Presidential Perils

A change in command at a college can sometimes be as rough as a switch of leaders in a banana republic. Last week two campuses were in turmoil because trustees named new presidents over the heads of favorite local candidates, and on a third campus a departing president philosophized about the perils of prolonged leadership.

Slippery Rock State College is a thriving school in western Pennsylvania noted mainly for the chuckles it draws when radio announcers toss its football scores in among those of such giants as Notre Dame and Michigan. Yet Slippery Rock's 2,300 students were dead serious about supporting easygoing Acting President John Edwards, 47, for the empty top job; 1,300 kids signed a petition favoring him. Instead, the trustees chose Dr. Robert S. Carter, the businesslike chairman of the education department at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.

Edwards and Carter quickly got into a fuss over when Edwards should give up the 18-room, three-story presidential mansion--a key fringe benefit to augment the post's $16,000 salary. One morning, Edwards was reading on his patio when the caretaker discovered that the water had been shut off--on Carter's orders, it developed. Electricity and heat also faded. Edwards' 17-year-old daughter had to dress at a neighbor's house for her high school graduation. Edwards called the cutoff "an outrage." Carter called Edwards "rude and obstinate." Furious, students hanged Carter in effigy. After a week in the dark, Edwards moved out.

Dr. Lloyd H. Elliott, president of the University of Maine, bumped into similar resentment after being named president of George Washington University.

On the G.W. campus, 13 deans and 32 department chairmen had recommended that Vice President John Anthony Brown be promoted to the job; the trustees ignored them. The Faculty Assembly thereupon refused to extend greetings to Elliott or assure him that they would cooperate. Elliott remained stoically optimistic, said he hopes to meet with "all segments of the university" to work things out.

No such acrimony had ever enveloped Dr. Barnaby C. Keeney in his ten productive years as president of Brown University. But last week, having startled a commencement audience with the announcement that he was resigning though he is only 50, Keeney offered some thoughts about presidential tenure. "I have long felt that something on the order of ten years is an appropriate term for the president of a university," he explained. "One cannot arrange his pace so that he will last indefinitely, if he wishes to be effective. I set mine, have followed it, and find that the results have been about what I had expected." His plans, he said, are indefinite except for one thing: he will not accept the presidency of any other university.

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