Purge

On the highway near Olivet, Mich., a tiny (pop. 800) town where nearly everyone votes Republican and goes to the Congregational Church, there stands a welcoming sign: "Olivet, a village of friendly folk, home of Olivet College . . ." Last week, friendship was on trial in Olivet and in the coed college on the hill.

Trouble had been brewing for the past six months--ever since Aubrey L. Ashby (class of '08) had taken over as president. Brush-mustached, cigar-puffing Aubrey Ashby, 62, onetime vice president of the National Broadcasting Co., didn't like anything that had been happening under his last two predecessors. Olivet (enrollment: 287) had earned quite a reputation as a progressive college with a highly literary flavor and a strong political bent. As far as Ashby was concerned, the place was a hotbed of socialists, pacifists, and foggy-minded liberals.

Many townsmen agreed. Some referred to the college as "little Bohemia." The Rev. Thomas W. Nadal, pastor of the Olivet Congregational Church, said it was in "a state of anarchy." Furthermore, gifts were dropping off and endowments were sagging. New President Ashby decided it was time for a change.

"My Beard, My Beret." A change was just what the board of trustees wanted. The board had already eliminated one political science teacher for "ultraliberal views"--bearded, mild-mannered T. Barton Akeley, who had been popular with his students but not with the town ("My beard, my beret. They just can't take idiosyncrasies"). When some of the students picketed in protest, Ashby was outraged. At his convocation, he promised to eliminate "termites" with a squirt of DDT (TIME, Oct. 18).

His pronouncement split Olivet right in two. The anti-Ashby faction found powerful leaders on the faculty. Among them were Economist Tucker P. Smith, head of the Olivet Teachers' Union and the 1948 Socialist candidate for Vice President, and Pacifist Carleton Mabee, of the history department, winner in 1944 of the Pulitzer Prize for biography (The American Leonardo). Student intellectuals lined up behind Smith as a Student Action Committee. "The S.A.C.'s," jeered Ashbyite Clark Balch, a 30-year-old senior and football tackle, "are the kind of people who like art and music and stay up till 4 a.m. reading the classics. We like to play ball and go out on dates."

The first skirmish of the war took place after Olivet's football team won its last home game with Anderson College (13-6) in November. President Ashby, a football fan, declared a holiday to celebrate. The Smith group of teachers and their student followers disdainfully held classes anyway. Later, in a speech to Detroit alumni, President Ashby remarked that most of the student troublemakers in the uproar over the sacking of Akeley came from one race and one locality. The S.A.C.s decided that he was referring to Olivet's Jewish students from New York, demanded at a mass meeting what he meant by "race." "Why, the human race," said Ashby inconclusively, and would say no more.

Back to Normalcy. After that, the Smith faction decided to force Ashby's hand on the question of faculty tenure. At a meeting of the faculty cabinet--an administrative holdover from pre-Ashby days--it pushed through a vote recommending that all the Smith boys be given life contracts. The board of trustees gave a fast and brusque answer. They told Smith and Mabee that they were fired. The trustees also informed three other teachers--a member of the political science department, the director of the fine arts school, and a member of the music department--that their contracts would not be renewed.

Last week, with his purge over, President Ashby felt that his college was finally getting back to normalcy. "If there's one thing this college needs," he said, "it's a little more discipline." Sighed a professor who had survived the purge: "We need a little law & order, but it's too bad it had to be Ashby."

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