I couldn't bring them along, and they were concerned for me. They didn't think I was wrong in terms of my assessment, they just thought I was politically unwise with respect to the course I was taking. In the end we got everything we asked for. So in one year we recovered everything we'd lost in the previous sixteen years. Once that had happened, all the wheels were greased in the university.
Money greases the wheels.
And it made it much easier for me then to be a more proactive leader than just a mediator, although you do a lot of that too. It gave me the kind of credibility and currency in the bank, as it were, that I needed for people to come around and be supportive. That was important. To download streaming video for this page, you will need the RealPlayer plug-in, free from RealNetworks.