Hopes for Bush presidential library at Baylor buoyed by location, institutional values
WACO, Texas (BP)--Administrators at Baylor University are awaiting announcement of the future location of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Archives with subdued confidence that the Waco, Texas, campus will land the project.
Baylor remains in the race for the library with three other institutions -- the University of Dallas, Southern Methodist University, also in Dallas, and a consortium of schools, including Texas Tech University, in Lubbock. But Baylor is the only one that can offer the library project what it needs: land and easy accessibility.
The Baptist university stands ready to provide more than 150 acres of land to the library and its accompanying museum. Added to that is the university’s location, virtually equidistant from San Antonio, Dallas and Houston, the major population centers in Texas.
“Seventeen [million] of the 21 million people who live in Texas live within a 200-mile radius of Baylor University,” said Tommie Lou Davis, chief of staff in the office of Baylor University Chancellor Robert Sloan. “That position offers us what the other campuses cannot: location and accessibility for a large portion of the people of Texas.”
Davis said she is confident that a presidential library in Waco could easily attract some 600,000 visitors in the first year, much like the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark.
The vision for the Bush library on the Baylor campus began nearly 10 years ago, long before George W. Bush was elected president and even before “Baylor 2012,” Sloan’s sometimes controversial plan to elevate Baylor to the status of a tier-one university. President Bush also has ties to the university, having been awarded an honorary doctorate while he was serving as governor of Texas.
Sloan, in an interview, said, “Although this vision for the library antedates 2012, it is consistent with the effort of 2012, that of building a great tier-one university. It will offer Baylor University visibility, a path for outreach, and an unparalleled opportunity for research.”
In what could be described as one of Sloan’s more brilliant moves as Baylor’s president, the embattled leader hired three of the nation’s top consultants in the business of presidential libraries before Bush was first elected in 2000. He said that when the race for capturing the library began in earnest last year, other schools attempted to hire the consultants away. “To their credit, they stayed with us,” Sloan said.
The consultants hired by Baylor were Don Wilson, former director of the George Bush Presidential Library Center in College Station, Texas; John Fawcett, who served as director of the presidential library system from 1987-94; and Terry Sullivan, an expert in online archiving.
“They were persuaded that we had the makings of a great proposal,” Sloan said.
Staffers from Baylor visited all of the presidential libraries around the country, Davis said, noting the best characteristics of each of the libraries, such as the educational outreach program of the Truman library, and then incorporating them into the university’s 178-page proposal. That proposal outlines land use; university programs that would support the museum, archives and oral history project; and the university’s mission statement and the imperatives of Baylor 2012.
An event out of Baylor’s control also contributed to its hopes for the library. When President Bush purchased a ranch a short distance from the Waco campus, locating the facility at Baylor seemed logical. “When they bought the property in Crawford, that was a big boost to our hopes,” Sloan said.
But Sloan sees Baylor’s institutional values as the main reason the university is high in the running for the library, citing as examples the school’s church-state studies program and the Center for Religious Inquiry Across the Disciplines.
“The placement of the library here would be a great point of pride for Baptists, but it is larger than any one group,” Sloan said. “It goes beyond Baylor. It is an affirmation of the state, the values that the president holds, and the values held by the people who love Baylor.”
“A faith-based institution such as ours easily aligns with George W. Bush’s vision for government,” Davis said. “George W. and Laura Bush impress me as the people who are inclusive of others. That is the kind of place that Baylor is -— welcoming.”
Sloan also said a presidential library at Baylor would affirm the place of Christians in American political life, as well as the position of the Christian university.
“Such a library speaks volumes to all of us about the importance of public service. Sometimes people want to withdraw from public involvement, but a presidential library on a private, faith-based campus would be a real affirmation of the need to be involved,” Sloan said.
“As for its position on the campus of a Christian university, it shows that they are an important part of the total fabric of higher education in the American experience. Christian universities bring diversity to the table,” he said.
If the presidential library lands at Baylor, Sloan said he would be proud, but he quickly deferred any notion that he should receive credit, or that the presence of the library would validate his presidency, which ended after he resigned under pressure from regents earlier this year.
“Presidents come and go, but what should abide is the institution’s character and mission,” Sloan said.
Davis said she anticipates that a great celebration at Baylor will ensue the day the announcement of the library’s location is made. She likened the campaign for the library to last year’s NCAA women’s tournament.
“We’ve made it to the final four. We want to be just like the Lady Bears. We want to finish the job,” she said.
Sloan and Davis said they hope the site chosen for the George W. Bush Presidential Library will be announced by the end of the year.
