Next, a Campus

The strange ad had run in the Lansing (Mich.) State Journal. "College faculty for hire," it read. ". . . Substantial upper-class student body . . . wish to accompany . . . Unusually high percentage of Ph.D.s." The ad was no gag. There really was a slice of faculty for hire at nearby Olivet College.

The nucleus of the group was Economist Tucker Smith, 1948 Socialist candidate for Vice President, and three other professors who had all been given their walking papers by Olivet's new President Aubrey L. Ashby (TIME, Jan. 24). By the time the ad appeared, seven more teachers had resigned and joined up, and about half of Olivet's 250 students said they would go along too. When they received no dazzling offers, Tucker Smith and his friends changed signals, decided to start a college of their own. Choosing a name was easy: Shipherd College, for Olivet's own founder, John Jay Shipherd. Then all the college needed was a campus, an endowment and a president. Last week it got the president.

The man Shipherd picked was a venerable educator who had not long ago declined the job of president of Olivet. At that time, white-thatched Alvin S. Johnson, a founder and onetime (1923-1945) president of Manhattan's New School for Social Research, said he had no desire to come out of partial retirement to-head a going college. But Shipherd was a challenge that he could not turn down. It could be a wonderful school, he thought-"no discrimination, no fool prejudices, students of all sorts living harmoniously together . . ." He promised to shepherd Shipherd without pay until the college was on its feet.

And so, last week, 74-year-old President Johnson began looking for $250,000 and a campus (one possibility: a former Army camp at Sackets Harbor, N.Y., provided the New York Board of Regents would grant a charter). Meanwhile, back in Olivet, President Ashby was looking for some new faculty members and about 100 new students. "The laundry has been washed and sent away," said he. "Now, we're ready for something constructive."

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