've had these ads, testimonial ads from alumni.

Award winning, haven't they?

Award winning, yes, we've won an award.

And people like Jack Welch, who's the head of GE, and Jack Smith, head of GM, people never realize that they were alumni of the school.

And when they hear little Katie Coleman, she's an astronaut.

Here's someone who's a doctor or whatever, and also, we just had someone from the Dartmouth campus who has a an Oscar for doing the.

He did the screenwriting on um LA Confidential.

He picked it up about two years ago, the Oscar, and he goes on to one of our ads and uh has the his Oscar in his hand and s asserts proudly that he owes it all to the University of Massachusetts.

Now you've raised the uh admission standards, haven't you, Mr.

Cransmith?

Yeah, they're going.

They're going up.

Tell, the there's higher education should always be higher.

People who come here are generally very serious about things.

So they can they can do more frequently than they realize they can.

So we've been at the task of raising the admission standards so that the grade point average has gone up as well as the uh SAT scores.

These are the use, these are the criteria, which and and by the way, we also have discretion with students who may have had a tough time of it, may have had some language difficulty, and but are doing well at every other part of the studies.

We can we have discretion, so people are not automatically excluded on the basis of these two criteria that I've just uh um made mention of.

But uh nevertheless, those have gone up, and uh we don't have to feel too uh uh too concerned that we're leaving someone behind because we have a system of uh community uh colleges and uh state colleges to which they'd be most welcome.

And we also, again, if we have someone who's a late bloomer, uh someone who has not had a real opportunity in his life, who hasn't sort of caught on early enough to the need to be serious about learning, then that person can go to a community college, and after two years is guaranteed admission into the University of Massachusetts into uh his junior uh year.

And uh, so he or she is welcome, as long as they, of course, maintain a certain uh grade point uh average at the uh community college, and we'll become an alumnus or an alumna of our uh school.

You have 300,000 alumn alumnus.

That's right.

All over the place.

Yeah.

And I think, and and what we're doing is important to Massachusetts because I think it's about well over two-thirds, about 80%, uh, remain in the state.

We have a couple of hundred thousand alumni in the state.

So what we do matters greatly to the come along.

We're gonna take a short break, Mr.

President.

We'll be right back.

So I've always assumed that they throw you in like library jail if you return a booklet, but let's check it out.

Excuse me.

I've had a book out since 1984.

What's the title?

Breakdancing made easy.

Excuse me.

Breakdancing made easy.

Breakdancing made easy, yeah.

What's the damage?

Uh relax maximum fines a dollar twenty-five.

Oh, that's cool.

So you break dancer?

Uh no.

Probably get a good spin going on at Noggin.

I get that, that's funny.

What I'm just asking.

Next.

What is abstinence?

I had a ton of those last semester.

Not absences, abstinence.

When something gross happens to your teeth.

That's an abscess, Julia.

It's choosing not to do something.

Like not drinking.

Right.

What does abstinence have to do with sex?

It's the best way not to get your girl pregnant.

Or getting a sexually transmitted disease.

Abstinence.

It means we choose not to have sex.

You don't have to do it.

What's the difference between living in Boston and living in the suburbs?

Gentlemen, go to work.

On these.

So, fellas, how do we do?

Boston.

It's all right here.

One out of seven Boston residents has no health insurance.

Are you one?

Chances are you're not getting the health care you need because you can't afford it.

You know, regular checkups for pregnant women, children, seniors, all of us, can keep simple health problems from becoming an emergency.

Call the mayor's health line at 534-5050.

We're a free confidential information and referral service.

Call 534-5050 and take care of your health.

Welcome back to the Dorchester Connection and our conversation with the president of the University of Massachusetts, William Balter.

President Bulger, what do you think about the recent elections?

Ten of our congressional candidates were unapposed.

Everybody's unopposed.

So what do you think about that now that you're not an elected official?

Does that a sad commentary?

You know, selfishly when I was in office, I always welcomed a uh what we would call a free ride, no opposition.

But the fact is, I think the system require needs people who are willing to put their names on the ballot, and uh there's a reluctance to do so.

What do you think it is?

I think there are a lot of things, but uh not the least of them is that uh, you know, when you do it, you know, your reputation is in jeopardy.

And um you can be attacked fairly or unfairly.

We have a right of free expression in this country, and I hope it'll always be the case.

But part of the price of it is that uh people can be very irresponsible in their um utterances.

And you have to remember that generally the media have a um they must uh get into rivalries.

They have to in order to draw listeners or viewers or readers, they have to have something uh spicy to say.

The unvarnished kind of day-to-day uh truth is not uh interesting.

Yeah, it's very dull.

Can I just very briefly, Demosthenes uh was a fellow who was defending himself about uh 500 years before Christ, and he had to stand before the Athenians and defend himself, and he said, you know, you've listened to my critic.

And oh, with great baited breath.

And uh because men have always had an appetite for uh gossip and invective, but he said now the time has come for me to say something nice about myself, and you're all beginning to fall asleep.

And and uh human nature is the same now.

So the thing that will attract the reader or the listener or the viewer is something sort of scandalous and quick and uh, and that can be very uh distressing for people in um public life.

Well, you know, it's I think we've come to a place that you have to be without sin, and you know, there's only one guy that I know without sin, and that's the big guy, and you know, so it is tough.

And another reason that I think a lot of people can't run is that it costs so much money.

It costs money, and also it doesn't pay much.

You have to really believe it's worthwhile.

It's a good thing to do.

I uh, oh, just to p I'll uh be partisan for a minute, but when uh Governor Weld came into office, he was I I like Governor Well.

You got along with them, you said so.

Very well.

I always enjoyed working with him.

Um he had a wonderful sense of humor.

He told me one time when I sought to apologize for something I had said at a head table at the Clover Club.

Don't ever apologize.

He said you'll take all the fun out of this business.

So I mean, uh but I liked Well, so but the people he brought in with him, they were a superior lot.

And they uh uh when they discovered that uh, well, this is a took it took uh kind of sacrifice and a willingness to work the day-to-day uh task of politics.

They didn't have any of the staying power.

Almost uh you just as as a group.

They left his administration.

Many of them came back thereafter as consultants, after they had to wait a year and then they'd be back as consultants.

And uh I would chide him about that.

I say, uh one of them uh, you know, they would talk when they came in, all these other people.

Uh the smell test, if you remember that.

Um people have to and uh uh and out they went and back they came.

I they they would find it difficult to uh pass the very tests that they had uh talked about so uh nobly.

And uh I I would ask when Weld found that difficult that they would go and uh come, you know, and be and and I think that uh the his successor, uh Lieutenant Governor Salucci coming in as governor, uh, really uh missed having the people that had been there originally.

He had to get all sorts of new people into position.

Now, why?

Because I think it's again it's it's the public service.

It's a tough and demanding thing.

And by the way, it should be held to scrutiny, and people should be willing to accept criticism.

Uh Churchill said politics is more exhilarating than war.

In war you can only be killed once.

I think it's part, by the way.

Uh even as I speak of it uh paradoxically, it's one of the things that that makes it interesting.

You know, the fact is that you uh you can be uh uh mangled a bit and then s to survive it.

There is some exhilaration in that, yeah.

You say in your book uh you went to Ireland after a um a long time without a vacation and you went to Ireland and a woman approached.

About uh getting her sister in the elderly housing.

And the point that I'm trying to bring up is that you elected officials, me and you know you never get always working.

Oh, sure.

You're always working.

I was in Connemara.

I thought I was on the other side of the moon.

I had never been to Connemara before.

There were a lot of constituents here come from that place.

It's a beautiful place in Galway.

And she says, You're Bolger, aren't you?

She says, How do you get into the Foley apartments?

And I told her I said, I think it's the mayor.

He's never mind trying to duck the issue, she said.

So everywhere you went you were recognized and people asked you uh But that's what an office holder does, right?

Oh sure.

Most by the way, every bit of it you can uh handle.

Every bit of it.

Including the but I think you but the question was, why don't people come?

Very frequently, I think it's because they fear not just the the loss of the office for which uh the failure to win a campaign, but rather a severe personal loss if in fact uh they have anything that uh can be uncovered.

And sometimes it's not uh true.

Or sometimes there's a huge focus on the individual beyond what's uh uh justified.

The focus is not I mean there are people who get along and manage to get along a little bit better uh with the media.

They sometimes will escape the uh the wrath.

Others uh don't do so well.

And uh I always found that very very difficult.

I I uh I remember telling Bill Taylor, who I had dinner with just a few nights ago because he's on the board at the Boston Public Library, still with me, that um I had refused to ever go to the Boston Globe.

I said I won't crook a knee to that crowd because I I disagreed with them so um uh you know seriously over the over the busing thing.

For a long time.

Yeah, and so I refused to go there because I thought that they should apologize for uh well they did two things.

They first of all uh favored a decree which was uh grossly unfair, and then they uh I thought uh disparaged people as uh really bad people for their opposition.

And they came from the communities that I still live in.

I mean they're very good and they I think they were there was an injustice.

It doesn't mean I think their intention at the globe was good.

You know, they wanted to uh right some wrongs and they had a very good purpose at that time, but the means of doing it was totally, totally inappropriate, and r zeroed in on people who who are of modest means who couldn't escape the judicial decree.

I never uh saw anyone volunteer to put himself at the disposal of the federal judge at that time, although I challenged each person.

I didn't want to get back into that, but it's I'm just it's more of that whole business of um oh just uh the it can be a very it can be very hard.

So people don't come.

And in the last election, everyone uh we have two hundred members of the legislature.

I don't think there were a dozen who had opposition of any serious kind.

Twenty-two of the House and Senate members in the Boston area.

We have twenty-four.

Right.

And twenty-two of them faced no opposition from a um, yeah.

Major parties.

They themselves would tell you that it's healthier for the system.

Well, well it is because it brings up the level of the debate.

Yeah.

And the debate on our campus, can it hearken to that, or is that something that uh it's already passed.

Yes, it's already passed.

It's already passed.

The nice thing about the debate was that it provided an opportunity for people to see the two candidates and make up their own minds.

That's right.

Now, what would you say, Mr.

President, is the difference between your life now as a university president and your life as the Senate president?

Oh, well, it's very busy.

But your wife is a lot happier, is he?

Oh, good.

It's very busy.

Because we have five campuses.

One's in Amherst, and it's about a uh almost a two hour drive.

So to be out there and to get back, it's a lot of driving in the day.

And um, I don't know, just do a couple of trips in a week is is a lot just to get into do things.

And we have campuses, as you know, in uh Worcester, in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and in uh Lowell and as well as in Boston.

It's about 58,000 students.

So there's a lot of responsibilities.

There are we have splendid chancellors on each of those campuses.

And in my own uh world now, we work we work at distance learning, we work at standards, the curriculum on all these things with the faculty.

I wouldn't uh pretend, I hope I'm not giving any impression that there's a uh sort of a unilateral uh action on my part that that works.

No, I we have to work in a very uh democratic fashion.

Faculty knows these things well anyway, and I respect them and get along with them well.

We have differences, but uh it's gone quite well with them.

Is your pace a little slower?

The pace is um I think it's a little more orderly.

Um it's a little more orderly, but you know, it takes it takes an awful lot of the time.

It's not strenuous, I wouldn't say that it's but it's constant.

It seems very constant.

I did that one though when I was in the pr as president of the Senate.

I would go to the districts of everyone, Republican and and uh Democrat, because they would want me to entertain.

Right.

And uh we'd all go to various parts of the state.

I was doing it all of the time.

I I can remember telling Bill Staltenstall that his people won up in Marble uh Marshfield.

I'm sorry, that's on the so but uh up at Manchester by the sea.

They were very upset because I was trying to open beaches, you know, for people to use the beaches, and they were very concerned about me.

And when I went there, I sp he was opposed to me on that.

And I spent my time uh saying how wrong he was, and uh they applauded him, and they did not applaud my actions.

And they were friendly, but they were nevertheless letting me know that uh they appreciated Senator Salt and Stahl's opposition to me.

Speaking of entertaining, do you miss doing the breakfast?

Oh, well, I always like that.

That was a great deal of fun.

But uh I think it's better for me to stay away from it so that others can do it.

It's their turn, you know.

Senator Lynch is doing a good job with the Bracken's.

Yeah, he is, and he's enjoying it, and it's nice, yeah.

Uh uh, he tells me that he he gets a big kick out of it.

Well, you know what, Mr.

President, I can't believe this, but we're out of time.

We'll have to have you.

That's regrettable.

I hope you'll invite me back.

Of course we will.

Thank you for joining us.

And this has been another edition of the Dorchester Connection.

Oh, these ceilings are nice.

I was gonna maybe do my ceilings like that if we.

Oh, hold on.

Oh, our first celebration