Peace Corps Online: July 2, 2003 - The Journal News: Iran RPCV Donna Shalala wins man's game

July 2, 2003 - The Journal News: Iran RPCV Donna Shalala wins man's game

Peace Corps Online: Peace Corps News: Headlines: Peace Corps Headlines - 2003: July 2003 Peace Corps Headlines: July 2, 2003 - The Journal News: Iran RPCV Donna Shalala wins man's game

By Admin1 (admin) on Wednesday, July 02, 2003 - 10:51 am: Edit Post

Iran RPCV Donna Shalala wins man's game

Caption: University of Miami football mascot

Read and comment on this story from The Journal News about Iran RPCV Donna Shalala who is winning at the man's game of football. She had already won a championship for George Steinbrenner, challenged President Clinton's moral authority, directed traffic in a tornado, scared off three thieves, and lived in a mud shack in Iran. So forget the lawyers, advisers and athletic directors, and understand that Miami is jumping to the Atlantic Coast Conference for a singular reason: Shalala wanted Miami to jump to the ACC. at:

Woman wins man's game*

* This link was active on the date it was posted. PCOL is not responsible for broken links which may have changed.

Woman wins man's game

By IAN O'CONNOR

(Original publication: July 1, 2003)

The second Donna Shalala joined the club, all 5 feet of her, the big boys of the Big East did not stand a chance. She had already won a championship for George Steinbrenner, challenged President Clinton's moral authority, directed traffic in a tornado, scared off three thieves, and lived in a mud shack in Iran.

Did anyone really think Mike Tranghese was going to change her mind?

"Donna's always been a scrapper," said her 91-year-old mother, Edna, herself a scrapper as a national champion tennis player. "Everything she ever did she did with a lot of nerve."

So forget the lawyers, advisers and athletic directors, and understand that Miami is jumping to the ACC for a singular reason: Shalala wanted Miami to jump to the ACC. Once the youngest woman ever to run an American college (Hunter, at age 39), and once the first woman to lead a Big Ten university (Wisconsin, in 1987), Shalala just became the first Division I woman to beat the power-brokering men at their very own Machiavellian game.

In the year of Annika Sorenstam and Michelle Wie, the Miami president put her male counterparts on a tee. Shalala abandoned Tranghese and ignored desperate pleas from Syracuse chancellor Kenneth Shaw and Father William Leahy, the Boston College president, when both begged her to take one for their prodigal-son tag team.

Wedged between the 30th anniversary of Title IX and the 30th anniversary of Billie Jean King's victory over Bobby Riggs, Shalala did what her former youth softball coach in Cleveland would do in his 30th anniversary season of owning the New York Yanks. She took the best available deal and left everyone else to rant and rave.

University of Miami President Donna Shalala has already won a championship for George Steinbrenner, challenged President Clinton's moral authority, directed traffic in a tornado, scared off three thieves, and lived in a mud shack in Iran.

Shalala wasn't about to fret over conference loyalties, lawsuits filed by angry presidents and ambitious attorney generals, her Ph.D. years at Syracuse, or her own involvement with a Knight Commission established to tame the very major-college sports monster Shalala is now riding to greener fields. She saw a chance to bolster non-revenue teams, pay smaller travel bills, and profit from a two-BCS-bid conference that will surely get its own intramural championship football game, one way or another.

Let them call her Donna of Troy if they wish. In this embarrassing money grab, there was no room for good guys or good girls, just winners and losers. Shalala isn't called "Boom Boom" for nothing. She's always known how to protect her assets, whether she's raising more than $400 million for Wisconsin's endowment or saving the couple hundred bucks in her wallet during an attempted robbery at a Washington, D.C., ATM.

"Donna told me the man had a gun on her and demanded her money," Edna Shalala said of the assault in 1999, when her daughter was Clinton's Secretary of Health and Human Services. "She just fell to the ground and started screaming."

Before the man and two accomplices raced off, Shalala got their license plate number. Police credited her for the thieves' immediate arrest.

When Clinton finally admitted his own crime against common decency, Shalala reportedly confronted him in a Cabinet meeting over the wobbly moral compass he'd become.

"Donna's always been a leader," her mother said, "even as a child. She was the first person to be named school guard in elementary school. When she was 10, there was a big tornado and we thought she was lost. We were worried, looking all over for her, and ready to head down to the basement when we found out she was up at the corner between the elementary school and high school, with trees down and everything, directing traffic in the storm."

Around the same time, Shalala played second base for the West Boulevard Annie Oakleys, a city champ coached by a college student on summer break named Steinbrenner. Shalala would become a tennis star like her mother, a great amateur player and the USTA's winner in the 80-and-over division. Shalala would experience Peace Corps poverty in Iran, befriend the likes of Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug, and raise funds and awareness for the fight against breast cancer, AIDS, and violence against women. The Girl Power program was launched under her Cabinet watch.

That power was felt yesterday in a most dramatic way. Shalala wasn't just slicker than the men; her partnership with Virginia Tech secured Virginia's support and rendered moot the women standing in her conference-hopping way, Duke's Nan Keohane and North Carolina's Molly Broad.

Shalala didn't care that the timing of this couldn't have been worse, given the recent tidal wave of scandals and hollow sermons on reform. She understood that business is business, and that a diminished Big East will now feast on weaker conferences and advance its own history of hostile takeovers.

So no ethical appeal could make a dent here. Fittingly, Shalala's punctuating move in this endless passion play was about money: Miami saved $1 million by saying goodbye yesterday instead of today.

All of this was inevitable the second Shalala replaced Edward Foote, and set her sights on becoming the first 5-foot woman to dunk on the big boys of the Big East. "Do you think this was a good decision?" Edna Shalala asked over the phone.

Her daughter sure didn't need any man's opinion about that.

Iran RPCV Shalala holds key to Miami's decision on College Athletics

Read and comment on this story from the Daily Press oon May 16, 2003 n how the college athletic world will focus on Iran RPCV and University of Miami President Donna Shalala, Hurricanes athletic director Paul Dee and the Big East Conference meetings in Ponte Vedra, Fla., this weekend where decisions there will impact the existence of the Big East and will shape the future course of Virginia Tech and Virginia athletics. Read the story at:

Shalala holds key to Miami's decision*

* This link was active on the date it was posted. PCOL is not responsible for broken links which may have changed.

Shalala holds key to Miami's decision

President tries to balance athletics with academics

By Dave Fairbank
Daily Press

Published May 16, 2003

The woman who will determine the landscape of college athletics holds football tailgate parties and played on a youth softball team coached by George Steinbrenner.

University of Miami president Donna Shalala traveled with students to the Fiesta Bowl last January for the national championship game and coached soccer in Iran during a Peace Corps assignment in the 1960s.

Shalala, who served as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration, has a Hurricanes' bumper sticker on her VW Beetle and a deep appreciation of college athletics. Comfortable with football recruits as well as CEOs and tenured professors, she is not an academic who will leave the fate of Miami's athletic department to the recommendations of others.

"I would say she probably would be a perfect boss for an athletic director, in terms of her interest and support of athletics, and augmenting the academic mission of the institution," said Wisconsin athletic director Pat Richter, who Shalala hired 14 years ago to help turn around the Badgers' program. "She basically said there's no reason a world-class institution can't have a first-class athletic program and that's the way we've operated."

The college athletic world will focus on Shalala, Hurricanes athletic director Paul Dee and the Big East Conference meetings in Ponte Vedra, Fla., this weekend. Decisions there will impact the existence of the Big East and will shape the future course of Virginia Tech and Virginia athletics. The ripples eventually may be felt all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Shalala, a world-class schmoozer, has been uncharacteristically silent during the expansion frenzy. She has said nothing publicly after news broke Tuesday that the ACC voted to expand to 12 schools, with Miami, Syracuse and Boston College as the clear preferences.

Late last week she told the Miami Herald, "We have not made a decision. I have not gone to the Board of Trustees with a recommendation. We are doing an analysis now. The Big East has been very good to us, and we have to make sure we make a careful decision."

In November 2001, she told a meeting of Big East presidents, "We're committed to the Big East. You have our word. We're not going anywhere."

Shalala, a 61-year-old Cleveland native, was president of Hunter College in New York from 1980-87. She served as chancellor at Wisconsin-Madison, the first woman to serve in that capacity at a Big Ten school, from 1987-93, when Clinton tabbed her for a Cabinet position.

She served until 2000 and became the fifth president at Miami in June, 2001. While at Wisconsin, she fired the athletic director and football coach and persuaded Richter, a Badgers' alum and state athletic hero, to leave his position with Oscar Mayer to revive an athletic department that was $2.1 million in debt when she arrived.

"What she made everybody see was that successful athletics could be very compatible with the institution and provide opportunities in philanthropy," Richter said. "The window to the school is many times through the athletic department."

Richter lured Barry Alvarez from Lou Holtz's staff at Notre Dame in 1989. Five years later, the Badgers went to the first of three Rose Bowls in the past decade. Shalala met with football recruits whenever asked and let Alvarez live in the chancellor's mansion while his home was being built.

"Even though she's small in stature, when she walks into a room, you know she's there," Richter said. "She just has that kind of presence. She's right in the middle of talking to people. She touches the people she needs to touch. She's never wishy-washy in terms of any kind of decision."

Shalala aims to make Miami a world-class research institution and wants to elevate the Hurricanes' athletic program, which reportedly lost at least $1.4 million in 2001-2002, despite winning the NCAA football title.

Miami has championship-caliber programs in football and baseball and a new, on-campus, 7,000-seat convocation center for men's and women's basketball.

Shalala told the Palm Beach Post in a 2001 story before the Hurricanes' national championship win against Nebraska, "I'm a bit of a CNN junkie and I devour the newspapers, too, like everyone else, but I still read the sports page first. I did when I was in Washington. It was more soothing."

Dave Fairbank can be reached at 247-4637 or by e-mail at dfairbank@dailypress.com

Copyright © 2003, Daily Press

Click on a link below for more stories on PCOL

7/2/03

Main Sections
PCOL Magazine
Breaking News
One World
Peace Corps Library

What's New?

Directory Sign Up

RPCV Directory
RPCVs by COS
RPCVs by State

RPCVs by Interest

Special Sections
Advocacy
Bulletin Board
Cartoons
Congress
Directors
Headlines
History
Humor
Laws
Local RPCV Groups
Lost RPCVs
Master Index
NPCA
Obituaries
PCVs
Photography
RPCVs
Recruitment
Return to COS
Safety of PCVs
Service
Speaking Out
States

Stories
The Third Goal
Training
US Peace Corps
USA Freedom Corps
Writing

This Month's Issue

Protest at the Peace Corps

Do volunteers retain first amendment rights while serving overseas?

Read the story and leave your comments here.

This Month's Issue: Protest at the Peace Corps
Protest at the Peace Corps
Returned Volunteers honor Jack Vaughn
Alcohol Abuse a big issue for PCVs in Central Asia
Peace Corps to add 1,000 AIDS/HIV volunteers
Op-ed: The Future of the Peace Corps
Marine Sergeant says PC is "truly hardcore"

More Feature Stories
Bill Moyers talks about America�s Future
RPCV is wheelchair basketball champion
Watch Director Vasquez on web tv
Presidential Candidate calls for 25,000 Volunteers
Shays says aid organizations curtailed in Iraq
Op-ed: US has obligations in Iraq says RPCV

Previous Issues and Special Reports
Exclusive: How RPCVs organized anti-war Ad
Improvements needed in Volunteer Support
From Russia with Love
Health Concerns: The Controversy over Lariam
GAO Reports on PCV Safety and Security
The Digital Freedom Initiative
PC/Washington: Senior Staff Appointments at PC HQ
PC Expansion: The Numbers Game?
Op-ed: Why Peace Corps needs Shriver's 4th Goal
When should PC return to Afghanistan?
RPCV Spy dies in Moscow
Op-ed: The Case for Peace Corps Independence
Preservation of an Independent Peace Corps

Some postings on Peace Corps Online are provided to the individual members of this group without permission of the copyright owner for the non-profit purposes of criticism, comment, education, scholarship, and research under the "Fair Use" provisions of U.S. Government copyright laws and they may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner. Peace Corps Online does not vouch for the accuracy of the content of the postings, which is the sole responsibility of the copyright holder.

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Iran; University Administration; Sports; Football

PCOL6522
25

.

			This is a public posting area. Enter your username and password if you have an account. Otherwise, enter your full name as your username and leave the password blank. Your e-mail address is optional.
Username:
Password:
E-mail:

Add a Message