You can’t help but fall in love with Charleston on one of these days. The temperature is warm, but not overwhelming – not like it can be on some spring days, dripping in humidity. A pleasant salt breeze blows through the Cistern Yard, a reassuring reminder of the proximity to the harbor. And the sky is a lush indigo, as if the city were draped in a grand South Carolina flag.
Having just delivered the commencement address for the Class of 2013, Glenn McConnell ’69 is taking it all in. Looking out over the crowd, McConnell can feel the emotion as if it were a giant embrace, and smiles as he looks into eyes sparkling with tears of pride. Family members crane their necks to catch a glimpse of their graduates and their arms hover in impossible angles, in attempts to snap photos – pictures they will hang prominently on their walls or display on their mantels and desks for years to come. These photos with Randolph Hall as a dramatic backdrop will serve as a reminder that it was all worth it. All the work, all the worry, all the sacrifice. As today marvelously reveals, it all made a difference.
And then McConnell turns to gaze upon the sea of white sharing the stage with him. Most people think that you’ll look your best on your wedding day – that is, unless they’ve seen a College of Charleston graduation. This is an apex moment. Everyone looks beautiful. These graduating seniors seem to shimmer on stage – the sun a natural spotlight on their white dresses and white dinner jackets. In those faces, McConnell sees so much hope, so much promise.
And he remembers. He thinks back to his own days back on the Cistern in 1969. Even with Vietnam and the draft looming like a hurricane off the coast, McConnell remembers the pride and optimism he felt walking across that very same stage, shaking hands with new President Ted Stern and getting that diploma.
That piece of paper represented so much: the mental struggles, the breakthroughs in his own thinking, his maturation toward independent thought and the hard-won confidence in his abilities. Actually, that piece of paper isn’t just a piece of paper. He understands that fully now: Rather, it’s a bond between him and the scholars who truly inspired him – Harry Freeman ’43 and Maggie Pennington in biology, the pipe-twirling Edward Towell ’34 in chemistry, Madame Andree Cochelin-Stafford in French and Sister Anne Francis Campbell, George Heltai and Glenn Grayson in history. These are the shoulders upon which he stands and, because of them, he knows – there on the Cistern stage – that he was and still is ready to face whatever may come. 
Live for Today
How did it come to this? Three decades of work. Three decades of consensus building. Three decades of forging relationships across the state. All for this?
That’s what was running through McConnell’s mind when Ken Ard resigned as lieutenant governor of South Carolina in March 2012. That meant McConnell, who was president pro tempore of the South Carolina Senate and the most powerful senator in the state, would assume a primarily ceremonial role as president of the S.C. Senate (voting only in order to break a tie) and as head of the Office of Aging, which commanded little, if any, clout.
A master strategist and a lawyer by training, McConnell could have maneuvered himself out of this conundrum. There was wiggle room, but he understood the spirit of the law in the state’s constitution on this particular matter. He knew that principle and commitment had to mean something, even in this new world of “upper-hand” politics and constant spin. That wasn’t his style of leadership. It never had been, and that wasn’t going to be his legacy as a public servant.
“I had taken an oath, and I took that oath very seriously,” McConnell recalls. “The time had come for me to fulfill that obligation, but I did feel like I was attending my own political funeral.”
Funerals are a funny thing. While they may be about endings and imbued with sadness and regret, they are also a time for reflection – and thus, appreciation for what came before the end. And there is a lot to appreciate in McConnell’s rise in South Carolina government.
His political journey started while he was a teenager. Raised in a household of Eisenhower Republicans, McConnell followed political races and conventions in the newspapers like they were box scores for his favorite team, and he was particularly inspired by Barry Goldwater’s presidential run in 1964. Remember, South Carolina – especially on the state leadership level – was a Democratic stronghold during the sixties. Being Republican was not a popular choice then, although more and more young people were gravitating in that direction.
At the College, McConnell got involved with the student council. He was a member of the College Republicans and also later served on the State Student Legislature, which traveled to Columbia twice a year and allowed him to see up close how the state legislature worked. By his senior year, he was president of the student body and, with Margaret Mohrmann ’69 (secretary) and Kathy Mood McKie ’70 (treasurer), he worked to strengthen the Student Government Association.
“The three of us really modernized SGA,” McConnell says. “This was as the College was joining the state system, and we were going through a very, very difficult financial situation. As student leaders, we were only concerned with how to move forward, how do we help solve problems and make the campus better.”
As part of that solution, McConnell would meet with President Stern and the College’s administrative leaders every Thursday morning to talk about student needs, ranging from parking meters and crosswalks to student activities. One particular student event stands out in his mind: the Grass Roots concert.
The previous year, the College brought the 5th Dimension to play in Silcox Gym, and, although the “Age of Aquarius” band awed the crowd with a great performance, it didn’t make money. McConnell vowed not to make the same fiscal mistake as his predecessors. He canvassed campus to see what students wanted to hear, and decided on the Los Angeles–based psychedelic rock band The Grass Roots, with radio hits such as “Let’s Live for Today” and “Midnight Confessions.”
“We packed that gym,” McConnell smiles, remembering the students, their heads swaying back and forth as they sang, “Sha-la-la-la-la-las, live for today.”
On the Greek scene, McConnell joined the fraternity Pi Kappa Phi, which was founded at the College, following in the footsteps of his brother, Samm McConnell ’62, and eventually worked his way to archon (or president) his junior/senior year.
“I had an amazing student experience,” McConnell recalls. “Every Friday after-noon, we would clean the fraternity house and get ready to host a party. Yes, we had a good time during the weekends, but during the week, starting on Sunday, you were focused on your studies. It was a demanding academic curriculum. The classes were small, so you couldn’t hide from your professors and not be prepared.” 
Even today, McConnell still marvels at the intelligence of the faculty: “They were all brilliant. I remember my history professors had photographic memories. They didn’t lecture from notes. They would walk the room, reciting dates, names and moments. They really cared that you learned the material.”
But those halcyon days of college would eventually end. Just a few weeks after he graduated with his degree in political science, McConnell received his pre-induction notice to report to Fort Jackson for his physical. On his two-hour bus trip to Columbia, McConnell had plenty of time to think about where his life might go – and, as an avid newspaper reader, he was not thrilled with the prospect of Vietnam, especially in light of the front-page images of Hamburger Hill and the knowledge that President Richard Nixon was sending 25,000 U.S. troops overseas by August.
But fate had something else in mind. During his physical, McConnell learned that he was color blind, so color blind, in fact, that the examining officer told him, “Glenn, you’re going back to Charleston. You’re not going to shoot at your own people.”
McConnell went to law school at the University of South Carolina that fall. His enthusiasm for government and law never wavered. It actually grew stronger. After earning his J.D., he was ready to change the world. And that enthusiasm caught the attention of Richard Fields, a municipal judge who had the distinction of being the first African American judge in Charleston since Reconstruction and who also served as chairman of the board for the Neighborhood Legal Assistance Program (known locally as Legal Aid). Whereas many of McConnell’s classmates went into private practice and more lucrative jobs on Broad Street, he went to Spring Street to work for Legal Aid, a precursor to even the public defender’s office.
“I learned a lot there,” McConnell says. “I saw domestic abuse cases as well as struggling families, families that had just broken down, and I saw how big finance companies took advantage of poor folks.”
After two years of heavy case loads and a relentless battle against a ceaseless current, McConnell took a job as a labor management relations specialist with the Department of the Navy at the Charleston Naval Shipyard. But a couple of former colleagues from Legal Aid soon convinced him to join their private practice, which he did.
At this stage, however, McConnell’s legal career was not his true distinction. Rather, his involvement in Republican politics was. By 1976, at the precocious age of 29, McConnell became county chairman for the Republicans in Charleston.
“Remember, we were the vanguard of change,” McConnell points out. “We were the party of young people and new ideas.”
His first run for office was not one for the history books, however. He was, in political parlance, a ghost candidate, having been put on the ticket for state senator just weeks before the election and facing a Democratic stalwart. No matter the long odds, McConnell dutifully got out there and went door to door, shaking hands and talking with voters. He lost, but not in a landslide. He took around 47 percent of the vote, and more people started taking notice of this rising star, including former S.C. governor
Jim Edwards ’50.
In 1980, Edwards convinced McConnell to try his luck again. This time, with the former governor as his campaign chairman, McConnell had a real shot. He analyzed election results in order to figure out how the Republican Party might grab more than 50 percent of the electorate, and he created a public relations campaign focusing on educational reform, criticizing the money spent by the General Assembly and urging voters to seek a government that “spoke in a voice more like their own.” McConnell and Arthur Ravenel ’50 (longtime state politician and namesake of the bridge spanning the Cooper River today) teamed up, campaigning at every crossroads in Charleston and Georgetown counties (the voting district for this particular seat). McConnell’s message and his personality resonated with voters.
And for the next 32 years, McConnell served as a state senator, rising up the ranks until, in 2001, he became the first Republican president pro tempore since Reconstruction.
Striking Home
Glenn, you’ve got to consider running for president at the College. They need you. We need you.
That was the message being relayed to McConnell late in the summer of 2013 from several alumni when former president P. George Benson announced he was stepping down. McConnell was flattered, of course, but he had already rolled up his sleeves and begun carving out a life as lieutenant governor. The challenges facing senior citizens in South Carolina were heart-wrenching, and, in only two years of office, he had already increased the budget and the relevance of the Office of Aging.
No, this is my duty now, he thought.
But that beautiful day in May on the Cistern – so full of hope and optimism– lingered in his thoughts even several months later.
McConnell told his friends he would think about it and make a choice before the new year. He already had quite a bit of campaign money in his war chest for the upcoming lieutenant governor race in fall 2014, and he thought it unethical to pursue both positions at the same time. He must choose – and soon.
In the meantime, McConnell picked up a Gates Foundation report on higher education, and what he read shocked him. According to the report, more than 40 percent of the country’s four-year colleges will most likely be absorbed by larger universities or go out of business.
McConnell had seen the College teeter on collapse before. It was that way in the late sixties during his undergraduate years, and it was that way in the mid-eighties, when he led a legislative audit of expenses and found an ineffective administration. He cared too much for the College to let it fail now. And while no one was talking failure, per se, McConnell foresaw the possibility of a different kind of defeat as the talks of a merger with the Medical University of South Carolina gained traction in the S.C. Statehouse.
“The College was under siege,” McConnell says. “And I saw us in a weaker position if there were a merger with MUSC. The stronger always absorbs the weaker. I wanted the College to be on equal footing and be the master of its own fate.”
And so, in an op-ed that appeared across the state in early January, McConnell formally threw his hat into the ring, writing that “the most compelling reason I have chosen this path is because of my love for the College of Charleston and my belief that I can be of service to her during a time of tremendous challenges as well as exciting opportunities.”
There was no turning back, and McConnell understood the risk: “I have no idea whether or not I will be chosen. I am aware that I may end up with nothing at all. I only know that this is the honorable course for me to take. And I know as a matter of faith that the right thing to do is always the best thing to do.”
Well, the “right thing to do” turned out in his favor when the Board of Trustees selected him as the 22nd president of the College, making him the third alumnus in the institution’s 244-year history to hold the top position. However, the choice did not come without some controversy. Various student groups and faculty members led campuswide protests, criticizing the presidential search process as well as McConnell’s passion for Civil War history and his lack of higher-education experience.
For McConnell, it was not easy to have his character and credentials questioned like that, to be defined in gross generalizations and fear-mongering stereotypes. Anyone who truly knew him knew better. He was a far different man from the caricature in which some critics wished to paint him. McConnell believed – as did his many supporters– that his record of public service spoke for itself. Without a doubt, he was about consensus, common ground, solving problems. Just look, he wanted to shout. Everything about him spoke to making headway, not headlines.
But he took it in stride. In fact, that debate was part of what attracted him back to campus and even reaffirmed his decision to seek this office. It was that passionate fight of ideas: That, for McConnell, is what has made this country great. People should express their opinions about leadership, and he knew that, given a chance, he would change minds.
“Different people on this campus believe different things,” McConnell observes. “That has always been the beauty of this place. At the College, we are a vast collection of people with inquiring minds, but, at our core, we are all about trying to achieve greatness. And that is why I came back – to help us keep reaching for greatness. That was my experience when I was here, and I want future generations to have that same opportunity as well.
“Now that I have this chance to lead this great institution, my alma mater,” McConnell smiles, looking around Randolph Hall, “I hope to prove that I am the right man, right now.”
– Mark Berry 
