Olivet Spawns Rebel School

Olivet College, Olivet, Michigan, was founded 109 years ago by Father Shipherd, a revivalist minister who had helped found Oberlin College, and who told his followers, "Be not conformed to this world" and "Dare to do what we acknowledge to be right."

Last February, a group of Olivet students and teachers took Father Shipherd's precepts to heart, split off from Olivet College, and announced their intention to form a college of their own, to be known as Shipherd College.

The secessionist movement brought to a climax a controversy over faculty tenure and administrative and educational policy which has agitated Olivet, Michigan, for almost one year.

Olivet's troubles started when Dr. Malcolm Boyd Dana resigned in April, 1948, after four years as president.

Dana had helped draw up a faculty constitution which gave teachers a voice in matters of education, promotion, and business administration. And on June 4, Olivet's Trustees approved in substance a tenure system first proposed under Dana's administration.

"Olivet Policy"

Dana had also furthered the educational experimentation which had characterized the 325-student Liberal Arts college for decades. The "Olivet Policy" had taught "self-realization" and social perception and had used occasionally unorthodox methods to accomplish this.

The "Olivet Policy" had come to be known in some circles as "radical," "screw ball," and the chairman of the Board of Trustees claimed that its critique of "big business" discouraged endowments.

Olivet needed money badly. Some teachers were owed several months' worth of back salaries. So a business man and lawyer was brought in as the new President, Aubrey L. Ashby, Olivet '08, a former vice president and general counsel of the National Broadcasting Company.

Ashby was installed at a meeting of the Trustees on July 21. He spoke to the Board for two hours, and during this session the Board decided to dismiss two central figures in the "Olivet Policy," Professor T. Barton Akeley, who had taught political science at the college for 12 years, and his wife, the college librarian.

Ashby later said, "I knew this action would take place before I accepted my appointment."

The Akeleys had been notified in April that the Trustees were satisfied with their work, and that they would be expected to return in September.

The Letter

But on August 9, without any previous warning, Akeley received a letter which said the Board had unanimously decided that his "usefulness . . . had been fulfilled" and that he was not to resume work in the College. "You can advise me," chairman Frank W. Blair said, "whether you desire to treat the next academic year as a sabbatical year or whether you now decide to present your resignation."

Akeley refused to resign. He needed his salary.

On the same day Mrs. Akeley received a letter telling her that the Board had unanimously decided that "it does not desire to have you resume work as Librarian at the College."

Three weeks later, the Akeleys were told they must leave their Olivet home by September 15. They then asked, but were deinied, the usual 60-day period for vacating.

The Board gave no official reasons for the dismissal, which took place without a hearing and without faculty consultation. But such observers as Time Magazine claimed they saw the unofficial reason. The Akeleys fitted into the supposed Olivet pattern of "queerness," which Ashby was out to correct. Akeley was highly respected among students and faculty, but he did were a heret, and he did hold what some Trustees called "liberal views."

No More Shorts

Akeley quashed one charge against him when he said, "The last time I were shorts down town was nine years ago." But President Ashby said that the Akeleys had been indoctrinating students with "their own peculiar ideas of democracy."

Akeley didn't like such allusions. In a letter to the Trustees' chairman, he said that the attack on him was "an appeal to curiosity, to prurience, to fears of involvement . . . not in your constitution, nor in Christianity, nor in ethics.

"Your new administration has called forth from Board members, from students, from faculty, from all ranks among employes of the college, the charge of domination, repression, threat, violation of civil liberty and of academic freedom and of the light to organize."

And this charge was just what the dismissal of the Akeleys had called forth. Before the month was up students had circularized a newsletter, which contained condemnation of the dismissals by eight faculty members.

A few days after the newsletter had gone out, Ashby called in three members of the newly-formed Student Action Committee and rebuked them for not sending the newsletter through the proper "channels," as requested. He told the students they had no right to discuss such "affairs of the administration."

A second newsletter followed which reported this meeting. It reported this exchange:

"We are going to create a society for your well-being,' the president stated. When asked if we would have anything to say about the kind of society it would be, Dr. Ashby answered, 'No!'"

Strike Call

Registration day, September 17, found student pickets around the administration building. Sixty-two students said they would not register in the college, and many of them still have not registered.

Ashby said he would call in an investigating board if faculty petitions were withdrawn and if the Action Committee members were placed on probation. But the Action Committee felt that Ashby's investigating board wouldn't really be an investigating board, and so the demonstrations went on.

Support came from alumni and faculty. A Federation of Olivet Alumni was organized, which financed the S. A. C. And at a meeting declared illegal by Ashby, the faculty resolved 11 to 5 that the demonstrators "Have acted . . . with sincerity, and . . . we respect them for their stand."

On September 20, the Olivet Teachers Union jumped into the battle. It charged that the administration had rudely interrupted the progress toward a tenure system made under ex-President Dana's administration: had thrown the college into turmoil: and had "imperiled the financial future of the college."

A. C. L. U.

Eight days later, the administration was berated by a field investigating team of the American Civil Liberties Union. "By his autocratic attitude and by his and the Board's apparent lack of understanding of the traditional American guarantees of academic freedom and tenure, Dr. Ashby has placed Olivet College in grave danger economically and as an educational institution." the A. C. L. U. stated.

"The contention of Dr. Ashby that it is 'kinder' not to make charges against Professor Akeley's not a matter for Dr. Ashby to decide. Professor Akeley resents such innuendo and justifiably wishes to face his accuser or accusers because it is his contention that Dr. Ashby is chiefly interested in silencing and removing a liberal professor. The failure of a 'red scare' to remove Professor Akeley two years ago lends weight to Professor Akeley's contention. At that time, nothing was proven which was detrimental to Professor Akeley's reputation."

Throughout the month of November, the faculty continued to press for hearings on the Akeley case and for a comprehensive tenure system. But a statement of Ashby's to the Detroit alumni on December 9 diverted attention to another issue.

Referring to the Student Action Committee pickets, Ashby remarked, "Ninety percent of the student picket line were of a certain race and from a certain section of the country." Six days later Ashby told a student protest meeting that he had not meant to deprecate any one race, and that he still believed in Olivet's traditional non-discriminatory policy. But when asked what race he had in mind in his statement, Ashby replied, "Draw your own conclusion."

So far, Olivet had only lost two of its teachers. On December 8, two faculty members resigned in protest, and on December 17, four were fired and another was given a one year terminal notice.

The first four dropped were Tucker P. Smith, professor of Economics, Julian Fahy, head of the Political Sciences Department, Arthur Moore, director of the Fine Arts School, and Herbert Hyde of the Music Department. The fifth was Carleton Mabee, head of the History Department and Puitzer Prize winner in 1944.

These men had been dropped for "economic reasons," the Trustees said. Dean James F. Mathias amplified on this statement:

"In order to become an accredited college, we must have a certain number of the faculty with proper degrees. Smith with his master of science does not fit in. We would like very much to keep Moore and Hyde. Fahy and Mabee, like them, are capable of commanding higher salaries than we can afford. We've given them as much advance notice as possible to help them find other jobs."

Other Reasons?

Other considerations may have entered into the Board's action, however. Smith had been the Socialist candidate for vice-president and was head of the Teachers' Union. Fahy, Mabee, and Smith had condemned Akeley's ousting in the first student newsletter. And all five discharged teachers were connected with the union.

At this point, the Echo, student newspaper, became quite vocal on the controversy. Its editor accused the Board of union-busting and called for Ashby's resignation.

Indignation mounted. One hundred thirty-nine out of 250 students signed a petition refusing to return unless the administration monded its ways. Some 50 students signed a petition expressing their loyalty to the administration.

On January 28, 13 faculty members moved to organize Shipherd College, a move branded by Ashby "an ingenious device to attract public attention. . ." But despite the Board's granting of life tenure to a few teachers, the exodus was on. Three instructors resigned early this year. Another dropped out on March 1. Mobee and another teacher quit on March 2, two more on March 3, another on March 9, and another on March 11.

The group expressed regret at leaving Olivet, but in letters of resignation the instructors attacked Ashby for his alleged anti-Semitic speech and charged the administration with "during key personnel, absence of an adequate tenure system, attacks on faculty members, abandoning democratic procedures, and failure to accept arbitration."

New York Site

Later in the Spring a planning committee of students, faculty, and alumni selected Sackets Harbor, New York, as the site of Shipherd College, started a campaign, and selected a president.

Back of Olivet this week, the college was nearing the end of a bloody year. Eighteen out of 35 teachers were gone. Olivet faced blacklisting by the American Association of University Professor: a majority of the present students were planning not to return: and educational and administrative policy had changed drastically--all since summer, 1948.

And it was a matter of conjecture which college more closely resembled the school which Father Shipherd had founded--the old college in Southern Michigan or the proposed new one in Northern New York.