Sex, Lies, and Conservatism

...We have proved that integrity, values, and courage can still triumph in a corrupt world...

...The students simply sang a not-very-enthusiastic rendition of the alma mater (“Noble pride in our Hillsdale’s name endures”) and filed out...

...Last Wednesday, the college announced that George Roche would be leaving his job after 28 years as president of Hillsdale...

...Trowbridge is a former professor of English and by all accounts a smart, decent person who is wellliked at Hillsdale...

...It’s an American story,” says Russell, the fund-raising consultant, “a David and Goliath story, a magical story...

...He likes to build fires outside...

...Students and faculty (the latter in a full, robed academic procession led by a lone bagpiper dressed in a kilt) filed into the George Roche Health Education and Sports Complex and took their places in folding chairs on the basketball court...

...The network of celebrity conservatives on which Hillsdale can now draw in its time of need is very large, thanks to Roche...

...Even so, Roche inspired devotion among administrators, faculty, and students, some of whom actively protected him...

...It was always dismissed as rumor, even by people who knew it to be true,” said one...

...The next one, in January, will feature Bill Bennett...

...Speakers like this don’t come cheap...

...All have just returned from class...

...Roche is not only a creator but also a creature of the conservative counterculture...

...Trowbridge seems confident he’ll be able to explain what has happened at Hillsdale in a way people can understand...

...Perhaps it was his medical problems that caused Roche to retire...

...And the pauses, I’m told by a physician, were a diabetic situation...

...It is fortuitous that he happens to be the college’s chief flack, for he is also Hillsdale’s resident expert on what he calls “the Roche case...

...In so doing he made of himself a hero to the movement, and transformed his school, in the unironic words of a former student, into a “conservative academic paradise...

...After an opening prayer, the chairman of the board of trustees, Donald Mossey, class of ’51, addressed the school...

...And, Trowbridge adds, he’s on pills...

...It will never be discussed...

...And we can do it with God’s blessing...

...I would never have thought in a million years that she would put a bullet into her head,” he says...

...Trowbridge does say that Hillsdale reached some sort of legal agreement with the departing president, one that allows Roche to keep his (presumably generous) retirement benefits...

...Within days, word spread that President Roche had been having an affair with his daughter-in-law...

...Trowbridge can say things like this because he still maintains that “no one will ever know” what really happened between President Roche and his daughter-in-law...

...Among the many papers piled on Trowbridge’s desk (interview requests from Time and 20/20, page proofs from the new Imprimis) are phone messages from prominent conservatives who have called to offer their support...

...Trowbridge doesn’t answer the question directly, but he makes the point—ever so subtly— that there are a few things reporters from out of town might not know about Hillsdale...

...Trowbridge has worked at Hillsdale on and off since 1978...

...Together we have built a beautiful dream,” he wrote...

...Today Hillsdale’s endowment stands at $183 million...

...Masterson pipes up again, this time sounding apologetic...

...Take old I.V...

...Chronicle reported that Roche, as of 1994, was the fifth highest paid president of an American college, with a total compensation package of $448,000...

...The purpose of the gathering was to talk about current events at Hillsdale...

...The vehicle for much of the fund-raising was Imprimis, a monthly newsletter mailed free to conservatives around the country...

...George Roche was a cult leader masquerading as a college president,” says Thomas Payne, who was an associate professor of political science at Hillsdale from 1977 to 1987...

...Quayle will call us,” he says...

...Transitions can be frightening times,” observed dean of the faculty James Stephens, before explaining why Hillsdale is such a terrific place...

...Last year, U.S...

...The success of this fund-raising apparatus is astounding...

...Sex, Lies, and Conservatism Scandal at Hillsdale College T U C K E R C A R L S O N & A N D R E W F E R G U S O N Around lunchtime on October 17, George Roche IV returned from an errand to find that his wife of 21 years, Lissa, had shot herself to death behind their home on the campus of Hillsdale College...

...asked his father if it was true...

...Several discontented members of the “Hillsdale family”—few of whom wish to be identified—use the phrase “cult of personality” to describe Hillsdale in the Roche era...

...Roche, I.V...

...But there was no memorial service for Lissa Roche on the Hillsdale campus...

...Then, while being questioned by the police, Roche admitted that his daughter-in-law had visited him hours before she died and had threatened to commit suicide...

...That’s the truth as he understands it,” Trowbridge says, sounding a bit like an Eastern mystic...

...Now he’s fixated on a constitutional “right to privacy,” something most conservatives don’t even believe exists...

...Trowbridge is tall, white haired, and handsome in an aging leading man sort of way...

...Two days before, a number of student leaders—editors of the paper, heads of various campus organizations—were summoned to a meeting with Hillsdale’s chaplain and two of the college’s deans...

...By the time of his hiring, the American conservative movement was entering its early adulthood, and Roche allied the school with it in an ingenious way...

...But the dominant culture was for the most part happy to ignore him...

...Another compared it to “a Stalinist kind of environment...

...We already know what we need to know...

...Of course some people won’t even need an explanation...

...None has yet received a straight answer from the college about Roche...

...He likes to camp...

...For conservatives, this has made the Hillsdale cause all the more compelling...

...told Miller, “didn’t say a word...

...on campus once in a while...

...At Hillsdale, it provoked only tepid complaints, even from the local guardians of free speech...

...What people are wanting us to do,” he explains, “is to deny George his constitutional right to privacy...

...George had the vision to see that to raise money, you’ve got to spend money,” says Ron Trowbridge, Hillsdale’s vice president and its director of external affairs...

...He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would say the things he just did...

...For 13 years he worked with Lissa Roche, who had an office next door...

...Conservatives, by contrast, were content to create a parallel universe with its own magazines, publishing house, newspaper, television network—and of course, in Hillsdale, its own college—all of them untainted by the “dominant liberal culture...

...But what about George Roche IV...

...Over the following century it dropped its sectarian affiliation and by the late 1960s had fallen on hard times—nearly bankrupt, its endowment down to $4 million, faculty hiring at a standstill, and the buildings in disastrous repair...

...Discontented faculty members ventilated their frustration by telling the Chronicle of Higher Education in 1996 that Hillsdale resembled a “Gestapo police state...

...Apparently, the attorneys are also telling Hillsdale administrators not to contradict Roche’s last public statement, in which the former president implied that he had decided to retire simply because he had gotten too old (“nearly 65 years of age”) to run a college...

...There will be no discussion of President Roche,” the group was informed moments after sitting down...

...Trowbridge says he learned a great deal in the course of investigating the Roche matter...

...More details, Masterson says, would just be fodder for “human curiosity...

...In this incestuous world Roche was a star...

...Will members of the extended Hillsdale family— particularly the donors and alumni upon whom it depends for funding—rest content with a similar lack of curiosity...

...I could tell by looking at him that she was telling the truth...

...And again, he may be right...

...It turns out he had reason to believe it...

...We don’t have a right to know...

...For four years in the Reagan administration he served as head of the National Council on Educational Research...

...It ought to stand on its own as an appeal...

...The words hang in the air...

...But the school seems determined to play along...

...They did so for a variety of reasons and with generally baleful effects...

...Which is, of course, the point: With higher learning in America increasingly in thrall to multiculturalism and the other enthusiasms of leftist orthodoxy, Hillsdale promotes itself as self-consciously traditional—“a trustee,” as its mission statement proclaims, “of modern man’s intellectual and spiritual inheritance from the Judeo-Christian faith and Greco-Roman culture, a heritage finding its clearest expression in the American experiment of self-government under law...

...We are all,” Blackstock said, “all of us, left fallen and short of the glory of God...

...Trowbridge has just finished explaining how, over the years, Hillsdale has been willing to stand up for conservative principles in the face of elite opposition, even Justice Department lawsuits...

...It quickly became apparent that his great gift, like that of all successful college presidents, was in generating publicity and raising funds...

...This is an important time for Hillsdale,” Mossey began, a time when “history is being made...

...In light of the problems Roche has caused for Hillsdale lately, this kind of make-believe comes off as stunning...

...And that was it...

...launched a search for a new president, and in 1971 settled on George Roche...

...Roche, who was on his honeymoon in Hawaii, returned to Hillsdale...

...Verlin went on to congratulate Hillsdale on its fight “against moral relativism,” and then read an extended passage from Martin Luther King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail...

...Roche developed several venues for broadcasting Hillsdale’s message of “academic independence” and “freedom from government control...

...He’s able to take complicated ideas and transmit them in an easily digestible way...

...According to two current Hillsdale employees, evidence of Roche’s ongoing extramarital affairs had been placed before members of the board of trustees and of the administration over the past 10 years...

...Yet at some point every spinner begins to believe the spin...

...When HEW began peppering the college for data about the student body’s racial, ethnic, and sexual make-up, Roche and Hillsdale resisted...

...Then a memo went out to college employees instructing them not to talk to the press, and soon after, Trowbridge announced that officials would never again entertain discussion of the matter...

...Hillsdale College is perhaps the premier conservative college in the country—though “conservative colleges” isn’t really the most competitive category one can imagine...

...In desperation the board of trustees Tucker Carlson is a staff writer and Andrew Ferguson a senior editor at THEWEEKLY STANDARD...

...At Hillsdale the reasons were ideological— a determination to resist the overweening power of the state...

...Shortly after Lissa Roche’s death, Trowbridge began to hear rumors about the dead woman’s personal life...

...Acting president Robert Blackstock— the new leader of Hillsdale’s war on moral relativism— all but dared those present to pass judgment on Roche’s behavior...

...Subsequent speakers agreed...

...The kind—Trowbridge doesn’t actually say this, but you get the point—that might make a man imagine that his father had been sleeping with his wife...

...He’s a very good speaker, a good writer...

...Hillsdale was founded by progressive Baptists in 1844, and from the beginning admitted students regardless of sex or race...

...He likes to be in the woods...

...It was Roche’s insight that this resistance could be turned into a public relations asset, particularly attractive to the growing base of donors to conservative causes...

...Fit and handsome as a soap opera star, he became a conservative celebrity himself...

...He was caught...

...then, as many conservatives did in those days, he quit with the recommendation that his agency be abolished...

...Apart from a few references to “events of the last few weeks,” no one mentioned the reason for the convocation...

...Most damning of all, Roche’s son, George IV (known as “I.V...

...Trowbridge says he knew Lissa Roche was having problems in her marriage (in September, “she ran away for one day to California, then came back”) but had no idea she was seriously depressed...

...Three times a year, Hillsdale takes its show on the road, in seminars produced under the auspices of its subsidiary, another Roche creation called the Shavano Institute...

...He wrote 14 books, several of them self-published...

...Seen in this context, the convocation held last Thursday might be considered a “modified limited hangout...

...Nice guy but, well, he may be a little odd...

...A few hours after the convocation, half a dozen or so students sit in the offices of the Collegian, Hillsdale’s newspaper, talking about the Roche Affair...

...Each issue of Imprimis comes with a plea for funds and, crucially, a return envelope...

...We want to project openness,” Trowbridge said, shortly after news of the scandal became public...

...There’s no place I’d rather be...

...I don’t have any problem with it...

...Mossey referred to the abrupt and spectacular destruction of Roche’s reputation and career as “Dr...

...Doesn’t his account pretty much settle the matter...

...The walls of his office are covered with photographs of conservative heroes, including Ronald Reagan and Warren Burger, both of whom he once worked for...

...When he was giving speeches lately you could see long pauses...

...He has an extremely charismatic personality,” says Lee Edwards, a historian of the conservative movement who sent one of his children to Hillsdale...

...Simple, says Trowbridge: the Constitution...

...Or as Trowbridge puts it: “I think what he always wanted to do with his life was to go back to Colorado and live in the woods...

...Well, Trowbridge says, “that’s what the attorneys are telling us...

...But I would still not tell you— ever—why it was...

...On October 27, after conversations with her husband and friends, he took what he had learned to the board of trustees, which promptly suspended the president...

...The reason they did it will never come out...

...I saw the look in his eyes...

...According to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, this made the school itself subject to federal mandates...

...Colleagues remembered that the two traveled together frequently...

...Through Imprimis and Shavano, Trowbridge says, “George knew you could build up a reputation, you could get students, and you could raise money...

...Maybe that’s what Trowbridge will tell Hillsdale’s donors and alumni when he writes them to explain why the college has a new president...

...Back in his campus office after the convocation, Trowbridge, Hillsdale’s vice president, describes the assembly as the final step in a long process of “closure...

...But that’s it...

...Two weeks after Lissa Roche’s suicide, the board placed George Roche “on leave...

...Between 1971, when he became Hillsdale president, and the end of October 1999, Roche raised almost $325 million dollars...

...The survival of Hillsdale became a conservative crusade, the college a right-wing David standing up to the federal Goliath...

...It was inspiring...

...Last Thursday, Hillsdale held a “special convocation” designed to “clarify the college’s core values...

...You see, Trowbridge says, “George had really severe diabetes and it was really beginning to take its toll and you could see it...

...told a number of professors and administrators at Hillsdale that he believed his father had been sleeping with his wife...

...Within hours Roche’s office was dark, its contents in boxes...

...I’ve gotten pep talks...

...This is the sort of thing that on an ordinary campus would spark a sit-in, maybe an effigy burning...

...Roche’s success is evident on campus, where the physical plant has been expanded by 50 percent, while the student body has been kept constant at 1,200...

...Again, the others nod...

...Nobody stood up and shouted, “But what about the daughter-in-law...

...In the mid-1970s, there were still several American colleges, Hillsdale among them, that refused to accept federal funding...

...What we had to do was work out what was legally satisfactory to both sides...

...And you know what...

...News & World Report ranked Hillsdale number one among midwestern liberal-arts colleges...

...But he is not going to talk about any of it...

...Flip through back issues of the college yearbook, and it often seems that there is a George Roche photo on every page...

...According to I.V...

...In fact, he won’t even discuss why he won’t discuss it...

...Why, after all, would he make up a story like that...

...The kind they give to depressed people...

...Roche’s request for an early retirement...

...And totally confusing...

...After the Supreme Court’s 1984 Grove City decision, which generally upheld the government’s position regarding student aid, Hillsdale barred its students from receiving any federal aid at all...

...You can get sued for that...

...He didn’t say where he was going...

...That cloistered atmosphere carried over onto the Hillsdale campus, and it is no surprise that over the past 28 years many students and faculty have chafed at it...

...Or maybe that’s what readers of Imprimis will be told when they ask why Lissa Roche is no longer the managing editor...

...What’s going on...

...George’s father, George Roche III, was Hillsdale’s longtime president...

...Plausible rumors about Roche’s womanizing had circulated for years at Hillsdale, but this one stuck...

...The Long March through the Institutions” was a tactic, and a highly successful one, of the left only...

...next May, Ken Starr will appear at a Shavano event in Dallas...

...I know more about this than anyone,” Trowbridge says, and he may...

...Nobody even snickered...

...Trowbridge is sure there will be others...

...Indeed, Mossey explained, it is at this time in history that “we can pledge ourselves to defend Hillsdale College...

...These days, Trowbridge says, you might see old I.V...

...Others were put out by Regnery Publishing, reviewed in the Washington Times, and then boomed as “book of the year” by Insight magazine, a Times subsidiary...

...Roche was 35, director of seminars for a libertarian think tank in New York called the Foundation for Economic Education, and a former history professor at the Colorado School of Mines...

...Roche said he planned to leave Hillsdale by the end of the week...

...So it was a mutual agreement...

...Both Roches had attended Hillsdale, a small liberal-arts college 100 miles west of Detroit, and both worked there, he as a physical trainer in the athletic department, she as an editor at various Hillsdale publications...

...George’s idea was that not taking the money ought to be a cause...

...It was just too horrible to act on...

...He kind of walks around maybe a little bit not focused...

...Their son was a junior at Hillsdale...

...They don’t have to tell us...

...The way she says it, “human curiosity” sounds about as appealing as “human waste...

...In place of federal assistance, the school substituted its own, privately raised money...

...Even so, many Hillsdale students received federal student aid...

...For Trowbridge, the point comes at the end of the conversation, when he suggests that, in fact, perhaps the Events of the Last Few Weeks really didn’t have anything to do with Roche’s leaving...

...Of all conservative publications, it is the most widely circulated, with a subscription base of more than 900,000...

...Others recalled that at a recent wedding reception for Roche and his second wife (he had divorced his first wife in April after 44 years of marriage), Lissa Roche got drunk and made a number of bitter and cryptic remarks about the college president...

...Hillsdale painstakingly assembled this list of subscribers over 26 years and guards it jealously, declining to rent it to other conservative nonprofits that would like to raid it for donors...

...He is close to almost every member of the Roche family...

...After a private ceremony, her body was cremated...

...Imprimis invites its regional subscribers to attend the seminars, and audiences often approach 1,000, to hear such speakers as William F. Buckley, Colin Powell, Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Margaret Thatcher—every star in the conservative constellation has at one time or another appeared at a Shavano seminar...

...Today more than 80 percent of the students receive financial aid—but from Hillsdale, not the feds...

...A string quartet played chamber music...

...For content, Imprimis offers a brief essay from a conservative stalwart, usually based on talks given at one of the many seminars Hillsdale hosts, both on campus and off...

...I haven’t gotten explanations,” says Teresa Masterson, a junior who writes for the paper...

...I think it’s what he wants to say, and if that’s what he wants to say, it’s his business...

...The other schools that didn’t take federal money, they didn’t tout it,” says Robert Russell, a longtime fundraising consultant to Hillsdale...

...Women were enrolled on a par with men, freed slaves with whites...

...Me too, nod the others...

...He can look and sound spookily like Lloyd Bridges in Airplane...

...Roche, in an account he gave to John J. Miller of National Review, he and Lissa went to the hospital to visit President Roche (who was being treated there for diabetes) on the morning of the suicide...

...The college choir sang hymns...

...Stunned, I.V...

...While at the hospital, Lissa confessed that she and President Roche had been having a sexual relationship since 1980...

...If so, Hillsdale risks being mocked by Roche’s own words from his resignation statement...

...Resentment of Roche’s highhanded administrative style wasn’t helped by his salary...

...If you’d arrived on campus from Mars—or even from Washington—and had somehow missed the local news and the front pages of the region’s major newspapers, you would have had no idea that the president of Hillsdale had just been forced from office in the wake of a suicide-sex scandal...

...His fund-raising forced Roche to travel constantly—“He was like a ghostly figure,” one student said last week—but he impressed his vision on the school absolutely...

...Why not...

...Inside the Roche Sports Complex all was weirdly calm...

...A large portion of the college’s donations, according to fund-raisers, arrive this way...

...The figure comes from Trowbridge, who adds, “If you wanted to adjust for inflation, the amount becomes almost astronomical...

...That was really a surprise for me...

...The student-faculty ratio is 11 to 1; the SAT scores of incoming freshmen have steadily increased, and so, by most accounts, has the quality of the faculty...

...But in the wake of a scandal as lurid as the one now roiling Hillsdale, magic becomes harder to sustain...

...And it attracted a lot of attention, a lot of students, a lot of donors...

...Being at Hillsdale, enthused senior class president Beau Verlin, “is almost like going to school in the ’50s...

...Steve Forbes will help us...