Failure of a Mission

When scholarly, bush-haired Harold Walter Stoke took over as president of Louisiana State University in 1947, he came as a man with a mission: he wanted to raise L.S.U.'s academic reputation to the level of the lavish $41 million campus that Huey Long had helped to build. For a while, it seemed as if he might succeed in doing just that (TIME, May 9, 1949).

But in 3-3-years, Harold Stoke found that his reforms did not always win applause. From the start, he aroused some of his deans by taking away their arbitrary right to hire & fire faculty members, and by giving the faculty a louder voice in university affairs. Some Louisianans disliked him because he was a Yankee (his last job: president of the University of New Hampshire), and because he tried to hire professors from outside the state.

In trying to rid L.S.U. of what he called its "candy and cake" atmosphere, President Stoke found himself bogged down in scores of minor squabbles. He had to worry about campus traffic regulations and cutting down the number and speed of student convertibles ("We must decide whether we want to be a university or a country club"). He fought with Athletic Director T. P. ("Red") Heard, who wanted to enlarge the football stadium, while Stoke aimed to put football in its place as "just another university activity."

Last week Harold Stoke, at the end of a failing mission, announced that he was fed up, would resign as of Feb. 1. With brisk efficiency, the board of supervisors picked a new president: Mississippi-born Lieut. General Troy H. Middleton, 61, able wartime commander of the VIII Army Corps in Europe, since 1939 (with time out for war service) L.S.U's comptroller. Harold Stoke's new mission: to take "some time out for battle fatigue," then look for another job.

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