COLUMBUS, Ohio - Alarmed over reports that William E. Kirwan would leave Ohio State University for Maryland, the student government president asked Kirwan directly over breakfast: Are you going?
Kirwan looked OSU senior Ryan Robinson in the eyes and said, "Don't worry. Don't worry."
That was last fall, and Robinson stopped worrying. Now, as Kirwan mulls over whether to leave the Ohio State presidency to become chancellor of the University System of Maryland, a whole campus is on edge.
Already in the midst of a stressful finals week, students and professors took the news of Kirwan's possible departure as a blow to their university and its ambitions and as a setback for the substantial gains made during his brief tenure since leaving the presidency of the University of Maryland, College Park.
In just four years, they said, he has improved academic programs and standards, attracted star professors, raised piles of money, paid more than lip service to diversity and made the state's anemic funding of higher education a marquee issue for the state's Democratic Party.
Clearly, they don't want him to go.
"I hope you don't get your story," Professor David Frantz bluntly told a reporter. A frequent tennis partner, Frantz said he'd be "incredibly dismayed" if Kirwan left. But Frantz realizes that Maryland offers something Ohio can't - family.
Kirwan's son and daughter live in Maryland. His son has two children, and his daughter has one on the way.
"If you know him and know how much family matters ... that would be the single biggest draw," Frantz said. "To go back, have a great job, be with his family, who could blame him? Look at it this way: Why wouldn't he do it?"
David L. Brennan, chairman of the Ohio State Board of Trustees, agreed that Kirwan's Maryland connections were a factor but said yesterday that he still held out hope Kirwan would stay in Columbus to finish the job he started. The trustees have "done everything we think is appropriate" to try to keep Kirwan, he said.
The trustees hired Kirwan in 1998 with the understanding that he would finish his career at Ohio State, said Brennan, who was on vacation in Florida.
"He's not made up his mind yet. I don't think we're going to lose him," Brennan said.
But he said he wouldn't begrudge Kirwan if he decides to take the Maryland job.
"He has strong family ties in Maryland, that's what tugging at his heartstrings, and I'm not sure we can compete with that," Brennan said.
