Rape of a Campus

Annapolis, Md. sits quietly on a small peninsula bounded by the Severn River, College Creek and Spa Creek. On the peninsula are crowded the U. S. Naval Academy, St. John's College, the town. Recently the Annapolis Housing Authority (organized under the U. S. Housing Authority), looking for a site on which to build low-cost dwellings for small-income groups, decided that a part of St. John's campus would be just the place. There upon A. H. A.'s blunt Chairman William F. Stromeyer, an old St. Johnnie himself, offered St. John's President Stringfellow Barr $30,000 for five and one-third of the college's 35 acres.

Mr. Barr politely declined. Reason: St. John's, after six lean years, had turned the corner under its new education program ("100 Great Books" -- TIME, July 19 1937) expected a 40% increase in enrollment this fall, needed the land for new buildings -- and an athletic field. Mr. Stromeyer, a onetime St. John's football coach, offered to reclaim land by filling a gully made by College Creek and build the college an athletic field. Mr. Barr said he could fill the gully himself, defied Mr. Stromeyer to take away land that the college, third oldest in the U. S., had owned since 1795. Thereupon Mr. Stro meyer got tough with the ancient institution.

He started condemnation proceedings and last week hearings got under way. Mr. Barr declared that Mr. Stromeyer's raid on St. John's would not solve Annapolis' housing problem, charged that there was no precedent for a housing authority seizing part of a college campus.

Said Classicist Barr: "Mr. Stromeyer is under the usual misapprehension about the word authority -- he thinks that it means force. . . . This is just ad hoc grabbing." Said Mr. Stromeyer: "We of the Housing Authority are unanimous. We have the law on our side. . . . Mr. Barr talks about precedent. . . When we took land from the Indians we had no precedent. This is something new. Housing is something new in this country. . . . We're going to carry it through."

Retorted Mr. Barr: "If he tries it, this will be a 20th-century Dartmouth Case."*

*Deposed as president of Dartmouth College by its trustees, John Wheelock (son of Founder Eleazar Wheelock) got the New Hampshire Legislature to create a new corporation, Dartmouth University, which he could head. In 1819 the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that the trust created by Dartmouth College's charter was inviolable, abolished "Dartmouth University," thereby set a precedent which was regarded as guaranteeing U. S. colleges against such Government interference.

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