New Loyola College President Harold "Hap" Ridley Jr. does not want to talk about filling shoes. He does not want always to be looking back at Loyola's recent past under "Father Joe."
In three decades as president, the late Rev. Joseph Sellinger succeeded in his driving ambition: turning a commuter school known little beyond greater Baltimore into a regional liberal arts college.
So the question becomes: What becomes the replacement of a legend most?
For Father Ridley, a soft-spoken scholar who until last fall spent almost his entire career at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., the answer will always be academic.
"The faculty wanted to see a faculty-type person here," Father Ridley said, and in this gangly 6-foot-4 student of Victorian poets they have one. When interviewed by trustees for the job, Father Ridley recalled he sensed the college "needed above all else someone who would be visible on campus, present to faculty and to students, who would be someone who had been a teacher, someone who really -- how can I put this? -- was an academic person."
English professor Robert Miola, for one, was impressed that Father Ridley was willing to become Professor Ridley, stepping in to lecture on Shakespeare for a course taught by Provost Thomas Scheye.
It was a signal from the top, Dr. Miola suggested, that the work done in the classroom is every bit as important as the duties of administrators cloistered in the corridors of Loyola's Maryland Hall. At Le Moyne, Father Ridley stepped down as provost, or chief academic officer, after five years in 1985, and returned to teaching in the English department. It was like having a hobby for which someone was willing to pay him, Father Ridley said. Nevertheless, he agreed to become president of one of the nation's 28 Jesuit campuses.
Those who know Father Ridley said he makes decisions deliberately but that he is willing to take risks. On any given decision, "he would seek out the best advice possible, reflect on it, measure it against his own feelings and try to make a decision," said Sister Judith Ridley, who as a child called her baby brother "happy" so frequently the word stuck as a nickname.
Born to an engineer and a schoolteacher in Jersey City, N.J., Hap Ridley, now 55, was raised in a Catholic family that did not emphasize religion in its life. When considering entering a seminary, he was told by a Jesuit priest he sought for counsel to list all the pros and cons on a sheet of paper. "I had only one column," Father Ridley recalled recently. "They were all cons. I couldn't articulate the reasons why I wanted to do it."
Instead, he thought back to Cardinal John Newman's writings, in which the 19th-century English theologian mused on how people acquire faith. "It's a treatise against rationalism," Father Ridley explained. "The whole man moves. Crucial life decisions are not decisions which happen in a minute, but it's a gradual sense that you have with emotional, intellectual, psychological underpinnings."
Loyola officials have many decisions to make. The school's enrollment has climbed to roughly 3,000 undergraduates, most of whom live in campus housing, and 3,000 graduate students. As institutional immaturity has given way to academic adolescence, Loyola now faces a new set of problems.
The school is juggling the highly practical education of its business school and other professional master's programs with the more intellectual structure of a liberal arts undergraduate education.
The college must also determine what religious instruction means in an era when only 9 of 222 full-time faculty are Jesuits. In the earliest days of the Sellinger era, three out of every four instructors were Jesuits. Those questions have been, on the whole, deftly deflected, campus officials said.
The school has not as easily sidestepped an issue that has polarized American campuses for the past 25 years -- how to make the student body reflective of society itself.
On Nov. 9, a group of 30 black students denounced the school for dragging its feet on racial issues, saying it was indifferent to African-Americans on campus.
Among the protesters' demands: that the college assemble a team of admissions officers devoted solely to recruiting blacks and other minority students; that the college fire any professor -- tenured or not -- who makes racially insensitive remarks; and that the college establish "special interest" residential quarters, where students could choose to live in areas built around themes like African heritage.
Loyola officials are disinclined or unable to accept these resolutions whole. "I don't think any of us are sanguine about the possibility of achieving all those things in the short term," said Dr. Scheye, who served as interim president for a year before Father Ridley's arrival on campus. "Those of us who work at it understand that progress will come in terms of inches."
Only 4 percent of undergraduates and 2 percent of faculty are black; minorities make up 8.2 percent of undergraduates and 6 percent of faculty. For the graduate programs, the totals are 6 percent black and 7.8 percent minority. Dr. Scheye said the university offered incentives for departments to hire blacks, and that it had set a goal that blacks would make up 5 percent of all undergraduates within the next five years.
These modest goals are unlikely to persuade the most ardent. Even so, black student activist Rob Greene, a senior from Baltimore, said the administration under Father Ridley has become sympathetic to their concerns, which include a belief that campus police are suspicious of blacks.
"I felt the college was very complacent about diversity," said Mr. Greene, a journalism major who is 21. "The students were very nonchalant about it. Something needed to be challenged." The Black Student Association held a public forum at which many white students questioned Mr. Greene, asking him to distinguish his proposals from self-segregation. The debate showed students grappling with fundamental campus problems, Dr. Scheye said with some measure of pleasure.
Father Ridley said that he intends to bolster the small cadre of black students and faculty on campus, in part by promoting the school in Baltimore City. "Loyola does not have any sort of clear identity within the local community, and to the extent it does, I think it is seen as a white campus -- a place where [blacks] are not welcome," he said.
"People are different. We have to help our students realize that, for their own good -- and for the success of their own careers -- the same way we have to understand the differences between women and men," Father Ridley said.
Said Mr. Greene, who has met with him as a member of a senior honor society: "Father Ridley seems to be a very concerned and earnest president. He doesn't seem to want to push these issues to the side." Rather than swell student ranks further, campus administrators said they intend to focus more on the experience undergraduates have on campus. That may mean converting some college-owned apartment buildings into more traditional dormitory settings. It also may mean building a big student center on the west side of Charles Street near the footbridge.
The college's whirlwind expansion under Father Sellinger reflected his own boisterous style. It also alienated many people who lived nearby. Loyola spokesman Mark Kelly concedes the school has only once met the enrollment caps in a 1986 pact forged with representatives of the tony neighborhoods near Loyola -- such as Tuscany-Canterbury, Keswick, Roland Park and Guilford.
More students on campus, residents protested, means more living off campus, partying, carousing, urinating in public streets and private yards. School officials were accused of deceit in their dealings with the neighborhoods.
In one particularly telling incident 15 years ago, the school, apparently worried that neighbors were prepared to seek an injunction, constructed towering lights for its lacrosse field on a Sunday, when the courts were closed. A judge later ordered the school to take down the lights.
Now the college and the coalition of neighborhood associations are hammering out details of a new agreement. And Mary Ann Knott, the niece of a major donor to the school and chairwoman of the North Baltimore Neighborhood Coalition, said Father Ridley's arrival has heralded a new day.
"There has been a very definite shift in the way the college has been doing business in the negotiations," Ms. Knott said. "People seem more relaxed. It doesn't seem as cutthroat." Ms. Knott said she believes the two sides can reach an agreement that will satisfy both.
In general, Dr. Scheye said, the new president has been encouraging a fresh look at old issues. "He comes to Loyola as a long-balanced, deeply experienced observer. The very fact that a new set of eyes are looking and asking, 'Why are things as they are?' is an enormous prompt to the campus.
"The poet Shelley talks about 'the veil of familiarity.' One of the things Ridley is helping us do is to shed that veil, and not be content because that's the way we've always done it," Dr. Scheye said.
THE RIDLEY FILE
Born: Jersey City, N.J., June 20, 1939.
Education St. Peter's Prep
Fordham University, B.A. 1962, Ph.L. 1963, M.A. 1964.
Woodstock College (Md.), B.D., 1969.
The Union Theological Seminary, S.T.M., 1970
New York University, Ph.D. 1975.
Professional Experience:
Regis High School (New York City) 1963-1966 Latin and English teacher
Maryland Institute, College of Art 1967-1968 adjunct instructor of humanities
Le Moyne College
1973-1994 English professor, department chairman, provost
Loyola College, president 1994-
LOYOLA COLLEGE IN MARYLAND
Founded 1852 (merged with Mount St. Agnes College in 1971)
Endowment: $63 million
Enrollment: 3,000 undergraduates
3,000 graduate
Students living on campus: 70 percent
Faculty: 222
Full-time administrators: 155
Other full-time staff: 318
Tuition: $12,990
Annual operating budget: $72.5 million
Financial aid budget: $16.9 million