Carry On

At the start, bush-haired Harold Walter Stoke made himself quite clear. He woulri leave the presidency of the middle-sized University of New Hampshire (enrollment: 3,500) and take over big Louisiana State (enrollment: 10,000) on one condition: that he have full authority to run L.S.U. "without political or other interference." For the university which had been one of Huey Long's pet projects ("[I'm] the Chief Thief for L.S.U.!"), it was a tall order. But it was just what the L.S.U. Board of Supervisors had in mind. For months during 1947, the 14 supervisors, most of them appointees of "reform" Governors Sam Houston Jones and James Houston Davis, had been looking for an out-of-state educator who was neither a veteran of past L.S.U. ruckuses* with Huey Long or his political heirs, nor a henchman of Huey's brother Earl, who is now governor of Louisiana.

Books v. Convertibles. Stoke wasted no time. As some students sized him up, he was a friendly, mild-mannered political scientist, still youthful and brisk at 44, whose idea of a good time was to sit down in his study with a copy of Bertrand Russell. But L.S.U. found new President Stoke meant business about keeping politics off the campus at Baton Rouge. He wanted Louisianans to understand that the university was for education and not "an instrumentality of government." Nor was the university a playground. "Give a student a convertible and a textbook," he said, "and you cannot expect them to compete on even terms." To make sure the books won out, he reduced campus pleasure driving during school hours, restricted student phone calls in the evening, kept classrooms open all day, instead of the half-day L.S.U. had been used to.

He wanted no "candy and cake" atmosphere, refused to allow an ice show in the coliseum or a professional football game in the L.S.U. stadium. He frowned on the university's traditional brand of student election campaigns, with their bathing beauties, free shoeshines, jazz bands, fire engines and acrobats. "I hope I am the last person to take the joy out of going to college," he told his students, "but just what sort of a university do you want?"

Stoke had his own answers handy. He pestered the legislature until he had enough money to give his whole faculty a raise: he wanted L.S.U., already well-staffed in many departments, to be able to attract the best academic talent available. He campaigned (though without success) to get the system of political scholarships replaced by a competitive plan. He deprived his deans of their arbitrary power over faculty hiring & firing. He revived faculty meetings, and for the first time in years, gave professors and instructors a say in running the university.

Deans v. Consensus. But in two years, even Stoke was not able to reform everybody. Some deans still take a dim view of his new "administration by consensus," call it "administration by passing the buck." Governor Long backed a constitutional amendment last November to bring the L.S.U. Board of Supervisors under his thumb. The amendment lost, but Louisiana recently began to hear, and read in newspaper columns, that the Supervisors themselves were set to bounce Harold Stoke. Then, went the story, L.S.U. might get a Louisiana man again as its president.

Last week, as the rumors spread, the board called an emergency meeting--but not to do any firing. On.the contrary, said the Supervisors, Stoke had been doing such a fine job that they wanted to give him a formal vote of confidence. In case anyone had any doubts about the future of Harold Stoke, the board had a word from Earl Long: "I am glad to leave to your judgment," said the governor, "the administration of L.S.U. I have never interfered and will not interfere with the selection of those to head the university .. ."

*In 1939, President James Monroe Smith, a Long man, was sentenced to from eight to 24 years in prison for embezzlement. L.S.U.'s last president, William ("The Conqueror") Hatcher retired on grounds of health after a series of administration-faculty disagreements.

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