Rumpus at Rollins

Hamilton Holt, beetle-browed onetime editor of the Independent, became president of Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. in 1925 and has since made it noted, by some estimates, for fuddling eccentricity, and by others, for pleasant liberality. Last week President Holt was in a squabble and Liberalism was the issue. He had ousted two professors, caused a third to resign. He was easing at least four others out. Two students resigned and others were vowing nevermore to return to Rollins College.

Against Classics Professor John Andrew Rice, onetime Rhodes Scholar, brother-in-law of President Frank Aydelotte of Swarthmore College, there stood last spring the curious accusations of 1) whispering in chapel, 2) creating campus cliques, 3) swimming insufficiently clad in Florida's warm waters. President Holt asked Professor Rice quietly to resign. Professor Rice declined. Presently President Holt discovered the American Association of University Professors was looking into the case. At once President Holt fired Professor Rice. Then two Oxonians on the Rollins faculty expressed sympathy with Professor Rice. Out went one and the other resigned. Meanwhile the A. A. U. P. turned in a preliminary report deploring President Holt's highhandedness.

By last week Rollins' faculty was thoroughly agitated. Editor George Barber of the undergraduate weekly Sandspur, "dismayed beyond words," and President Nathan S. French of the student body both resigned from college. Many another student had already planned not to return next year because of a new "unit-cost" plan which will raise tuition fees to about $1,340.* Hamilton Holt seemed doggedly intent on having his own way even if it meant decimating his faculty and losing leading students. With him he had a complaisant board of trustees, save for Mrs. Raymond Robins, Florida bookshop proprietor and wife of Herbert Hoover's reformer friend who disappeared with amnesia for some weeks last year (TIME, Sept. 19 et Seq.) She hastened to Winter Park to see that her nephew, Professor Theodore Dreier, was not booted out with the others.

*The total cost of running Rollins, minus endowment income, will be divided by the number of students. For those who cannot pay in full, scholarships will be provided. Kent School (Conn.) and Bennington College (Vt.) have similar arrangements.

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