Wallace Anderson Part III: The Covenant Years

By Laura Kaufmann

Since he arrived at Covenant one and a half years ago, Wallace Anderson has not created any new policies. But when controversial changes surface or existing rules are enforced, the accusing finger points in one direction.

“That’s just the way it is,” he said. “The person in the chair gets the blame.”

Anderson himself thought he should not have been hired as the Vice President of Enrollment Management. Citing his shoddy first meeting with President Nielson, he felt he was not right for the job. But Nielson and Dean of Faculty Jeff Hall decided to hire him anyway.

“I can honestly say I don’t know how we got here,” said Anderson. “My first impressions of Covenant were not good because I stayed on the Ghetto, and it was such a filthy place. But we got past that.”

“What did it for me was our meeting with Nielson,” said Mrs. Paige Anderson, “and he said that Covenant is like a canvas, a picture that still has yet to be painted, and we’re working on a little corner of it right now.”

That work gives Anderson a mixed reputation. Though he single-handedly rescued the school during the Department of Education financial audit last year, in which Covenant mishandled $800, 000, complaints about increased bureaucracy and micromanagement still prevail, particularly among faculty and alumni. Anderson insists that extra regulation is essential for the school’s well-being.

“Part of the audit revealed lack of control and accountability,” he said. “Accountability is just good business practice and extremely biblical. It sends me that people don’t realize that.”

Some students blamed Anderson for the controversial housing policies last year, in which upperclassmen were threatened with being supplanted by incoming freshmen in the dormitories. But he actually had little to do with it.

“I was not involved at all until the eleventh hour,” he said. “I trusted Scott Raymond and his team. It seems to be okay now.”

The recent resignations of Dean of Students Scott Raymond and men’s soccer coach Brian Crossman implied dissension among the upper echelons regarding academic, athletic, and disciplinary philosophy. All the particulars of these events were not publicized, but opinions vary throughout the community.

“He’s been really good with this transition from Raymond,” said Director of Student Life Jason Wood. “He started coming to student development staff meetings, and he’s been reading up on books about residence life, the same stuff we’ve been studying.”

According to English Professor Cliff Foreman, the effect has been negative. “I don’t know enough about each situation to be emphatic, but judging from the number of resignations we’ve witnessed, the style of leadership used by Enrollment Management seems to have been far from collegial,” he said. “And that has hurt the school more than it has helped it.”
Foreman’s assessment is not necessarily indicative of the faculty’s view of Anderson, but Crossman’s resignation stirred up activity among the professors.

“The faculty steering committee has asked the status committee to explore the circumstances surrounding the resignation of Professor Crossman as men’s soccer coach,” said Faculty Moderator Stephen Kaufmann.

Dean of Humanities Paul Morton declined to comment when asked about the faculty’s relationship with Anderson.

Anderson steadily defends his side of the story. He insists that the money saved by regulating athletic scholarships, a practice disagreeable to Crossman, would benefit the school in the long run. “There’s a misconception that we have endowed scholarships,” he said. “I would love to work at an institution that had a lot of money, but we just don’t have it.” He pointed out that the faculty received a 1.5 percent pay raise last year because of increased control.

Because of such controversies, some alumni have threatened to stop donating money to the school, citing a loss of institutional memory, among other things. Anderson is not worried.

“The facts would show that we have just as many people saying they’re going to give again because we’re getting back to what Covenant used to be like,” he said. “I think the push is to go back to the firm, sure foundation of this school, rather than the other direction.”

There is no doubt that both enrollment and admissions have improved since Anderson’s arrival. Last fall Covenant received its largest entering class at 308 students. Liz Crusey, a Regional Director of Admissions, credits Anderson with the transition to the Banner system and more attention to detail with prospective students.

“Now 95 percent of visitors tour the campus with regional directors from their particular region,” she said.

Anderson is worried more about retention than admissions, however. Last year the retention rate in the freshman class was the lowest ever at 70 percent.

One policy he hopes to change is the rule against coed dancing. He wants to free students to dance anywhere except on the dorms, with minimal supervision.

As the “person who sits in the chair,” though, these changes have not come without mistakes that Anderson readily admits.

“I have handled a lot of things badly,” he said. “I’m too intuitive. At meetings, I’ll think we have a consensus and everyone agrees, but later I realize that they don’t understand it because I’m bad at explaining things.”

“The people that have ever worked for him closely just love him,” Mrs. Anderson said. “But he seems to be an agent of bringing about change. That’s the way God uses him.”