Dennett Out

Early last week rumors began flying in Williamstown, Mass, that President Tyler Dennett of Williams College was going to resign. Bristle-headed President Dennett, fishing at his camp near Lake George, N. Y., would not deny or confirm. Neither would Lawyer Bentley Wirt Warren, suave chairman of the finance committee of Williams' Board of Trustees. But when the story was published as fact by the Springfield Republican, President Dennett broke his silence to announce that for two weeks his resignation had been sealed, delivered, and accepted by the trustees to take effect Sept. i. "The sole issue between the president and the board," barked Tyler Dennett, "has been whether he should be regarded as an employe of the board."

Exact opposite of most presidents who quarrel with their trustees, hard-fisted Tyler Dennett claimed they were wasting money. When Alumnus Dennett ('04) went back to Williams three years ago from a professorship at Princeton's School of Public & International Affairs to succeed President Harry Augustus Garfield, son of the 20th President of the U. S., he was shocked to find that his small, patrician college was piling up steady deficits. President Dennett installed a budget system, launched a money-raising program for Williams' library, laboratories, teachers' salaries, scholarships. But he found 73-year-old Senior Trustee Warren, who commutes 140 mi. to Williamstown from his Boston office, interested not only in Williams but in Williamstown. This spring when the Greylock Hotel, the old hostelry across the street from Williams' fraternity row, went up for sale, Mr. Warren and four of his colleagues voted to buy it for the college. When Dr. Dennett protested that he had no use for the building and needed the money elsewhere, the trustees offered to put up all but $7,000 of the $42,000 purchase price. Dr. Dennett thereupon asked for a "suspensory veto" on financial proposals. When the trustees refused, he resigned.

That this incident would have provoked a resignation if strong-willed Dr. Dennett had been getting along smoothly with his trustees, Williams men found hard to believe. They pointed out that Tyler Dennett is a man who needs plenty of elbow room, that he quit his post as Historical Adviser to the State Department in 1931 thoroughly impatient with "bureaucracy." But no one thought that Tyler Dennett, an able, searching scholar whose John Hay biography won the 1933 Pulitzer Prize, would find it hard to get another job. This week the trustees elected as his successor one of their own number, Alumnus James Phinney Baxter III ('14). A great friend "of Tyler Dennett, who he recommended to Williams' trustees three years ago as earnestly as Tyler Dennett was recommending him. Trustee Baxter was salmon-fishing in his native Maine during the entire fuss. Plainspoken. loyal Friend Baxter immediately announced that in educational matters he and Tyler Dennett see eye-to-eye.

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