New Presidents

St. John's. Last fortnight Amos Walter Wright Woodcock, onetime (1930-33) Federal Director of Prohibition, was elected president of St. John's College at Annapolis, Md. Simultaneously Douglas Huntly Gordon, 31, was abruptly dismissed as the head of the third oldest college in the U. S. Appointed acting president until Mr. Woodcock takes office next autumn was Dr. Reginald Heber Ridgely, biology professor.

The change caused a great ruckus among St. John's men. William Woodward, rich racehorse owner and honorary chairman of Manhattan's Central Hanover Bank, who has contributed more than one-third of St. John's endowment fund, promptly resigned from the college's finance committee. So did Sylvester W. Labrot, the committee's chairman. Friends of the Board of Trustees said that strongwilled, patrician Dr. Gordon had failed to "cooperate," that he had coddled rich students, snubbed and tyrannized others. But Gordon friends declared his lack of cooperation had been chiefly in a stand against loose financing, unwarranted free scholarships for board members' friends. Last week a representative committee of St. John's 300 students issued a statement viewing President Gordon's departure with "genuine regret," declaring he had won the "support and confidence of the student body." All President-elect Woodcock, A. E. F. veteran, Methodist and bachelor, would say was: "I want to revive what we used to call the St. John's spirit, building the future of the college on character and scholarship."

Union. Last week Union College (Schenectady, N. Y.) accomplished a shift of presidents more gracefully than St. John's. Meeting in Manhattan, Union's Board of Trustees allowed Acting President Dr. Edward Ellery to go back to his old job as head of the chemistry department and faculty chairman. Then the Board announced that Dr. Dixon Ryan Fox, 46, Columbia University history professor (Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York; An Outline of Early American History) would be inaugurated in June as Union's 12th president. Union, founded in 1795 as the first non- sectarian college in the U. S., is currently excited about its new Plan of Education, which split its 18 departments into four autonomous divisions: languages & litera ture, social studies, mathematics & science engineering.

Olivet. Joseph H. Brewer Jr., 35, made his debut as an educator last fortnight when he became president of Olivet College (enrollment: 200) in Olivet, Mich (pop. 566). Last week he made his first presidential bow with a Founder's Day speech celebrating Olivet's 90th birthday. Son of a Grand Rapids banker, delicately dapper President Brewer took degrees a Dartmouth and Oxford, was private secretary to the late Editor John St. Lot-Strachey of the London Spectator for four years, helped found the short-lived Manhattan publishing firm of Brewer, Warren & Putnam.

Hood. As far as he knows, Joseph Henry Apple of the Reformed Church's Hood College has been a college president longer than anyone else in the U. S. Hood (enrollment: 422) was created in 1893 by the union of Mercersburg College's young women's division with the Frederick Female Seminary at Frederick, Md. Joseph Apple, 68, has been president from the start. This week he was to announce that on July 1 he will relinquish his office to the Rev. Henry Irvin Stahr, 53. executive secretary of the Reformed Church's Board of Christian Education, onetime pastor in Reading, Bethlehem and Hanover, Pa.

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