Word: olivet
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...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...
...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...
...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...
...suggest that he proceed to abolish geometry (invented by a pagan), algebra (influenced by Mohammedans) . . . music (its appeal is sensual), art (unattractive to red-blooded hemen) and . . . that when spring comes-if it ever does to Olivet, Mich.-he keep his students all indoors lest it freshen their blood and create unorthodox notions...