FIGHTING THE SYSTEM : Another ‘Iron Magnolia’ Tries to Clean Up Georgia

ATLANTA —  As Jan Kemp reclined on the sofa in her living room after another tiring day in court, her mother talked about her ability to see into the future.

“Mother’s psychic,” Kemp said.

“I’m not proud of the fact,” her mother said.

Four years ago, the future came to Margie Hammock in a dream and startled her out of a deep sleep.

“It was h-e-l-l,” she said, genteelly spelling the word.

She said she saw her daughter’s depression, the nervous breakdown, the suicide attempts, the trips to the hospital, the financial drain as medical and legal bills mounted and eventually the trial that would force Jan Kemp to live through it again.

She got out of bed and wrote a letter to her daughter.

“It was like someone was telling me what was going to happen to her,” she said. “I wrote it down and mailed it to her. I told her I would prefer for someone else to do this.”

“I was crushed,” Kemp said.

“It’s the first disagreement we’ve had,” her mother said.

“I thought you were being unsupportive,” Kemp said. “You didn’t sound like my mother. After telling me all of my life to stand up for what I believed in, you wanted me to take the easy way out.”

“I was scared,” her mother said.

“I was scared, too,” Kemp said.

Her detractors can say what they will about Jan Kemp, and the words they have used to describe her run from abrasive to disruptive to vicious, but she never has been one to take the easy way out. That was true as far back as high school in her hometown of Griffin, Ga., about 40 miles south of Atlanta, where she was the president of a youth group at the Methodist church.

In the interest of hearing both sides, she once invited an atheist to speak to the group. When her offer was discovered by the elders of the church, they raised h-e-l-l. She was forced to withdraw the invitation. But she did not go down without a fight, invoking the principle of freedom of speech. In another time, in another fight, it is an issue that she again has embraced.

“Basically, I’m shy,” Kemp said in her Southern drawl, a voice so soft that it does not seem to go with her 6-foot 2-inch body. “In school, I was terrified about having to give a book report. But if I thought something was immoral or unethical, I summoned up courage to speak about it. I have strong convictions. I want things to be done right.

“I’m like Rosalynn Carter. What did they call her? The Iron Magnolia. I’m an Iron Magnolia.”

That does not mean she is invulnerable. She twice tried to kill herself in 1982. Even Iron Magnolias get the blues. But there is no questioning her resiliency. Three days after she was released from the psychiatric ward of Atlanta’s Peachford Hospital for the second time, she filed a suit against the two University of Georgia administrators responsible for firing her, Dr. Virginia Trotter, vice president for academic affairs, and Dr. Leroy Ervin, director of the developmental studies program. Kemp contends she was fired for speaking out against preferential treatment for athletes who were enrolled in developmental studies. Now an adjunct professor at Southern Technical Institute in Marietta, Kemp, 36, seeks reinstatement, less than $100,000 in actual damages and an undisclosed amount in punitive damages.

She said her husband, Bill, who is chairman of the social studies deparment at Atlanta’s Therrell High School, has remained supportive, even though the legal fees have exhausted their investments and retirement funds. They live with their two children, Will, 3 1/2, and Margie, 20 months, in Acwater, a middle-class suburb about 25 miles north of Atlanta.

“If it hadn’t been for the J.C. Penney’s charge card, we couldn’t have had Christmas at all,” she told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in early January. “We haven’t missed a meal, but we’ve put some strange things on the table. If we lose, we’ll go bankrupt.”

Now being heard in the U.S. District Court of Northern Georgia, the trial begins its fifth week today.

Six days into the trial, a white-haired woman in a purple shawl approached Kemp and placed $5 in her hand.

“We’d all go to hell if it wasn’t for people like you,” said Margaret Bridges, a retired teacher and a 1933 Georgia graduate. “This is a widow’s mite toward your lawyers’ fees.”

Later, outside the courtroom, Bridges said: “All I happened to have was $5. If I’d had $100, I would have given it to her. It’s shameful what’s going on at the university. I’m embarrassed. When I was in school, Georgia wasn’t a great school. There was so little money that the teachers were paid in scrip. But it was an honest school.”

Asked why she filed her suit, Kemp said, “Because I love the University of Georgia.”

From 1976, when Kemp returned to her alma mater to begin work on her doctorate degree, until 1983, she was associated with the developmental studies program, first as a teaching assistant, then as an instructor before her promotion to English coordinator.

Georgia law requires that all of the state’s colleges and universities offer developmental studies, non-credit remedial courses in math, reading and English for students who are not prepared for regular curriculum. Of the approximately 250 students that the University of Georgia admits into its developmental studies program each year, about 10% are scholarship athletes.

In 1981, Kemp complained to her superiors about preferential treatment for athletes within the program. The most blatant example was Trotter’s decision in December of 1981 to promote nine football players into the regular curriculum so that they would be eligible for the 1982 Sugar Bowl, even though they had not met the requirements in their developmental studies courses.

In a tongue-twisted admission that has brought her considerable ridicule, Trotter said, “I would rather err on the side of making a mistake.”

There have been other questionable practices. Evidence has been presented that standards for gaining admission to the university are lower if an athlete participates in a revenue-producing sport such as football or basketball, that some athletes are admitted even if it is believed they have little chance ever to graduate and that they remain eligible by enrolling in non-demanding courses. One athlete whose transcript was read in court took First Aid, Tumbling and Personal Communications in Health during one quarter.

Oddly enough, one of the most damaging indictments of the university’s policies came from Ervin in a speech he made to the developmental studies faculty in 1983. His comments were tape-recorded by one of the instructors and presented during the trial.

“I know for a fact that these kids would not be here if it were not for their utility to the institution,” he said. “There is no real sound academic reason for their being here other than to be utilized to produce income. They are used as a kind of raw material in the production of some goods to be sold as whatever product, and they get nothing in return.”

Other faculty members within the program also objected, but Kemp was the least diplomatic. She threatened to go public with the information. In April of 1982, Kemp was demoted from coordinator to instructor. Four months later, she was fired by Ervin. Trotter approved the firing.

Kemp contends that the dismissal was a violation of her civil rights. Presiding over the trial is Judge Horace Ward, who has been involved before in litigation with the University of Georgia. In 1950, he was prevented by state and university officials from becoming the first black to attend Georgia. As a crusading civil-rights attorney a decade later, he was instrumental in gaining admission for the university’s first two black students.

During a break in the trial last week, Ward said: “I’m amazed by the amount of bitterness involved (in this trial). I’m bothered by that. Bitterness does sometimes cloud the truth.”

Testifying on Kemp’s behalf, Teresa Timmons, a former instructor within the developmental studies program, said: “You don’t have to be a scholar to figure out that the people who spoke out strongly were gone within a year.”

Another former colleague, Ruth Sabol, said Kemp had an “extraordinary amount of moral courage.”

The defendants, on the other hand, contend that Kemp was fired because she did not participate in scholarly research, a requirement for professors at the university, and because she was insubordinate and unable to get along with other faculty members.

“She would belittle others in meetings if they did not agree with what she said,” said one former colleague, Rebecca Galvin.

Galvin, the university’s tutoring coordinator, said Kemp once threw a piece of candy at her. At least, Galvin said she thought it was candy. When she opened the wrapper, she said she found a condom inside.

“Mean, vicious, abrasive, aggressive, intimidating, caustic, combative,” one of Kemp’s attorneys, Hue Henry, said one afternoon while cross-examining a defense witness, who was critical of Kemp. “Did I leave out any adverbs?”

Proving that you can take the professor out of the classroom, but not the classroom out of the professor, Kemp leaned over to her attorney and corrected him.

“Adjectives,” she said.

“Pardon me,” Henry said. “I went to the University of Georgia.”

Trotter and Ervin may be co-defendants in the U.S. District Court of Northern Georgia, but the University of Georgia is on trial in the court of public opinion.

“The issue is bigger than the case,” Henry said last week. “Everybody on our team, including Jan, wants it that way. We want the verdict real bad. But no matter which way the verdict goes, we feel that we have achieved our objective.”

The university has virtually conceded that point. In his opening remarks to the jury, Hale Almand, the lawyer hired by the state attorney general’s office to defend Trotter and Ervin, admitted that the university will enroll an athlete even if it realizes he has little chance to graduate. His defense of the practice further embarrassed the university. “We may not make a university student out of him,” Almand said, “but if we can teach him to read and write, maybe he can work at the post office rather than as a garbage man when he gets through with his athletic career.”

As Kemp said, “In one sentence, he managed to insult postal workers, garbage men and athletes.”

The relationship between academics and athletics at Georgia has been the subject of controversy before. An 18-part, Pulitzer Prize-winning series in 1984 by the Macon Telegraph revealed that over a 10-year period the university graduated only 17% of its black football players and only 4% of its black basketball players. Since black athletes began attending Georgia in 1969, as few as 30 from among 200 have graduated. But no university’s policies in regard to student-athletes has ever been placed under such a microscope as Georgia’s have been since this trial began.

So far, Georgians do not like what they have seen.

“People are shocked,” said Pat Nelson, another of Kemp’s attorneys. “They thought that these things were going on at Auburn and Clemson but not at Georgia. They know better now. About the only thing people can say in Georgia’s defense is that this is happening everywhere.”

In a letter to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Tommy Lawhorne, a co-captain of the 1967 Georgia football team and now a vascular surgeon in Columbus, Ga., wrote: “During the last few years, my love (for college football) has begun to fade. Too much business and too little scholarship has cooled my zeal. . . . It is common for colleges to display TV vignettes of laboratories and libraries during halftimes of games in which illiterate students represent these same institutions. The irony of this is equaled only by the hypocrisy of it all.”

Another reader, Tom Brewer of Decatur, Ga., wrote: “Keeping the athletic teams well-stocked with talented jocks is important, but not important enough to compromise the integrity of the university.”

Bill Shipp, an editorial page columnist for the Constitution, wrote: “The Jan Kemp case is a disgraceful mess not only as it relates to the school for gladiators, but to the entire administration of Georgia’s higher-education system and to the regents who are supposed to set policy. It’s time somebody called for a broom.”

An editorial in the newspaper asked, “Sheepskin or fleece for athletes?”

Armed with their answer to that question last week were about 250 students on the Georgia campus in Athens, who, despite a temperature of 12 degrees and a wind-chill factor of minus 20 degrees, participated in a protest march from the office of university President Fred Davison to Sanford Stadium. Upon arriving, they had an auction for an imitation diploma. It went to the lowest bidder for a nickel.

The demonstration was organized by a newly formed group called Students Against Campus Corruption. As they marched, students chanted: “SACC Trotter/SACC Ervin.”

In reference to athletic director and football coach Vince Dooley, some of the students also chanted, “SACC Dooley.”

At a hastily called press conference the following afternoon, Kemp said: “I am pleased that there was a student response. It’s the first time since the early ‘70s there has been a student demonstration. I’m pleased it’s for academic integrity.

“However, I am somewhat disappointed that some of the people were chanting, ‘SACC Dooley.’ From all the dealings I’ve had with Coach Dooley, I have known him to be a man of utmost dignity.”

Kemp was asked about a letter that had been introduced into evidence earlier. In the 1982 letter to Trotter, Dooley asked that an outstanding track athlete be admitted to the university, even though he did not meet required standards. The athlete was allowed to enroll.

“I saw that for the first time along with you guys,” Kemp told reporters.

Dooley said Thursday that he has been notified that he will be called to testify this week as a witness for the defense.

“I don’t think he will hurt me,” Kemp said.

Despite everything that has transpired, Kemp said she and her husband are as devoted Georgia football fans today as they were as undergraduates, when they met in the Bulldog Room in the student center at Georgia.

“I didn’t miss a game for 15 years,” she said. “I didn’t miss any games the national championship season. I went to all 12 games, including the Sugar Bowl. We followed them around like groupies. Everything I had was red and black. We still follow the Dogs, even though we can’t afford to go the games.

“I still want Georgia to win. But I want them to do it honestly.”

Testifying on Kemp’s behalf, one former football player, Ronnie Stewart said: “There is no finer person. If there was any preferential treatment that I got as an athlete, it was from her, because there was no time she wouldn’t get out of her bed and come to the dormitory to help me. I remember one Sunday she came to the library and we sat for 10 hours while I wrote a paper.”

Even witnesses for the defense concede that Kemp was an excellent teacher, whose evaluations from students generally were good except for occasional complaints about her moodiness.

Kemp admitted she sometimes was “not as pleasant as I could have been” to her students.

“I think it’s related to my unwillingness to let them coast,” she said. “I wanted them to do well at the university. I stayed on their backs. I don’t want athletes knocking on my door five years from now offering to rake my leaves when they could have had an education.”

During an interview at her home, Kemp said she did not always want to teach. She received her undergraduate degree from Georgia in 1971 in journalism. But when she could not find suitable employment, she accepted a job as secretary to the president at Georgia State in Atlanta. When her boss was appointed by Gov. Jimmy Carter to the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, she went with him as an assistant, meeting regularly with Carter’s administrative assistant, Hamilton Jordan, to discuss cases.

She took advantage of her journalistic background by writing free-lance articles, most of them dealing with education. Inspired by her research, she taught in public schools for four years before accepting an offer to return to Georgia in 1976 to work on her doctorate and teach in the developmental studies program.

“I love the challenge of developmental studies,” she said. “There is nothing more satisfying than taking someone who hasn’t learned the power and effectiveness of the language and teaching them to use it. Friends of mine prefer honors courses in English. But there’s no challenge. The challenge is taking someone who can’t read or write and teaching him to be an accomplished writer. Left alone, we can do that.”

She said she came to that conclusion that she would not be left alone in April of 1981, when she said Ervin requested that she ask another instructor within the English department to change the grades of five scholarship athletes from failing to incompletes. She said that when she protested, Ervin told her: “Who do you think you are? Who do you think is more important at this university, you or a very prominent basketball player?” Ervin has denied he made such a request.

In December of 1981, Trotter promoted the nine football players who had not completed their developmental studies requirements.

According to testimony, most of the faculty members within developmental studies objected to Trotter’s decision. “We were outraged because we felt the athletes were being exploited to produce revenue,” said Dr. William Diehl, a former reading instructor within the program who since has left for another university. “Their primary purpose wasn’t to graduate.” But as it was Kemp who objected the most vigorously, she was chosen to draft a letter to Trotter. When the other faculty members refused to sign the letter because they felt it was too vitriolic, they say she accused them of cowardice.

Kemp said that was not her intention.

“I said, ‘Silence is golden, but sometimes it’s also yellow,’ ” she said. “They asked me if I was calling them cowards. I said, ‘No, but if the shoe fits, wear it.’ ”

In April of 1982, Kemp was demoted from coordinator to instructor.

On a leave of absence while pregnant with her first child, Kemp said she learned that Ervin was attempting to build a case against her by soliciting negative comments from students who had failed her courses. After she filed a libel suit against Ervin, she said he attempted to blackmail one of her best friends, a homosexual instructor, by threatening him with exposure unless he would agree to testify against Kemp. She said the instructor resigned. Under instruction from his attorneys, Ervin has not commented on the charges.

“As long as I was the only one being hurt, I was making it beautifully,” Kemp said. “But when others became involved, that’s when the depression set in.”

Kemp earlier suffered from depression in 1974, but she said that was a “mild case of the blues” compared to her state of mind in 1982.

“I lost my ability to contribute,” she said. “I had insomnia. I had nosebleeds. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t dress myself. I couldn’t cook breakfast. I couldn’t do the laundry. I thought I was a burden to my family and that the best thing to do was get out of their lives. It was irrational, but depression makes you irrational.”

She said if she had not been pregnant, she would have committed suicide then.

“I owe Will my life,” she said of her son. “I planned to commit suicide in April. I was rational enough to do it then. But I didn’t want to do it before Will was born. When he was about two months old, I went ahead with it. But I couldn’t find my heart. I stabbed myself in the chest with a butcher knife. I kept stabbing myself in the chest.

“All the way to the hospital, Will was crying. My mother and my husband were telling me to breast-feed him. This is the most vivid memory I have, one that I will never forget as long as I live. Will was crying because he hadn’t been fed all day, but I thought my milk was poison. I wouldn’t feed him. Mother and Bill were begging me to feed him. I finally said OK. As I was feeding him, the blood from my chest was running down in his face. I’ll never forget that as long as I live.

“When I woke up in the hospital, I thought I had succeeded in committing suicide, and I thought I was in hell. I was in the psychiatric ward, and the patient next to me was a drug addict. I thought she had Will.”

While she was in the psychiatric ward, she received notice from the university that her contract would not be extended beyond 1983. A month later, Kemp’s doctors approved her for release. Three days later, she again tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose. She was readmitted to the hospital for two more months.

She still takes medication for depression but said she believes the worst is behind her.

“I was spiritually healed in a faith-healing service at the Living Faith Fellowship in Watkinsville,” she said. “The Good Doctor and the Good Lord got me over it. The first thing I did when I got out of the hospital was file another suit.”

When her daughter finished telling her story, Margie Hammock was asked if she could see far enough into the future to reveal the verdict.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Jan has already won.”

Even though she has asked to be reinstated at Georgia, Kemp said she probably will remain at Southern Tech even if she wins her suit. She has applied for a fulltime position in developmental studies next fall.

“There’s nothing that I would like more than to go back and be a part of the new Georgia, after it’s swept clean,” she said. “But more than likely, I’d stay at Tech because it’s such a fine institution, such a honest one.”