Those Who Love It

The International Friendship League, the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Boston Park Department Office. The Offices of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. The Massachusetts State House, The Unitarian-Universalist Association, The Massachusetts Prison Association, Portia Law School and Calvin Coolidge College all sit on the peak of Beacon Hill. It is a tiny two-block neighborhood and for the most part, the institutions that reside there are devoted to enriching the lot of human beings. "So," says one Beacon St. resident, "how did Calvin Coolhitch Cowitch evah get up heah?"

Of all the colleges and universities in Greater Boston, probably none has a lower reputation among academics and intellectuals than does Calvin Coolidge College. For many years, the school's graduate division, which awarded higher degrees in return for relatively little work, was something of a scandal. Apparently the graduate division catered chiefly to public school teachers looking for an easy way to get the higher salaries that come to teachers with Ph.D's. Under a new dean, the graduate division was closed up in the mid-60's, but the school's reputation increased only slightly. Calvin Coolidge College is still completely unaccredited, it has only three full-time faculty members for its one hundred students and operates out of an old weary Beacon Hill House.

And, by the time you read this, it may be on its way out of business. The death of a small place like Calvin Coolidge College may seem to be a good move, but, as Daniel Webster used to say, There-Are-Those-Who-Love-It. CCC is actually the undergraduate division of its next-door neighbor, the Portia Law School. Portia is an interesting place. It was founded in 1908 to provide, as you may have guessed, legal education for women. In the mid-30's the school trustees decided to admit male students and to open an undergraduate division. And so was born Calvin Coolidge College. Each institution was more or less autonomous, though the Trustees were obviously more interested in the fate of the Law School than in that of the College.

Five years ago, the Trustees voted to embark on a program that they hoped would lead to eventual accreditation of the Law School by the American Bar Association. (The Law School is also unaccredited.) And so Calvin Coolidge College began to die. The College is a drain financially and physically on the Law School. For the Law School to meet the ABA's requirements, the school is going to be forced to retain the money and land now used by the college. Since accreditation time is coming up soon, the Trustees have quietly notified the college students that CCC will be gradually phased out of existence. Those who are currently enrolled will get their degrees but no effort to enroll future classes will be made.

So yesterday the students of Calvin Coolidge College took to the streets. They paraded up and down in front of the 45 Mount Vernon Street offices with placards urging that Calvin Coolidge College be retained. They came with a plan to save the college and, by asking for $10 from each of the school's 100 students, hired a lawyer who will move against the Trustees in the event of a phase-out. The plan to save the college, which has the endorsement of the college's dean, involves affiliating with Newton's Mount Ida Junior College. The chief stumbling block in the affiliation plan is that Calvin Coolidge and Portia would name only a minority of the trustees of the new board. "But our trustees just don't want to relinquish power," says Coolidge student body president Pat Vinti of Chelmsford.

Obviously the students want to save the college since, as one of them put it, "a degree from a place that closed up isn't worth much." Coolidge's Dean Goodnow has other reasons for wanting to keep the college going. "Affiliation with Mt. Ida," he says, "would give us some of the facilities we need in order to begin thinking about accreditation." Goodnow, who became dean in 1965, also believes the school is becoming somewhat better. "In light of our actual standing in the academic community--which is almost no standing at all--we're getting people into graduate schools."

"I'm 100 per cent for affiliation with Mount Ida," Goodnow says, "I'm all for continuing."