David Miller entered the University of Illinois at Chicago’s dental school in 1984 with some trepidation. “First off, it was a very competitive environment,” he says. “There weren’t many African-Americans around. There were two of us in my class.
Once his recruits were admitted, Roberts served as their advocate. “When problems developed with housing or financial aid, I stepped in,” he says. “This one time six or seven blacks came down to my office, enraged that this professor had seated them all together in the front of the class. So off I went to have some words with the instructor.” Roberts put failing students in touch with tutors and lent a sympathetic ear to those who needed to talk. “If you were in the cafeteria or the bookstore, he’d see you and say, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’” says Linda Murray, a medical school alum who’s now director of the Winfield Moody Health Center in Cabrini-Green. Sometimes he played a more significant role: Pablo Torres, a local dentist, says Roberts helped him secure a residency in New York.
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The dispute over the UHP would have likely remained an internal matter if the university hadn’t fired the mouthy Roberts. Last July Allen Anderson, dean of the dental school, presented Roberts with a letter informing him that he would soon receive a “terminal contract,” limiting his employment to one more year. The letter didn’t catch Roberts entirely by surprise, since his relations with Anderson had soured after he’d opposed the Michael Reese merger. “The dean and I hadn’t been lunching together or having tea and crumpets,” says Roberts. “Though when I went to meetings I always acted professionally.”
As for Roberts’s contention that he needed an expense account to do his job adequately, Camper says, “To recruit minorities when you’re located right in the middle of the city of Chicago doesn’t require an enormous expense.” Anderson claims Roberts was accorded a modicum of travel money, though Roberts denies that.
“Roberts’s speaking out has been irritating, yes, but that’s not why he was canned,” says Camper. David Broski, the new UIC chancellor and the person most visibly irked by Roberts, declined to comment on the situation, citing his defendant status in the assistant dean’s lawsuits.
