Uproar at Drew

For most of its century of life, Drew Theological School in Madison, N.J., has had a reputation as the nation's most intellectually adventurous and scholarly Methodist seminary. Within the past year, however, its dean has been dismissed, six of the 24 professors have quit for other jobs, and more resignations are expected in the near future.

Cause of the uproar is an administrative civil war between the seminary and parent Drew University, to which it is attached. Traditionally the university's most prestigious and powerful division, the seminary had its own operating budget and total autonomy to hire its own staff. A decade ago, however, Drew's trustees decided that it was time to bring the rest of the university up to the academic level of the seminary; to that end, they elected Robert Fisher Oxnam, son of the late Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, as the school's first lay president.

Formerly head of Pratt Institute, Oxnam had the trustees' approval to oversee all operations of the seminary as well as Drew's secular departments. Annoyed at their loss of control over budgets and policy, the seminary professors were furious when Oxnam vetoed a proposed faculty appointment on the ground that the salary offered the man was too high. Seminary Dean Charles W. Ranson then signed a confidential letter of complaint to the trustees--an action that Oxnam used as an excuse for firing him. Although Oxnam was backed by the trustees and by a special investigative committee appointed by the Methodist Church, the seminary remained unrepentant. Divinity students undertook a series of protest demonstrations and last fall the resignations began.

Methodist officials are understandably embarrassed by the situation, since they support Oxnam in his desire to improve the university but do not want the divinity school to lose its luster. Unfortunately, the atmosphere of distrust and discouragement at the seminary is such that there now seems to be no way to halt its decline--and Oxnam may find it difficult to hire qualified replacements for the men who have already quit.

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