Introducing the New Editor

Soon after, the Council approved a new Managing Board for Spec, selected by KCAC. Named as editor-in-chief of the new board was Stanley Smith, a tall, husky V-12er who is acting captain of Lou Little's football eleven, captain of Columbia's crew, and target of the ousted Spec men.

Smith, who comes from a little town outside of Syracuse and went to Rensalear Polytechnic Institute before the Navy sent him to Columbia, has this to say about his new job:

"When I first tried to come out for, Spec I was told to go see somebody out in Brooklyn. I was given the impression that Spec was all sewed up and didn't need or want me. The Navy doesn't give a guy much chance to run out to Brooklyn, anyway.

"When I was co-captain of the crew, we beat Navy, which was pretty good going, and were all set to face Cornell. Spec ran a story about how we were going to race Cornell and it didn't say anything about our beating Navy until the very last paragraph.

"The big trouble with Spec and all the other publications around here was that they were run by a little crowd of ininsiders and their stuff didn't make sense to anyone who didn't know Jack and Bill and Bob and all their nicknames."

Here's the situation as it stood at the end of Columbia's short summer season. In this Corner we have the boys kicked into the back room by the KCAC. They say independent collegiate journalism at Columbia has been dealt a death blow by Dean McKnight and his rubber-stamp "undergraduate" body, and they have a lot of allies among Columbia's student leaders.

In the opposite corner we have Stanley Smith and Harry Coleman, who were five-weeks-old Spec candidates when KCAC rocketed them to the top. They say there's another side to the story.

Chance for Come-back?

What chance the old Managing Board has to recoup its set-back it is hard to discover. They still have an oar in officially, and sources associated with the "outs" say the situation is far from settled and predict a renewal of the fight this fall, with a possibility of two rival Specs.

The Emergency Council says the issue is settled, but even Smith anticipates new battles. "The old board will need plenty of money, though, to publish a Spec privately," says Smith; "Mr. Hubbard (Benjamin Hubbard, head of KCAC) will okay our printing bills and he won't okay anyone else's."

Referee in the dispute will apparently be Dean McKnight, who grows purple when it is suggested that the Emergency Council is his rubber stamp. When Columbia's employees' union struck for higher pay and better working conditions the Spectator compared wage scales at other New York colleges and came out in support of the union. There are certain things which college administrative officials don't like to see in print. People are wondering whether McKnight will continue to use his weight to muzzle Spec.

(If he does, the last editorial voice in the ivy league colleges will be stilled. The Princeton Bulletin, a miniature thrice-weekly sheet prepared by a secretary in the Dean's Office, has replaced the daily Princetonian. Yale's publicity office issues, with student assistance, a News Digest each week. The Harvard CRIMSON, realizing that rapid turnover and a younger student body discourages a mature and consistent editorial policy, publishes, still independently, the voice-less Service News each week. Dartmouth's position is similar to Harvard's, though the Log, successor to the Indian, is slanted more Navy-wise.