"Prex Dex"

Last thing Dexter Merriam Keezer did before he became president of Reed College (Portland, Ore.) was to promise a friend he would not turn into a "stuffed shirt." After one year in the job President Keezer felt compelled last fortnight to warn all ambitious young educators how close he had come to breaking his promise. Wrote he in his annual report: "The conception [of the college president held by much of the community] is perhaps best reflected by the subjects on which I have been asked to address groups: The Future of the Western Hemisphere, Shakespeare's Message to the World, and What's Worth While in Life. . . . When I have professed my inability to deal with such gargantuan subjects I have almost uniformly sensed a plunge in the respect of my petitioners for me. ... In some cases the reactions have been all but audible, and it has been much as though I had been told, 'You dare to pass yourself as a college president and you don't know Shakespeare's message to the world! It smacks of false pretenses.' "

Few persons would take Dexter Keezer for a college president. Periodically since his graduation from Amherst in 1920, he has found academic life dull. For a year he was a reporter on the Denver Times. He took a Ph.D. in economics at the Brookings Institution but quit teaching after six years. From 1929 to 1933 he was associate editor of the Baltimore Sun. In 1933 General Johnson made him executive director of the NRA Consumers' Advisory Board.

One of Economist Keezer's associates on the board was William Trufant Foster, first president of Reed College. When Reed was founded in 1911 by the widow of a steamboat tycoon as a cultural centre for the Northwest, William T. Foster had been called to get it going. He built a surprisingly intellectual college with no intercollegiate athletics, no fraternities, complete student self-government. In 1920 President Foster resigned* and thereafter Reed coasted along under competent but not always vigorous leadership. After Messrs. Foster & Keezer had been working on the Consumers' Board for six months, Mr. Foster's old job was offered to Mr. Foster's new associate.

Dexter Keezer arrived at Portland last autumn with his wife and small daughter, solemnly sworn to become no stuffed shirt. Students made his acquaintance during the freshman-sophomore tug of war when the victorious sophomores discovered that one of the "freshmen" they had been dragging through the mud was new President Keezer (TIME, Oct. 29, 1934). Subsequently "Prex Dex" attracted even more attention by appearing in bright red duck pants. In the winter he could be seen carrying an armful of wood to heat a cold conference room. In the spring he played tennis and fished with his students, shocked bookworms when he inaugurated a carnival and skiing trips, reminded them: "You don't live on intellect alone."

When it came time for a formal inauguration last spring, President Keezer invited the usual academic guests, informed them that they, not he, would do the talking. One suggestion he acted on was for a system of faculty advisers charged with the duty of seeing that new students get a "custom-made" rather than a "ready-to-wear" curriculum.

In making his annual report, this most unacademic of college presidents viewed his field with an ex-newshawk's eye. Of Portland, whose conservative citizens generally regarded Reed as a hotbed of radicalism, he announced that he was trying to "narrow the distance many Portland people have to travel--sometimes even to the Atlantic Coast--to become aware of the educational strength which Reed imparts to the community. . . ."

Reed, said he, would like more applicants to choose from but will not use unfair methods to get them. "Reed College is not making any invidious comparisons, either in print or orally, of its opportunities with those offered by other institutions; it is not seeking, through scholarships or any other type of financial aid, to entice any students who have decided to go to other institutions to change their plans and come to Reed; it is not employing any solicitors to seek applicants for admission on a commercial basis. ... I find a grim humor in the fact that the National Recovery Administration held that it would be inappropriate to have a code of fair competition for institutions of higher learning. Within the limits of my observation, the competitive methods used by most of the industries for which codes of fair competition were regarded as highly necessary have about them a positive aura of sanctity compared with those used by some of our institutions of higher learning in recruiting students."

* The magnetic personality who persuaded President Foster to quit the college he had built was Waddill Catchings, spectacular Wall Street bull, onetime director of 29 corporations, father of an arresting theory of the business cycle. William T. Foster put Mr. Catchings' theory into graphic prose, joined his friend in propagating far-&-wide the Foster & Catchings economic heresy.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.