Education: Revolt at Duke

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Chronicle took the meeting by surprise when he charged Duke's faculty with undermining student morale by its outspoken hostility to the administration. He called on professors to put their own complaints in writing or hold their tongues. The students passed his resolution. Afterward they remembered Editor Edmondson's reputed closeness to Dean Wannamaker, wondered if they had not endorsed a bright red herring. From the Endowment trustees came no answer to the students' telegram. Said Dean Wannamaker: "I like to see the students have some fun. They acted too hastily. They do not know exactly what they want now but they are earnest and sincere and something will grow out of it." Other university officials pooh-poohed the revolt, urged Durham newspapers to ignore it. But many a student and restive alumnus saw more to the affair than a youthful outburst, more to the rumored faculty unrest than the squabbles and jealousies which beset every university administration. Back of it all, they said, was the refusal of Trinity-Duke's longtime ruling triumvirate — President William Preston Few, Vice President Robert Lee Flowers and Dean Wannamaker — to adjust themselves to running a big university instead of a small college. Trinity College was governed by a board of trustees two-thirds of whom were elected by Methodist church conferences, one-third by alumni. When in 1924 the late Tobaccoman James Buchanan ("Buck") Duke gave Trinity his name and some $40,000,000, the board was left untouched. But control of the Duke millions was put in the hands of a new board called the Duke Endowment. What most Dukemen wanted to know last week was whether the hand-picked board of trustees or the Duke Endowment consisting of 21 independent members was running the university.

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