Academy v. College

A sedate congressional committee room rang last week with the din of intercollegiate battle. The House Naval Affairs Committee, under the watchful eye of billiard-bald Chairman Carl Vinson, sat, looked and listened. Tiny, ancient, impoverished St. John's College was defending its 160-year-old campus against the predatory onslaught of its huge wealthy neighbor, the U.S. Naval Academy.

Founded as King William's School in 1696, the third oldest college in the U.S. (older: Harvard, William & Mary), St. John's for the last eight years has been the site of robust, red-haired Stringfellow ("Winkie") Barr's noble experiment in education by the world's 100 Great Books. Debt-ridden by a heavy mortgage, which Barr has managed to cut a third, and reduced by war to 22 teachers and 93 students, St. John's has been uncomfortably aware for the last five years of the Academy's predacious eye.

National Interest. The Navy wants St. John's 32 acres, across Annapolis' King George Street, for a dormitory to house 5,000 midshipmen. Said a Navy spokesman: "St. John's property is urgently required in the national interest." St. John's suggested that Annapolis could expand just as well by crossing College Creek on its north, leaving St. John's alone. The president of the American Institute of Architects gave supporting testimony. But Vice Admiral Aubrey Fitch, the Academy's superintendent, does not want his men to have to march too far between classes and dormitories. Said he: "There is no other tract of land comparable to the St. John's acreage." When a four-striper, Captain Theodore Wirth, said that the Academy has its traditions too, the crowded committee room cheered.

Before a Senate committee, St. John's Trustee Richard Cleveland, Baltimore lawyer and elder son of the late President, decried the Navy's evaluation of the disputed campus at $875,000. Said he: "The trustees of St. John's do not and will not willingly sell the historic campus at any price. It may be that [the Navy] has not yet exerted on this peacetime problem the ingenuity and resourcefulness [it] so magnificently demonstrated in war."

Every Real Teacher Knows. The biggest cheer of the day, from a gallery of St. John's undergrads, went to President Barr. Said he: "Believe me, sir, this is not a matter of mere sentimentality. Every real teacher knows the tremendous working advantage of surroundings that incite the learner to renewed effort." He called up the ghosts of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Samuel Chase and Thomas Stone. "These men," he cried, "not only signed the Declaration of Independence. They exerted themselves . . . for the people they had helped free by founding . . . St. John's and by choosing its present campus." The president of St. John's alumni summoned to his alma mater's aid the shades of Francis Scott Key and Major General Allan McBride, who died in a prison camp at Formosa. Columbia's Professor Mark Van Doren added his testimonial to St. John's: "The best known, the most often discussed, the most often debated and the most widely copied liberal arts college in America."

In its home town, St. John's had less support. Annapolitans have no very deep love for the lounging, unliveried St. Johnnies--and 80-c- of every dollar spent in Annapolis comes from the care and feeding of the spruce, shaven & shorn tenants of the Naval Academy.

Buffeted from both sides, the committee considered appointing a committee of impartial architects to determine whether the Navy really had nowhere else to go. But weatherwise Washingtonians, scanning the political skies, guessed that St. John's would have to pack up its 100 Books and move.

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