On the same day Mrs. Akeley received a letter telling her that the Board had unanimously decided that "it does not desire to have you resume work as Librarian at the College."

Three weeks later, the Akeleys were told they must leave their Olivet home by September 15. They then asked, but were deinied, the usual 60-day period for vacating.

The Board gave no official reasons for the dismissal, which took place without a hearing and without faculty consultation. But such observers as Time Magazine claimed they saw the unofficial reason. The Akeleys fitted into the supposed Olivet pattern of "queerness," which Ashby was out to correct. Akeley was highly respected among students and faculty, but he did were a heret, and he did hold what some Trustees called "liberal views."

No More Shorts

Akeley quashed one charge against him when he said, "The last time I were shorts down town was nine years ago." But President Ashby said that the Akeleys had been indoctrinating students with "their own peculiar ideas of democracy."

Akeley didn't like such allusions. In a letter to the Trustees' chairman, he said that the attack on him was "an appeal to curiosity, to prurience, to fears of involvement . . . not in your constitution, nor in Christianity, nor in ethics.

"Your new administration has called forth from Board members, from students, from faculty, from all ranks among employes of the college, the charge of domination, repression, threat, violation of civil liberty and of academic freedom and of the light to organize."

And this charge was just what the dismissal of the Akeleys had called forth. Before the month was up students had circularized a newsletter, which contained condemnation of the dismissals by eight faculty members.

A few days after the newsletter had gone out, Ashby called in three members of the newly-formed Student Action Committee and rebuked them for not sending the newsletter through the proper "channels," as requested. He told the students they had no right to discuss such "affairs of the administration."

A second newsletter followed which reported this meeting. It reported this exchange:

"We are going to create a society for your well-being,' the president stated. When asked if we would have anything to say about the kind of society it would be, Dr. Ashby answered, 'No!'"

Strike Call

Registration day, September 17, found student pickets around the administration building. Sixty-two students said they would not register in the college, and many of them still have not registered.

Ashby said he would call in an investigating board if faculty petitions were withdrawn and if the Action Committee members were placed on probation. But the Action Committee felt that Ashby's investigating board wouldn't really be an investigating board, and so the demonstrations went on.

Support came from alumni and faculty. A Federation of Olivet Alumni was organized, which financed the S. A. C. And at a meeting declared illegal by Ashby, the faculty resolved 11 to 5 that the demonstrators "Have acted . . . with sincerity, and . . . we respect them for their stand."