Washington Changes Again

The presidency of a tax-supported university is always sensitive to political change. So found Dr. Henry Suzzallo when he was president of the University of Washington. Politically adroit, able at money-raising, careful to dine with the right people, he nonetheless erred by snubbing a Washington lumberman named Roland H. Hartley. In 1926 Dr. Suzzallo lost his job; Hartley had become Governor and got even. Under Dr. Suzzallo the University had grown, but grown expensive. Under Governor Hartley and the University's next president, Matthew Lyle Spencer, the University experienced sharp economies, a re-organization last summer (TIME, Aug. 8). Stiffer entrance requirements were designed to keep it from competing with the vocational State College in the Eastern part of Washington. This pleased opponents of mass-education; it pleased agrarian East Washington. But taxpaying Western parents, who found their children unable to get into the University, resented having to send them East.

In last autumn's elections, Democrat Clarence D. Martin adroitly seized upon Education in his platform. He promised to throw the University open to every accredited Washington high-school graduate. Last November he was elected Governor. Once more the University's presidency grew precarious.

The University board of seven regents was replaced, four of the new members being notably anti-Hartley. To them, last January, Mr. Hartley's President Spencer submitted a perfunctory resignation. Last week it was accepted. Also, Governor Martin's "education-for-all'' policy was put in effect. The regents began by restoring the Pharmacy department to the status of a College and announcing a $530,000 building program. Also, last week the regents elected as acting president the man who for 20 years had been dean of the College of Pharmacy, stocky genial Hugo August Winkenwerder, 55. For a permanent president the regents will look outside of Washington, and Governor Martin last week persuaded the Legislature to withdraw a proposal to limit the president's salary to $6,000 a year (under President Suzzallo it reached a high of $18,000).

Washington taxpayers last week began to feel that their embogged University was getting somewhere after months of bickering politics, mixed as is the atmosphere at many another State university by talk that this professor keeps a mistress, that another was caught recommending abortion to someone's wife, that a third has a Picasso nude on the wall of his orange-curtained office.

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