Touchdown Machine

When Harry ("Curly") Byrd ran for Governor of Maryland last fall,* his Republican opponents raised quite an unpleasant fuss about one aspect of his career: his 18 years as president of the University of Maryland. As most Maryland voters knew, the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools had recently completed a thorough examination of the university, and rumor had it that its confidential report was far from favorable. Last week, after keeping it under wraps for months, the university finally let the secret out. The association's haymaker: unless Byrd's successor, Wilson Elkins, straightens out his campus by April 1956, the university may no longer be accredited.

"Lack of Ferment." The association's investigators gave Curly Byrd at least one bit of unrestrained praise. In his 18 years he had seen his enrollments jump from 3,376 to 25,000, his budget grow from $2,600,000 to $22 million, such a unit as the College of Military Science become first-rate. But in building up the campus, he had apparently neglected a few essentials. His control had been so tight that the university had become "unquestionably the lengthened shadow of President Byrd." As a result, said the association, there was a tendency on the part of facultymen to "shrug off" responsibility and for departments to suffer from "sterility and lack of ferment." In spite of much improvement since it was last inspected in 1935, the Medical School was in many respects 15 years behind the times. Its facilities were overcrowded, its salaries "definitely low," its library "grossly inadequate." As a matter of fact, almost every library at the university was a scandal. The English Department had a book budget of only $600 a year, and the law library had only $8,000 compared to the University of Virginia's $23,000. The association's summary of the music library: "Dictionaries--poor; History of Music--unsatisfactory; Theory--unsatisfactory; Musical Form--poor; Counterpoint--poor; Biographies--poor; Music Education--satisfactory; Magazines--professional (3), scholarly type (none) ..." Ds & Fs. Of all parts of the university, however, none got such a beating as the athletic program. To make sure that his plant would be the best, President Byrd, who rose to his job after 21 years as football coach, charged each student a $15 athletic fee, added $40 a year more for the construction of athletic facilities. Not only did the university violate Atlantic Coast Conference rules by its "deliberate and forceful" program for recruiting football stars (and a topflight team, as a result), it also allowed athletes to repeat courses year after year. Football players got full training-table privileges each fall, while other athletes did not. They received a monthly $15 allowance for laundry. And though they numbered only 1.5% of the student body, they got 54% of all undergraduate scholarship funds.

Furthermore, said the association, some of their academic records were a farce.

Among the cases the association cited: P: A physical-education student who, in spite of credits earned for passing examinations in "Varsity Sports," was dropped after his freshman year in 1949, was readmitted the next fall even though he did not report for make-up summer school. Then he flunked out again, only to be readmitted in 1953. P: Another physical-education student who flunked out as a freshman in January 1953 but was promptly readmitted in February. His best subjects: Phys. Ed. 123 ("Coaching Basketball") and Phys. Ed. 125 ("Coaching Football"), P: A football co-captain who, in spite of cheating on a physiology exam, inched himself up--after five years--to the junior class. His "junior"-year curriculum: Sport Skills (a required freshman course which he had already taken), an advanced Sport Skills (a required sophomore subject), Basic Body Control (another required freshman course), Introduction to Education (which he had taken in his first year), American Government (which he had taken in his second year), History of American Civilization (which he had taken twice before with grades of D and F).

Last week, as the association report went out just before his formal installation, President Elkins, a Rhodes scholar and Phi Beta Kappa, promised to do his best to meet the association's requirements by 1956. If the General Assembly only gives him enough money, said he, "there is little doubt that this purpose will be accomplished."

* He was defeated by Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin, 380,000 to 318,000.

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