New Haven, Safe Haven

Campus wits called it "the coronation of the Kingman" and Yale's Kingman Brewster Jr. jovially agreed. With two days of pomp and ceremony designed by him to stress that "Yale is an important asset of world civilization," the 263-year-old university last week inaugurated Brewster as its 17th president.

Rather than a small gathering of New England gentry, come to honor one of their own, 200 leading educators were invited to New Haven for the celebration. In the caps and resplendent gowns of their universities, domestic and foreign, the delegates marched to

Cross Campus, and the bells in Harkness Tower pealed traditional Yale tunes (sample: Down the Field). Parading back to cavernous Woolsey Hall, Brewster received the ancient symbols of presidential office: the 1701 manuscript of the original Yale Charter, the school seal of 1722, and the brass keys to the university. Windup of the weekend was a grand ball at the turtle-shaped Ingalls hockey rink, where guests, faculty and the presidential couple sipped punch and danced the night away as two bands played music to be inaugurated by.

Homecoming. Although Brewster is a Yaleman (class of '41), he is far from a typical Old Blue. As an undergraduate he turned down membership in Yale's elite senior societies, quit a fraternity because of the "mumbo jumbo" of the national chapter. He was chairman of the local America First Com mittee, among a dozen other campus activities, but when war came, lie signed up as a Navy fighter pilot. Instead of returning to Yale, Brewster went through Harvard Law School, became a professor in it, and was talked about as a possible future dean. It was while he was vacationing on Martha's Vineyard with his wife and five children that Mother Yale beckoned. Sailing and walking the beaches with Yale President A. Whitney Griswold, he became a close friend over the years, and Griswold lured him back to New Haven in 1960 to become provost.

It was a good time to be back, for Griswold had just rescued the university from a serious case of postwar doldrums. He more than tripled the endowment to $375 million, built 26 new buildings that gave the neo-Gothic campus a modern look, established research fellowships for young scholars. But the last days of his 13-year tenure were trying ones for Brewster and Yale. Griswold had always been rather distant from all but a few faculty favorites; now he was dying of intestinal cancer, and it fell to Brewster, as provost, to run day-to-day affairs. Yet he had neither the power nor the inclination to make major decisions. Once again, Yale seemed to be drifting.

Revival. After Griswold's death a year ago, the august Yale Corporation took five months methodically screening 160 nominations for the presidency. Brewster was the odds-on choice despite two obstacles: he had no Ph.D., and he had not joined a senior society. But with rare unanimity, faculty and students were plugging for him, and when he was named last October, Yale was overjoyed. The new president, 44 years old, plunged into the job with impressive energy and charm. "We don't know exactly what will happen yet," says Paris-born Georges May, dean of students, "but we do know it's going to be a very dynamic administration."

Brewster grasps problems quickly, is wise in the ways of academic intrigues. He attends faculty meetings and wields authority without antagonizing touchy professors. Undergraduates find him remarkably accessible. When a group of Calhoun College seniors got up the nerve to ask Brewster to lunch, he took the crowd instead to Mory's.

Brewster lost a few points last fall when, as acting president, he squelched a student invitation to Alabama Governor George Wallace to address a campus meeting, on the grounds that it might cause a riot. The incident was apparently a case of "acting" jitters; when Brewster was finally named president, he resolved not to "shoot from the hip" again.

While Brewster's exuberance and shirt-ad good looks quickly made their mark, academic policy changes proceeded more gradually. So far, at least, he is mainly drawing on Griswold's legacy. The rejuvenated graduate school, under Economist John Perry Miller, now offers degrees in 52 fields, including two new Ph.Ds. this year in economic history and industrial administration. Last December, Brewster filled the first endowed chair in Roman Catholic studies in a U.S. secular university by hiring away Catholic University Scholar Stephen Kuttner.

The status of lowly freshmen, long coddled by Yale on the theory that they needed time to make the transition from high school, is being elevated. About 60 exceptional freshmen, out of a class of 1,037, can now take independent studies, and a handful can even enroll in a double-degree program, which will give them a B.A. and M.A. at the end of four years. This year Yale is abolishing the post of dean of freshmen. One proposal not yet carried out: the enrollment of girls in Yale College.

Hard Sell. Even without girls, the student body is changing. This year, for the first time, public school graduates in the freshman class clearly outnumber those from prep schools, 536 to 501. A recent report showed that of the top executives of the 750 largest corporations in the U.S., Yale produced nearly twice as many as any other school. But Brewster's special assistant, Henry ("Sam") Chauncey Jr., 28 (himself a descendant of Yale's first graduate and Harvard's second president), is determined to "go out and sell Yale as more than a rich man's institution." In pursuit of creative brains, which often test out poorly on college entrance exams, seven fulltime admissions officers --aided by more than 1,300 alumni spotters--are out scouting the country. Forty percent of the class of '67 is receiving financial aid, totalling $643,000.

The emphasis on intellect is also reflected in the current predicament of that unique Yale institution, the eight secret senior societies. More and more students simply do not care to join. The oldest society, Skull and Bones, in recent years has had trouble finding 15 top juniors willing to join, while one of the newest, Manuscript, is popular, and proudly intellectual. Another society, Elihu, has won prestige by shedding some of its Edwardian ritual and emphasizing serious discussion. The most remarkable departure in Yale societies, however, is the fact that one of the estimated ten "underground" societies--underground because their membership and place of meeting are secret--is coed. It is called Vaya, perhaps from the first two letters of Vassar and Yale, and is reportedly composed of seven Yalemen and seven Vassar girls who meet at least once a week for dinner at a hideaway about halfway between both campuses. Seems that it's strictly platonic. U.S. campus mores being what they are, Vaya may be somewhat oldfashioned. But then, Yale has always been a blend of solid tradition and cautious innovation.

No Forfeit. Brewster is determined to preserve the combination. His inaugural address pledged the university to keep aware of the outside world, while preserving a haven for the detached pursuit of knowledge. Yale may hook up to educational TV, Brewster said. It might even train volunteers for the Peace Corps or give harried students a year off to ponder their future. More important, though, Yale will remain geared to its smallish, liberal arts college--unlike Harvard with its proliferation of special research units, or the "multiversity" of Clark Kerr's California. "Even the pressure to serve the state," Brewster said, "must not lead the university to forfeit that credibility which belongs alone to those who answer only to the dictates of a conscientious intellect."

Nowadays, said Brewster, "everyone has a constituent, a sponsor, a supplier, a buyer, a boss who dominates his life. Freedom has too often been reduced to the right to choose on whom to be dependent. There are few centers left where genuine, constructively motivated independence is proclaimed with serenity and zest.

"The nation needs to preserve safe havens where ruthless examination of realities will not be distorted by the aim to please or inhibited by the risk of displeasure."

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