Following the collapse of John E. Pomfret’s presidency, the College began a new era under the leadership of a man who was the antithesis of that gentle scholar. President Alvin Duke Chandler, son of Julian A C. Chandler, who had been president of William and Mary from 1919 to 1934, quickly reverted to the goals of his father’s administration . The younger Chandler initiated an expansion program that enlarged the campus and the student body and helped to establish a multicampus system designed to take education to all the people of Tidewater Virginia.^[1] In the same consistent pattern prevailing since the College reopened in 1888, another new president brought another marked change in William and Mary’s educational mission.

Admiral Chandler Takes Command

After Pomfret resigned, the Board of Visitors’ executive committee met on September 18, 1951, and heard the recommendations of a special faculty committee calling for an acting president of the College.^[2] The executive committee quickly named Chancellor Professor James W. Miller to the post and appointed Rector Oscar L. Shewmake as chairman of a special committee to consider candidates for a permanent president.^[3] Acting President Miller tried to placate his angry colleagues and spoke reassuringly to bewildered students at the autumn convocation on September 28. He raised the low morale at the College but took no major initiatives during those tumultuous days.^[4]

The faculty, meanwhile, continued reacting to the Board’s condemnation of Pomfret. On September 17, when it unanimously adopted the Williamsburg Manifesto, it also discussed petitioning the governor to replace the entire Board on the grounds that it had lost public confidence. Although the faculty took no action, news of the possible censure leaked to the press.^[5]

Still smarting from the faculty’s stinging rebukes in the manifesto and from newspaper accounts of the recent censure discussion, the Board of Visitors met on October 6. Believing that the Board would not act until the following spring, faculty representatives presented their views on the type of permanent president the College needed. They wanted a repetition of the exhaustive search process that had resulted in Pomfret’s selection in 1942.^[6] After the faculty representatives left, the Board heard the Shewmake committee report recommending Alvin Duke Chandler to be the next president.^[7] It immediately elected him but delayed announcing its decision until October 9.^[8] He would be sworn in two days later. When the stunned college community first heard the news on the radio, outrage and disbelief swept the campus. Charges of secrecy, misrepresentation, and undue speed came from faculty and student leaders. The Board, apparently convinced that the faculty was trying to usurp its power and authority, cited the “crisis” at the College that called for swift action to control the situation.^[9]

To the contrary, the faculty felt that the College was running normally and deplored the Board’s hasty selection of a president without faculty consultation.^[10] At a special meeting on October 10, the faculty passed a resolution protesting the Board’s actions as a violation of accepted academic practice and William and Mary traditions. The protest was against the manner of the election, not against Chandler himself.^[11] Minutes before Chandler took office on the eleventh, the dean of the College, Nelson Marshall, angrily resigned.^[12]

At the center of the controversy was Rear Admiral Alvin Duke Chandler. Born in Richmond, Virginia, on August 18, 1902, he attended William and Mary in 1918, then graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1923. He served two tours as an instructor at the Naval Academy before becoming a much-decorated veteran of World War II. In 1948 he commanded the U.S.S. Des Moines, the newest heavy cruiser in the navy. An assignment at the Imperial Defense College in London, then duty as director of the logistic plans division in the office of the Chief of Naval Operations, followed.^[13] He was a thoroughgoing naval officer, used to commanding men and ships. To the Board of Visitors, Chandler’s family ties with William and Mary and his demonstrated administrative and command abilities appeared to be an ideal combination to correct the problems caused by the athletic scandal and to control a fractious faculty. Chandler offered “a real executive firmness and determination,” wrote former Governor William M. Tuck, who expected to “hear nothing else from [William and Mary] but good.”^[14]

When Chandler became president, he had no clear educational goals for the College. To a special convocation on October 17, 1951, he described the College’s mission as furnishing “guidance for a greater understanding which leads to the production of a disciplined, independent, and inquiring mind.” To the faculty he said that the College’s purpose was “to create an atmosphere in which truth, ethics, character, and loyalty to our democratic ideals are nurtured and encouraged.”^[15]

Lacking in college administrative experience but realizing the need for a comprehensive appraisal of the College’s objectives and resources, Chandler recommended a self-evaluation study and named Education Professor Kenneth H. Cleeton as director of the project.^[16] It was the first undertaking of its kind in the College’s history and ten years ahead of such a mandatory study required for reaccreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. While various sub-committees devoted much of the 1952–53 session to the study, Chandler took an avid interest in the work and insisted on provisions for growth and for autonomous professional schools.^[17]

In October 1954 the self-evaluation study was ready. It cited William and Mary’s goal as providing high-quality educational services in eastern Virginia and offering a distinctive education for the state and nation. Liberal arts and sciences should remain at the heart of the College’s program, but the study also recommended independent schools of law, business administration, and Education and continued ties with the Richmond and Norfolk Divisions.^[18] In effect, the study advocated a shift from the single-campus, liberal arts emphasis of the Pomfret years to a multicampus system that would include professional and vocational training for all of Tidewater Virginia.

The self-evaluation’s many suggestions also called for proficiency testing in English and foreign languages for advanced placement of entering students and for honors courses for superior students. Sabbaticals, higher salaries, low-cost housing, and reduced teaching loads would increase faculty effectiveness; and more scholarships would attract better-qualified male students. All phases of intercollegiate athletics must be tightly controlled. Administratively, there should be deans of the three projected professional schools, of the College of Arts and Sciences, and of admissions; and there should be a coordinator of the Greater College of William and Mary. The inadequate physical plant needed capital outlays for a student activity building, a women’s dormitory, a new library, an academic building, a storage building, and an auditorium—in that order.^[19] Even before the self-evaluation study was ready, Chandler regularly referred to the Greater College of William and Mary as three institutions serving the entire Tidewater region.^[20] The recommendations of the study subsequently became a blueprint for the Chandler administration. Like his father, J. A. C. Chandler, the president would take education to the people.^[21]

But before Chandler could begin his program, he had to carry out the Board of Visitors’ demands for scandal-free athletics and a muted faculty. He acted immediately on College athletics. All students, athletes and nonathletes alike, must meet the same entrance and academic standards, he insisted. Spring practice and participation in postseason bowl games must end; future contests must be only with schools comparable to William and Mary; and the College must honor all existing scholarship and scheduling commitments. Chandler would personally direct the new head football coach, Marvin Bass, in recruiting and scholarships.^[22]

Chandler and the faculty agreed that intercollegiate athletics must be firmly controlled, but they disagreed on who had ultimate authority. The faculty had appointed a study committee on September 25 to determine how to implement the faculty control required by its manifesto of the seventeenth and by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.^[23] Simultaneously, the regular Faculty Committee on Athletics repeatedly discussed its role with Chandler but reached no clear understanding.^[24] In January 1952 the special study committee defined faculty control of athletics as helping to determine educational policies such as admissions, academic requirements and eligibility, scholarships, class attendance, extracurricular activities, and game schedules. Before the faculty could act on any of the study committee’s suggestions, Chandler directed all faculty committees, including athletics, to compile statements describing their functions and responsibilities.^[25] Chandler then convinced the Board of Visitors that control of athletics rested with the faculty and the president—especially the president.^[26]

Tackling a different facet of the athletic problem, Chandler moved to defray the Athletic Association’s $35,000 deficit and $65,000 scholarship commitments for the coming session. He established the President’s Emergency Scholarship Fund and conducted an energetic campaign to raise voluntary contributions.^[27] Concurrently, the Virginia General Assembly added another incentive to clean up athletic abuses at all state institutions. An act of March 1952 required these schools to submit annual reports on athletic department receipts and disbursements.^[28] Although William and Mary received no commonwealth funds to support intercollegiate sports, the Athletic Association began submitting monthly as well as annual reports to Chandler, who passed them along to the governor’s office.^[29] The administration had effectively taken control of Athletic Association financing.^[30]

In April 1952 Chandler, the Faculty Athletic Committee, and the president of the student body announced the College’s intercollegiate athletic policy. After approving athletics as a legitimate extracurricular activity and using the President’s Emergency Scholarship Fund and the Educational Foundation Fund to pay for scholarships, they avowed that the College would abide by the Southern Conference regulations, including its rules for grants-in-aid, and would schedule future games with only state, Southern Conference, and other natural-rival teams. The Board of Visitors approved the policy when it met the next month. It had done a total turnabout from its postwar “win” policy, reiterated as recently as the previous August. The transformation was complete when it abolished its own Athletic Committee a few months later.^[31]

By the fall of 1952, the Faculty Athletic Committee had devised a charter accepting Chandler’s demand that its members—now five—be appointed by the president. It reported progress toward amateurization of athletics in May 1953, but it still had not determined its proper role three years later. Chandler announced that the committee’s purpose was to foster harmony within the College community. The committee chairman and two other members resigned in disgust.^[32] Under a new chairman, the committee drew up another statement of its duties, which remained advisory and peripheral.^[33] The administration retained control of finances and scheduling. Although they had been unable to assume control of intercollegiate athletics, finally, in 1957, the full faculty, along with the president, announced with much fanfare William and Mary’s “new” athletic policy: it broadened the program to include all sports and repeated the provisions of the old policy of 1952.^[34]

As these disputes continued, William and Mary’s intercollegiate athletic standings plummeted. After a good 1951–52 football and basketball season, a succession of coaches and years of drift affected the program adversely. By the fall of 1956, the football team hit rock bottom with a winless season. Milton L. Drewer, Jr., soon took over as athletic director and head football coach and began a long rebuilding process.^[35] In the 1950s the minor sports, especially the cross-country, baseball, and track-and-field teams, were more successful than football and basketball.^[36]

During this decade of rebuilding, Athletic Association deficits steadily rose. Strict accounting, mandated by law and enforced by Chandler, showed the deficit growing from $36,756 in 1951 to $100,960 just nine years later. Simultaneously, commitments for grants-in-aid increased from $65,000 to $80,000 a year.^[37] However, William and Mary ended the decade with no taint of athletic corruption. Chandler had effectively wrested control of athletics from the Board of Visitors, athletic directors, and the faculty and pointed the College on a course of compliance with ethical standards and conduct.^[38] The faculty’s role remained what it had always been—advisory.

As Chandler took control of the College’s intercollegiate athletic policy, he turned to his second task: curtailing the authority of the faculty.^[39] At his first faculty meeting on November 13, 1951, Chandler unsuccessfully opposed a faculty bylaws change which established the Faculty Advisory Council.^[40] Composed of the four elected division heads, three other elected faculty members, the president, and the dean of the College, the council was to represent the faculty to the Board of Visitors, to advise the administration on all educational and faculty personnel matters, and to act for the whole faculty, when necessary, between regular faculty meetings.^[41] The advisory council met monthly and became a constant irritant to the president. He eventually subdued this active group in 1959, when it was downgraded to a standing committee with only advisory responsibilities.^[42]

Although only four of the approximately twenty-eight faculty standing committees were elected, Chandler wanted all such committees to be appointed by the president. Members of elected committees, he said, were usually unavailable during the summer. When the faculty demurred, Chandler told them to “trust the president.”^[43] Then, acting during the summer of 1952, he encouraged the establishment of an evening college immediately and without consulting the full faculty. In July 1953 he bypassed the curriculum committee and secured the Faculty Advisory Council’s approval to begin a concentration in Education because he believed William and Mary needed to act at once to help alleviate the critical shortage of teachers. The next summer he circumvented the faculty honorary degrees committee and secured the advisory council’s recommendation to award two such degrees in September. These experiences precipitated a faculty resolution calling for full faculty meetings during the summer, when needed.^[44] Nevertheless, in August 1956 Chandler again sidestepped the honorary degrees committee by arranging for the Board of Visitors to approve a doctor of law degree for that nemesis of the faculty, the former rector Oscar L. Shewmake.^[45] Two years later he further weakened faculty authority when he persuaded the Board to define the four division heads as administrative officers of the College, to be, therefore, appointed by the president.^[46] Chandler tried to suppress dissidence by stressing loyalty to William and Mary. Cautioning the faculty against publicly criticizing or disparaging the College, he repeatedly suggested their bringing complaints and questions to the administration. Many faculty, however, felt that they had the duty and the right to speak freely, and they continued to do so.^[47]

The president conducted most faculty meetings, and they often turned into stormy confrontations between the faculty and Chandler. He never understood why the faculty failed to respond as military units when their commander made decisions and issued directives, and he sometimes accused those who disagreed with him of disloyalty.^[48] Consequently, faculty turnover rate was high: at least eighty-seven resigned, culminating in the resignations of Chancellor Professor James W. Miller and three other department heads.^[49] The gap between Chandler and the faculty continued to widen under the president’s often-stated desire to “run a tight ship.”^[50]

During these same years, the faculty fared no better with the Board of Visitors. In late 1955 the Faculty Advisory Council tried to open the lines of communication by inviting the Board to lunch.^[51] After this informal beginning, the Board adopted a policy of asking faculty representatives to meet with it once a year, beginning on May 26, 1956. At that session seven faculty members questioned the Board about William and Mary’s goals: was the College to concentrate on liberal arts or become a large system with different schools? Chandler and the rector, James W. Robertson, brusquely dismissed all faculty inquiries and concerns, with Chandler’s equating questions about policy changes with an indictment of his administration.^[52] After this inauspicious start, the faculty had only minimal contact with the Board until 1960, when the new Faculty Advisory Committee initiated a meeting to establish the precedent of appearing before the Board.^[53]

Although Chandler eajoyed little faculty support, he knew that he must build and retain a strong teaching staff to accomplish the College’s educational missions. The self-study had recommended various benefits for the faculty, and Chandler tried to implement many of them, especially higher salaries. Along with the presidents of other Virginia colleges, he appealed to the General Assembly’s joint appropriations committee in early 1952. The legislature responded, and all faculty received an across-the-board $250 raise. Even so, William and Mary salaries lagged behind comparable institutions.^[54] A succession of pay raises in the late 1950s helped to make teaching at William and Mary more attractive. By 1960 a professor earned $7,600 to $10,000; an associate professor, $6,200 to $8,200; an assistant professor, $5,500 to $6,700; and an instructor, $4,500 to $5,400. Faculty in the law school and in scientific and professional departments were paid above that scale.^[55] Chandler had long recommended merit promotions for faculty, and by 1959 the first formal evaluations of teachers helped to determine merit raises.^[56] Chandler also appointed three Chancellor Professors: A Pelzer Wagener, head of the Department of Ancient Languages; G. Glenwood Clark, head of the Department of English; and Richard L. Morton, head of the Department of History.^[57]

Retirement benefits improved when the General Assembly created the Virginia Supplemental Retirement System in 1952.^[58] Another emolument, formalized by the Board of Visitors in 1955, was the availability of twenty-year, 4 percent loans for faculty and staffhousing.^[59] These loans were immensely popular. College policy toward two other perennial faculty requests, sabbaticals and reduced teaching loads, remained virtually unchanged. In 1959 Chandler asked for sabbaticals in the budget, but nothing came of it. The fifteen-hour-a-semester teaching load, set by the Board in 1947, was the norm, sometimes waived for administrative or coaching responsibilities.^[60] Faculty research remained stable. College funds for research averaged $7,000 a year, and another $3,500 a year came from the Richmond Area University Center.^[61] With such limited funds, William and Mary continued to be essentially a teaching institution. The faculty did escape one scourge of the 1950s—McCarthyism. Accusations of communist affiliations engulfed many campuses nationwide, but William and Mary’s only brush with this persecution was a congressman’s request to remove a suspect sociology textbook from use.^[62]

In spite of the rash of faculty resignations during the 1950s because of dissatisfaction with Chandler’s administration or better job opportunities, the faculty grew from 132 members in 1951–52 to 159 in 1960. Women comprised about 13 percent of the full-time faculty. The teaching staffs training and qualifications improved throughout this decade of a national surplus of doctors of philosophy, and faculty with the highest academic degrees reached over 57 percent.^[63]

As the demand for higher education intensified nationwide, William and Mary’s enrollment grew from 1,664 in September 1951 to 2,410 nine years later.^[64] Males averaged 52 percent of the student body and, after the veterans’ era, never reached the 60 percent majority prescribed by the Board of Visitors. Virginians predominated, averaging 57 percent and climbing to 63 percent by 1960.^[65] Korean War veterans added to the enrollment but never approached the volume of World War II veterans.

Except for two graduate students admitted in 1951 and another law student in 1955, the student body remained entirely white. After the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in public schools in 1954, Virginia became embroiled in a massive resistance movement that precluded any possibility of admitting blacks as undergraduates.^[66] No problems had developed from having black graduate students on the William and Mary and Richmond Professional Institute campuses, and Chandler himself called for moderation and cooperation in wrestling with impending social changes.^[67]

Chandler, like his father, consistently stressed selectivity, not only in academics but in character and reputation.^[68] Soon applications for admission far exceeded the space available, and the College became increasingly selective. In 1953, for example, one in four applicants actually enrolled. By 1960 the ratio was one in eight.^[69] Although the basic entrance requirements remained graduation in the upper half of the high school class and sixteen acceptable units, by the decade’s end over 60 percent of freshmen were in the top quarter of their high school class. William and Mary, said the dean of admissions, H. Westcott Cunningham, was becoming a “top-flight academic power.”^[70]

Participation in the testing programs of the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) also helped the College choose better-qualified students. In 1958 all entering out-of-state students had to take the SAT, and soon Virginia students had to meet the same requirement. The College began granting advanced placement for students scoring well on the CEEB tests, as the self-study had recommended. Law school applicants had to take equivalent law tests (LSAT); graduate students, the Graduate Record Examination (GRE).^[71]

To help students defray their educational expenses, the College expanded its work-study program. By 1960, 654 students held part-time jobs at William and Mary, Colonial Williamsburg, or in the city itself. In 1951 there had been $26,000 available for scholarships. Nine years later, 323 scholarships, 102 grants-in-aid for athletes, 91 state teachers’ scholarships, and 69 scholarships funded with noncollege money offset $202,647 in expenses.^[72] The National Defense Education Act of 1958 provided another source of financial aid.^[73] The federal government contributed to student loan funds and especially encouraged expansion of Education, mathematics, natural sciences, engineering, and modem language studies.^[74] After obtaining some of these federal loan funds in 1959, William and Mary students received $60,135 the next year.^[75] During these years the College began a program of identifying potential graduate students, informing them of scholarships and fellowships at various universities, and encouraging them to pursue higher degrees. By 1960 about 17 percent of William and Mary graduates undertook advanced training at universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Vanderbilt, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, as well as at various medical and law schools.^[76] They obtained prestigious Woodrow Wilson fellowships—seventeen since 1945 and more than any other school in Virginia—and two Fulbright scholarships. William and Mary ranked forty-first in the country for producing graduates who gained academic distinction in graduate schools and was one of the three southern schools ranked in the top fifty.^[77] Two other outlets for students’ creative talents emerged in the spring of 1956. A campus radio station, WCWM, began local broadcasting, and Seminar, an academic journal for undergraduates, was founded.^[78] As the student body became larger and more selective, the College made minor changes to the curriculum to meet the diverse needs of resident students and of the larger community. In the late 1950s, more flexible distribution requirements allowed greater latitude in course selection.^[79] Simultaneously, the College began offering a departmental honors program to attract and reward outstanding seniors. These select students engaged in a six-hour independent study course and executed a research paper or project.^[80]

In 1957 the success of the Soviet earth satellite Sputnik triggered a national emphasis on science, especially physics. William and Mary responded by acquiring more modern physics equipment, adding courses in electronics and in nuclear and atomic physics, and expanding the physics department staff. The department provided graduate courses leading to a master’s degree for William and Mary students and for personnel from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at nearby Langley Research Center.^[81] Tangentially, a master’s program in mathematics was soon available. Other departments expanded into graduate work; and by 1960 master’s degrees were offered in history, English, psychology, Education, law and taxation, marine science, and the teaching of science for high school science and mathematics teachers.^[82] By then, William and Mary had eighty-four graduate students.

The Department of Jurisprudence raised its academic status when it became the autonomous Marshall-Wythe School of Law in 1953, under Chancellor Professor and Dean Dudley W. Woodbridge. Its masters in law and taxation program was the first of its kind in the country, and the law school also gained an endowed professorship of taxation. In 1957 the William and Mary Review of Virginia Law broadened its scope and became the William and Mary Law Review. Increasing its influence even more, the law school cosponsored the Tidewater Tax Conference for area legal and accounting leaders.^[83]

Still another move to serve the larger community came from the Department of Business Administration. It had issued the monthly Williamsburg Business Index since 1943. In 1958 the department established the Bureau of Business Research as an educational and research service and began publishing the monthly Virginia Business Report.^[84]

In other curricular changes, the Board of Visitors had reestablished the major in Education in 1953. A separate music department enabled William and Mary to be the only state college giving a major in music education for men. The College also began a forestry program in cooperation with Duke University similar to its long-standing arrangement in engineering with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Students could attend William and Mary for three years, then Duke for two years and earn both bachelor’s and master’s degrees.^[85]

William and Mary’s extension service had started in 1919 under J. A. C. Chandler’s administration and was the first such program in the state. It grew from 323 students, mostly teachers and principals, in 1951 to 1,622 in 1960. The extension division had centers in Hampton and Princess Anne County, and in the areas of Norfolk-Portsmouth, Petersburg-Hopewell, and Richmond-Henrico. It also held classes at numerous smaller localities scattered across Tidewater Virginia. Education courses predominated.^[86]

Chandler further demonstrated his belief that adults as well as youths benefitted from higher education by encouraging the evening college.^[87] Initially a response suggested by Dean of the Faculty Charles F. Marsh to requests from nearby military installations, the evening college opened in 1952 and offered regular on-campus classes either as degree or supplementary courses. Designed for people who worked during the day, the classes gave residence credit and met at night and on Saturdays. Beginning with 152 mostly military students, the evening college was immediately popular. By the end of the decade, nearly 400 students, predominately civilian, chose from over thirty courses a semester.^[88]

Expanding horizons also appeared in foreign study programs, and two exchange scholarships made such study possible. The Exeter College Scholarship, begun in 1946, provided for the annual exchange of a William and Mary and a British student. In 1958 Chandler was instrumental in establishing, and W. Melville Jones in directing, the Drapers’ Company Exchange Scholarship offering a William and Mary student two years of graduate study at a British university while a British student took two undergraduate years at William and Mary.^[89]

Undergirding the growing and diversified College was the library, and both new librarians—William G. Harkins and then James A. Servies—tried to cope with the obsolete, inadequate facilities of the old library building.^[90] Lack of shelf space forced the removal of little-used books to attics and basements around the campus. Even worse, only a portion of the valuable manuscript and archival collection could be kept in the fireproof vault. The rest sat on open shelves in rooms with neither air conditioning nor humidity control. The College desperately needed a new, modern library, but that lay in the future.^[91] In spite of physical limitations, the library’s holdings and expenditures grew, and by 1960 the number of volumes, documents, periodicals, and audiovisuals and microtexts reached 481,381; manuscripts, 568,622, for a total of 1,050,003.^[92] Even with its shortcomings, the library continued to rank highly in comparison to those of similar colleges.^[93]

Although a new library did not materialize, other buildings arose to relieve campus overcrowding. There had been no major construction at the College since 1935, so in 1954 Chandler launched an ambitious building program, called for in the self-study and then approved by the Board of Visitors. Chandler envisioned new buildings for dormitories, classrooms, student activities, a library, storage, a women’s gymnasium, and law and government. A badly needed power plant and a men’s dormitory, Bryan Hall, had already been finished in 1953.^[94] Before any more construction began, a Christmastime fire swept through Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall, destroying the auditorium and heavily damaging the whole structure.^[95] When funds became available, another Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall was the first building to rise on the new campus, to the southwest of the main campus, and became symbolic of Chandler’s building and expansion program. It was completed and dedicated in 1957.^[96] The old, fire-damaged building was reconstructed, renamed Ewell Hall, and housed the music department. The next year a new women’s dormitory, Landrum Hall, and two wings on Bryan Hall partially eased the housing shortage.^[97] The student activity building, a dream since Julian Chandler’s administration, arose across Jamestown Road from the old campus.^[98] When it was finished in 1960, the Campus Center provided long-desired recreational and meeting space for students. Work also began on an underpass, known as Alvin’s Alley, for students to cross Jamestown Road safely.

Still another master plan, devised in 1959 by the director of development, William F. Swindler, placed a massive new library at the end of the Sunken Garden on the old campus. Rejected by the Virginia State Art Commission, this plan saw two revisions the next year.^[99] Finally, on May 6, 1960, the Art Commission approved the latest plan, which depicted a whole new campus centered around an academic court with Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall at one end and the new library at the other. Classroom buildings would fan out around the court. Designed to accommodate 2,900 students by 1970, the projected layout of the new campus provided a viable plan followed in concept by later presidents.^[100]

To maintain the buildings on the historic ancient campus, the College continued its upkeep arrangement with Colonial Williamsburg, which had raised its fees to $3,000 a year.^[101] In another transaction, the College sold Colonial Williamsburg a 2-acre tract on Francis Street with three historic sites; this was part of lands acquired from Eastern State Hospital. Chandler wanted the College to retain the bulk of these 207 acres for future expansion.^[102]

New buildings require vast amounts of money, of course. Chandler did not share Pomfret’ s aversion to debt, and his construction program pushed the College into large-scale borrowing. The General Assembly showed a consistent stinginess toward William and Mary, not only in capital outlay but in operating funds.^[103] As a result, the College borrowed from the Virginia Supplemental Retirement System and floated state-backed revenue bonds.^[104] Indebtedness soared from $159,000 at the end of the Pomfret administration to $1,260,700 in 1960. The College looked for other sources of support, and a major part of Swindler’s job as director of development was a public relations campaign to raise private funds for new construction, a tactic that Chandler had long recommended.^[105]

As the College’s debt mounted, so too did its endowment, rising from $2.1 million in 1951 to nearly $3.2 million nine years later.^[106] Principal donors continued to be individuals rather than corporations. William and Mary’s greatest benefactor was Lettie Pate Evans, who bequeathed $500,000 for the William A. R. Goodwin Memorial Fund and another $25,000 for the John Stewart Bryan Scholarship Fund.^[107]

Cooperative Research Continues

During these years of growth, the College’s cooperative programs in marine biology and early American history and culture flourished. The Virginia Fisheries Laboratory, jointly operated by William and Mary and the Virginia Commission of Fisheries, had moved to its new building at Gloucester Point in 1950. A few months later, John L. McHugh became director.^[108] Under McHugh’s efficient leadership, the laboratory concentrated its research on oysters, blue crab, shad, rock, and croaker and, later, on saltwater sport fisheries and oyster drills. Other studies focused on the effects on oyster grounds from construction of the Hampton Roads bridge-tunnel and on the potential pollution from an oil refinery being built on the lower York River.^[109] A modern research vessel—the Pathfinder—and a new building for graduate students’ living quarters provided additional means of broadening the research programs. On a larger scale, the Fisheries Laboratory coordinated its activities with such groups as the Chesapeake Bay Institute, the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, the Office of Naval Research, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.^[110] In the late 1950s, several grants allowed the Fisheries Laboratory to investigate parasites of marine life in the Chesapeake Bay and to strengthen its research training for teachers and for undergraduates.^[111] In 1959 the laboratory established a branch station at Wachapreague on the Eastern Shore.

Although the staff of the laboratory produced large numbers of scholarly articles on its research, it had more impact on Virginia residents by its public relations program. It continued to welcome school children to the laboratory and made presentations to schools, teachers’ groups, service clubs, and sportsmen’s and commercial fishermen’s organizations. It reached the public by radio and television and issued informative press releases written in nonscientific language.^[112]

Since its beginning in 1940, the laboratory, in conjunction with William and Mary’s biology department, had offered a master’s degree in aquatic biology. In 1959 a separate Department of Marine Science began its own master’s program among its more diversified courses. The next year the Board of Visitors approved increasing the programs and staff of the laboratory and beginning a doctoral program, with an emphasis on biological oceanography.^[113] The Virginia Fisheries Laboratory, the only such facility in the state, was then better able to help meet the growing national demand for trained marine scientists. In January 1959 McHugh resigned as director.^[114] Several months later William J. Hargis, Jr., assumed the post and continued to guide the laboratory in multifaceted programs of conserving the state’s fishery resources, encouraging commercial production, and educating the public.^[115]

The College’s second major cooperative research endeavor, the Institute of Early American History and Culture, jointly sponsored by William and Mary and Colonial Williamsburg, continued to gain in stature and accomplishments after Lyman H. Butterfield became director in July 1951.^[116] From 1951 through 1959, the Institute, in conjunction with the University of North Carolina Press, published twenty scholarly books. In 1952 it began awarding an annual prize for the best new book in the field of early American history and issued periodic newsletters. Staff members lectured for Colonial Williamsburg’s educational program and taught in the College’s history department. Butterfield also initiated a yearly series of conferences in Williamsburg on needs and opportunities in the field of colonial history.^[117] Grants-in-aid to encourage young scholars to provide manuscripts for the Institute to publish proved less than productive, and at Butterfield’s suggestion, the Institute council ended the program.^[118]

In 1954–55 the Institute went through a year of transition. Butterfield resigned as director in November 1954.^[119] As the search got under way for his replacement, Chandler and Colonial Williamsburg President Kenneth Chorley instigated a thorough evaluation of the Institute by the noted historian and former council member, Arthur M. Schlesinger.^[120] The ensuing Schlesinger Report strongly recommended a formal charter or constitution by the sponsoring institutions and a clear emphasis on research and publishing as the center of the Institute’s program.^[121] Before the council could act on Schlesinger’s suggestions, Douglass Adair, editor of the William and Mary Quarterly since 1946, abruptly resigned.^[122]

During these uncertain months, Lester J. Cappon, editor of publications since 1945, served as acting director until the council appointed him director in May 1955.^[123] The council also approved a constitution which more clearly described the Institute’s organization and reaffirmed its paramount goals of research and publication.^[124] Cappon quickly energized the program and named Lawrence W. Towner as editor of the William and Mary Quarterly and James M. Smith as editor of publications.^[125] Cappon actively sought and received a three-year Lilly Foundation grant of $20,000 annually to increase publications.^[126] The Institute then averaged three books a year and published five in 1960. Cappon reorganized and reinstituted the research associates system by giving two, three-year postdoctoral fellowships, and he also began a “road show” to teach graduate students at other institutions the intricacies of historical editing.^[127] In 1959 the history department’s new graduate apprenticeship program, largely devised by Towner, attracted more interest and students.

Simultaneously, the Quarlerly‘ s reputation for outstanding articles and book reviews grew. Under the editorship of Adair and then Towner, circulation rose from 1,100 in 1951 to 1,556 nine years later.^[128] The Quarterly was one facet of the Institute’s successful program and helped illustrate a marked postwar resurgence of interest in early American history.

Carrying on still another cooperative activity from the Pomfret era, Chandler encouraged the College’s participation in the Richmond Area University Center. Under administrator Herbert W. K. Fitzroy, the center ran its operations from the Ellen Glasgow House.^[129] It attracted outstanding visiting scholars who spoke at William and Mary and other member colleges, provided lecturers for the Richmond Professional Institute’s adult classes, conducted seminars, and sponsored scholarly conferences.^[130] Most important for William and Mary, the center made grants for faculty research.^[131] The cooperative concept attracted more and more interest, and by 1960, twenty-one colleges and universities were affiliated with the center. Reflecting this growing participation, the center’s name changed to University Center in Virginia in 1958.^[132]

Chandler also realized that good publicity helps any institution, and he took advantage of available opportunities to put the College in the national spotlight. When Chandler was formally inaugurated on May 15, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower attended the ceremonies and received an honorary doctor of law degree. He was the seventh consecutive United States president so honored.^[133] The next year the College hosted the beginning of a year-long celebration of the 200th anniversary of John Marshall’s birth. The Marshall-Wythe-Blackstone Commemoration ceremonies on September 25 also honored the Anglo-American Bench and Bar, the 175th anniversary of the first chair of law in America, the rededication of the Marshall-Wythe School of Law, and the creation of the chair of taxation at the College. Among the dignitaries were Chief Justice Earl Warren and the Lord Chief Justice of England, Rayner Lord Goddard.^[134]

When Elizabeth, Queen Mother of England, visited Colonial Williamsburg in November 1954, she attended a luncheon in her honor at the Great Hall of the Wren Building.^[135] More British royalty—Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip—were guests at a tea at the President’s House on October 16, 1957. The first reigning British monarch to visit William and Mary, Queen Elizabeth was in Virginia to attend ceremonies of the 350th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown.^[136] The College took an active part in the organization and execution of the Jamestown Festival’s months of celebrations and granted W. Melville Jones a year’s leave to serve as director.^[137] The next year, as part of the James Monroe bicentennial observance, the College and Colonial Williamsburg sponsored a celebration on December 2 of the 135th anniversary of the historic doctrine bearing his name.^[138]

Running a Tight Ship

As the College became increasingly well known, Chandler had to insure a smoothly running administration. Although he had lacked any experience in educational administration, he had definite management ideas. His naval engineering and command experience led to an admiration of the “management engineering approach to institutions of higher learning which has been most beneficial to industry and commerce.”^[139]

Chandler had ample opportunity to try out his management ideas and to shape the administration, because at least twenty-four administrators resigned.^[140] Stalwarts such as J. Wilfred Lambert, dean of students and registrar; Dudley W. Woodbridge, dean of the Marshall-Wythe School of Law; Vernon Nunn, the auditor; and George J. Oliver, coordinator of branch activities and director of extension, remained. Chandler named Hugh H. Sisson, who had been treasurer and business manager at the Richmond Professional Institute, as bursar; Joseph D. Farrar, former dean of student life at the University of Texas, as dean of men; and Dorothea Wyatt, a professor of history at Goucher College, as dean of women. He upgraded the admissions director to dean and selected H. Westcott Cunningham for the job. Charles F. Marsh served as dean of the faculty until replaced by W. Melville Jones in 1958.^[141] Administrative posts increased from the sixteen of 1951 to twenty-three in 1960, including the recently created office of director of development and public information, a position filled by William F. Swindler.^[142]

Deeply involved with all facets of administration, Chandler was a hardworking, hands-on president who kept abreast of all potential decisions.^[143] He surrounded himself with a small core of advisors—the deans of the faculty, students, law school, and admissions, the bursar, and the coordinator of branch activities—had daily contact with most of them, and met formally with them once a week. Although he asked their opinions, Chandler usually knew what he wanted to do.^[144] He then moved quickly, without hesitation, on a desired action, often antagonizing administrators as he did the faculty.^[145] The administration became more bureaucratic and structured, with flow charts showing duties and lines of communication. If appropriate management techniques worked for industry, thought Chandler, they would also work for colleges. With Chandler began the business management approach to administering William and Mary—a marked change from the casual style of the scholar-president Pomfret.^[146]

Mutiny on Board the U.S.S. William and Mary

Students, as well as faculty and administrators, were subjected to Chandler’s autocratic style. Although the 1950s were generally a peaceful, even apathetic, time on American campuses, such was not the case at William and Mary.^[147] In January 1955 a massive student rebellion threatened to topple the Chandler administration. Student discontent had started early in Chandler’s presidency. In March 1952 he had sent a notice to all students telling them to cease their rudeness, cheap displays of affection, loitering, and throwing trash on the campus.^[148] That fall unauthorized outsiders flocked to the fraternity lodges on weekends and contributed to disturbances and alcoholic abuses. These lodges were the center of social activities because there was as yet no student activities building. In December, after repeated attempts to solve the rowdiness problem by working with Interfraternity Council officers, the administration abruptly halted dating in the lodges. Chandler lifted the ban a few days later when the Council earnestly pledged its cooperation.^[149] Then, in October 1953, Dean of Students J. Wilfred Lambert reiterated the College’s alcohol regulations.^[150] The next spring Chandler met again with student leaders and tacitly approved serving—not selling—beer in the lodges “under proper conditions,” that is, not to minors.^[151]

The 1954–55 session started badly. Two articles of questionable taste appeared in the Flat Hat, causing the administration to insist on more faculty supervision of the publication—a move provoking accusations of censorship from the students.^[152] Concurrently, reports of excessive drinking and disorderliness at the fraternity lodges triggered investigations by Lambert and Joseph D. Farrar, the dean of men. The deans met repeatedly with student leaders, trying, with little success, to solve the problem. Finally, on January 5, 1955, the administration firmly announced that the College would enforce Virginia’s alcoholic beverage laws: no students under twenty-one could drink beer in the lodges.^[153]

Resistance was instantaneous. Letters flew between Chandler and student leaders. Two mass meetings of students on January 7 and 9 vented long-standing dissatisfactions which, by now, had expanded from alcohol to requests that the president meet monthly with the Student Senate to improve communications, that the College permit off-campus fraternity houses again, that the College revoke its policy prohibiting husbands and wives from serving on the faculty so that popular philosophy teachers Sydney and Beatrice Rome could both remain, and that the Student Assembly be informed of new student regulations before they became policy. Chandler agreed to send these requests to the Board of Visitors.^[154] Other students busily took their case to the newspapers, complaining that the administration’s repressiveness had turned the beleaguered College into the U .S.S. William and Mary.^[155]

When the Board met on January 29, it admitted a student delegation which presented a thirty-five-page list of grievances. The Board reaffirmed its policy against married couples serving on the faculty and appointed a committee to study the other complaints.^[156] Calm temporarily returned to the carnpus.^[157] On April 16 Chandler announced the Board’s decisions. Beginning in September 1955, there would be no alcohol of any kind allowed on campus, and College-approved chaperones must be present during social hours at the fraternity lodges or men’s dormitories. “Students shall, at all times, conduct themselves as ladies and gentlemen,” the Board intoned. It also strengthened faculty advisory roles in student publications.^[158]

Once more pandemonium broke loose. The president of the student body, Ronald I. Drake, Jr., penned a statement to parents and to the public, charging Chandler with bad faith.^[159] Simultaneously, a student poll—unscientific to be sure, but nevertheless revealing—showed widespread support for student leaders and pervasive dissatisfaction with the adrninistration.^[160] In late April a special conference committee, composed of students, faculty, and administrative officers, began studying all facets of student affairs and sent its recommendations to the Board a month later.^[161]

During the summer of 1955, the situation worsened. On June 18 three student leaders, now safely graduated, sent a Report of the Student Government of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg to Governor Thomas B. Stanley and to the General Assembly, charging Chandler with “broken promises, violated agreements, and a completely uncooperative attitude” and calling for a full investigation of Chandler’s administration. The report went on to describe “the feeling of fear” and “the lack of confidence” in the administration.^[162] Chandler quickly rebutted these charges to the Board of Visitors. When the Board met on June 25, it issued a “Statement and Findings” which completely exonerated Chandler of any maladministration of the College and called the student government report a “vicious, vindictive attack … unwarranted and without justification.” The statement suggested that those faculty and administrators who could not give allegiance to the president or accept the Board’s policies did the College a disservice by staying at William and Mary.^[163]

The faculty, relatively uninvolved until then, jumped into the fray. The dean of the faculty, Marsh, and three highly respected senior professors—Richard L. Morton, Jess H. Jackson, and William G. Guy—called on the president to protest and then wrote to Chandler that the statement appeared to deny “freedom of thought which is … an inalienable right of every person.”^[164] Realizing the seriousness of the situation, Chandler and the Board hastily explained that the statement had meant to stress the “desirability of orderly constructive discussion” on disagreements, not to suppress freedom of thought.^[165]

Dissatisfied with the weak explanation, professor of government W. Warner Moss released a letter to the press saying that Chandler had forfeited faculty allegiance and trust.^[166] Hard on the heels of Moss’s letter, the former acting president, Chancellor Professor of philosophy James W. Miller, resigned because of the “rapid deterioration” of William and Mary, which had become like “occupied territory.” He also called for a legislative investigation of the College.^[167] Chandler rallied his faculty and administration supporters, who had earlier sent statements to the Board, to join the war of words in the newspapers.^[168] Nevertheless, the influential Richmond Times-Dispatch called for a full investigation of Chandler’s administration.^[169]

When the fall semester began, an uneasy truce settled over the embattled campus, and Marsh, the dean of the faculty, calmly reassured the apprehensive teaching staff.^[170] No legislative investigation developed, but Governor Stanley appointed H. Lester Hooker, a William and Mary alumnus and the chairman of the State Corporation Commission, to the Board of Visitors.^[171] The move would have far-reaching consequences. Alumni voiced their concerns at a special meeting with the Board of Visitors on September 10; but, at the same time, the board of the Society of the Alumni gave Chandler veto power on all articles in the Alumni Gazette.^[172] With a new group of leaders, the students adjusted to the College’s rules about alcohol and vented their youthful energies in more traditional ways. All through the 1950s, panty raids, water riots, food fights, and heckling by students gathered at College Corner annoyed the administration but did no serious harm.^[173]

Expansionist Dreams Become Reality

Chandler wanted the upheaval put behind him so that he could move ahead with his other dreams for the College. Although he had no early plans about William and Mary’s expansion, his thinking about the College’s goals and the means of achieving them took shape as the institutional self-study progressed in 1952–53.^[174] Central to his vision were the Richmond and Norfolk Divisions, and by January 1953 the president had devised the concept of the William and Mary System, which the Board of Visitors quickly adopted. Stressing the College’s responsibility to educate youth and adults in Tidewater, the whole state, and the nation, Chandler emphasized the divisions’ importance to the system.^[175] Like his father before him, Chandler was convinced that “William and Mary should become the Tidewater College in Eastern Vrrginia.”^[176]

Feeding into Chandler’s expansive ideas were population statistics. Pointing to the rapid growth of the state, especially Tidewater and the Eastern Shore, which had leaped over 100 percent in twenty-five years, Chandler said that Virginians must either plan for educating the postwar generation or stop having babies.^[177] The College was “strategically located” to serve that one-third of Virginia’s population lying within a seventy-five-mile radius of Williamsburg.^[178] Cognizant of other states’ actions to provide educational services through community college systems, which Virginia did not yet have, or through state regional systems such as in California, Chandler often reiterated William and Mary’s duty to provide more services to the people of Virginia through its three campuses.^[179] By 1955 he regularly referred to the “Greater College of William and Mary” and began issuing a news bulletin to those connected with the three institutions, which by then had a combined enrollment of 7,559 students.^[180]

Chandler’s complete reversal of Pomfret’ s attempts to separate the branches from the parent institution was welcomed by the Richmond and Norfolk Divisions. In 1952, at Chandler’s urging, the Board of Visitors rescinded its earlier resolutions to drop the divisions and created the new administrative position of coordinator of branch activities and director of extension. By the following year, the directors of the two divisions began regularly attending Board meetings, and in 1955 the Board decided to hold one of its meetings on the Richmond and Norfolk campuses each year.^[181] For the first time, the governor and his budget committee visited these campuses, and in 1958 the General Assembly passed an act recognizing the Richmond and Norfolk Divisions as integral parts of William and Mary, with the same graduation requirements and with control of all three vested in the Board of Visitors.^[182]

The Richmond Professional Institute continued its undergraduate professional offerings in subjects such as art, business administration, distributive Education, occupational therapy, and nursing as well as graduate courses in clinical and applied psychology and social work. It received its own accreditation, independent of William and Mary, in December 1953; and the title of Dean Henry H. Hibbs, Jr., changed to provost five months later. Hibbs, who had been head of this division since 1917, retired in June 1959, and George J. Oliver became the new provost. During the 1950s enrollment at the Richmond Professional Institute grew from 2,569 to 5,026 full- and part-time students.^[183]

Accredited as a junior college in 1951, the Norfolk Division offered a two-year arts and sciences program as well as vocational and technical training. Newspapers and residents of Norfolk exerted increasing pressure on Chandler and the Board of Visitors to create a four-year college there and to meet the needs of the area with well-rounded educational services.^[184] Soon the division began degree programs in business administration, Elementary Education, nursing, and medical technology, followed by several other majors, and awarded its first bachelor’s degrees in 1956. Lewis W. Webb, director since 1946, became the provost in 1957 and guided the division’s expansion from 2,899 students in 1951 to 6,437 in 1960, when 188 students received bachelor’s degrees.^[185]

In 1957 Chandler tried to integrate the programs and resources of all three colleges by proposing systemwide schools, recommended by the self-study three years earlier. He suggested to the Board of Visitors a school of Education and a school of business administration, both to be located on the William and Mary campus, as means of strengthening the professional offerings of the three colleges and of attracting more male students, especially if the foreign language requirement for business majors was relaxed. The Board referred the matter to its education committee.^[186] This committee solicited the opinion of Dean Marsh, who was adamantly opposed to four-year professional schools. He convinced the committee that such schools would erode William and Mary’s liberal arts degree, and Chandler’s proposal got nowhere.^[187]

The two branch colleges continued to grow in size and respectability, and by 1960 the Greater College of William and Mary had a combined enrollment of 16,445 full- and part-time students. Surely such institutional strength would receive favorable financial treatment from the General Assembly, but such was never the case. In 1954, for example, the General Assembly appropriated $604,000 in capital funds for the three schools in response to Chandler’s request for $5.6 million for the biennium. By 1960 capital appropriations rose to nearly $3.4 million; but the Greater College never benefitted from state largesse as much as the University of Virginia and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, a fact that Bursar Sisson attributed to a hard-core group of legislators, alumni, and faculty which fought against the school’s expansion.^[188] And the two branches never received their equitable share of either capital or operating funds granted to the whole system, which fostered resentment toward the parent college.

As the administration made plans for the expansion of the three colleges, a plan of a different sort was under way in Norfolk. As early as 1953, a member of the Junior Chamber of Commerce (Jaycees) had suggested the organization’s financing an independent survey of the needs of the Norfolk area with an eye to establishing a four-year college.^[189] Five years later the city council and Provost Webb lent their support, and the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia arranged for the federal Office of Education to conduct the survey, at the expense of the Jaycees. During the summer of 1959, Norfolk newspapers picked up the idea of an independent four-year college with its own governing board; and when the survey, Higher Education in the Tidewater Area of Virginia, was released on December 4, the ground swell of public opinion intensified. The study recommended several associated colleges, each with its own name, purpose, administration, and faculty, but under one Board of Visitors and one chief executive officer.^[190] The State Council of Higher Education enthusiastically endorsed these recommendations as part of its “response to widespread neglect of public higher education in Virginia during the State’s long and unproductive preoccupation with massive resistance,” wrote the director, William H. McFarlane.^[191] He also thought it would save taxpayers’ money and provide educational facilities for eastern Virginia.^[192]

Thousands signed petitions to the General Assembly, and legislators from the Hampton Roads and Richmond areas sponsored a bill to establish the Colleges of William and Mary. Chandler had long felt that William and Mary should be one of the state’s three large institutions because of its location and opportunity for service, so he supported the bill.^[193] It moved quickly through the governor’s office and the General Assembly, became law on March 3, 1960, and was effective immediately. Chandler’s dream of one major educational system for Tidewater Virginia had come true. He was ahead of his times in his concept of a unified multicampus system, for the decade of the 1960s was the era of the proliferation of such systems.^[194] The five campuses of the Colleges of William and Mary spread from Petersburg to Norfolk, far surpassing any other system in the state. It was ironic that the people of Norfolk rather than Chandler himself were responsible for bringing about the momentous change.

An Interlude: The Colleges of William and Mary

The new entity, the Colleges of William and Mary, consisted of the Williamsburg campus, the Norfolk Division, the Richmond Professional Institute, and two junior colleges to be established at Petersburg and Newport News by September 1961. The Board of Visitors, enlarged from eleven to fifteen members, would control all property of the several institutions as well as perform its usual decision-making functions. There would be a chancellor of the colleges, presidents of William and Mary, the Norfolk and Richmond Divisions, and directors of the junior colleges. The chancellor would be the chief executive officer, and the heads of the schools would report to the Board through him. Quickly adopting an organizational plan in May, the Board elected Chandler as chancellor.^[195]

During the summer and fall of 1960, the Board of Visitors began to set up the new system. First, it had to select a president for William and Mary. The faculty, through its advisory committee, tried to participate in the process by writing to Rector Robertson and suggesting qualifications and possible candidates for the post. At a special meeting on June 11, Robertson read this letter to the full Board; but under the May organizational plan, recommendations for the presidency had to come through the chancellor. That chancellor was Chandler. He had won even this final bout against the faculty. Chandler already had his own candidate: Davis Young Paschall, the state superintendent of public instruction who had been an ex officio member of the Board for three years. After a brief discussion of Paschall’s qualifications, the Board elected him as the College’s next president. Why wait any longer just to give the impression “that the faculty had a chance to influence the selection?” quipped Board member Judge Hooker.^[196] Paschall assumed office on August 16, 1960. So widespread was the relief that Chandler had been replaced that even the faculty, which had reacted vigorously just nine years earlier to the Board’s method of selecting a president, placidly accepted the decision. Students and alumni welcomed Paschall enthusiastically, pointing to a “new spirit” on campus.^[197]

As Paschall settled into the presidency, the Board met again in August and in October to complete the organization of the new system. It named Provost Webb as president of the Norfolk Division, which he had directed for fourteen years. Soon the division became the Norfolk College of William and Mary of the Colleges of William and Mary—one of the many name changes the institution had experienced over the years. The branch continued to expand in students and programs, and the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools accredited it as a four-year college in December 1961.^[198] George J. Oliver, provost of the Richmond Professional Institute since 1959, became its president. He had held various posts at William and Mary since 1945, and the Board and Chandler were well aware of his administrative talents. The school was renamed the Richmond Professional Institute of the Colleges of William and Mary, and it continued its primarily professional offerings.^[199]

A new challenge for William and Mary was establishing two junior colleges, slated to open in the fall of 1961.^[200] The first of these, Christopher Newport College, was located in Newport News under the direction of H. Westcott Cunningham. Cunningham had been in the Chandler administration since 1953 as director, then dean, of admissions and student aid. The city of Newport News provided the old John W. Daniel School as temporary quarters for Christopher Newport and gave funds to remodel and equip the building, while Cunningham lined up faculty and administrators. Offering the first two years of a liberal arts curriculum for students wanting to transfer to four-year colleges or to earn associate of arts degrees, Christopher Newport opened in September 1961 as a nonresidential college with 209 students.^[201]

William and Mary’s second junior college, Richard Bland College, was located three miles south of Petersburg in Prince George County on 200 acres of land; it had two buildings that had once housed the old Petersburg Training School and Hospital for Feebleminded Negroes. Retired army colonel James M. Carson, who had been professor of military science and tactics at William and Mary from 1955 to 1959, was director, and the nonresidential college began classes in September 1961 with 175 day students and 90 evening students. Like Christopher Newport, Richard Bland offered the first two years of a liberal arts education. Unlike Christopher Newport, Richard Bland also moved heavily into technical and vocational training in subjects such as secretarial science, junior executive business management, cooperative distribution, and life insurance underwriting.^[202]

It was Chandler’s responsibility as administrative chancellor to orchestrate the activities of the five colleges, and he leaped into his new command with his customary gusto. Also charged with controlling the budgets of all the colleges, he brought Bursar Sisson into the chancellor’s office as comptroller. The two men immediately devised, and the Board approved, a capital outlay proposal of $52,774,414 for the five campuses for 1962–68, with the College in Williamsburg receiving a disproportionately large amount.^[203] Used to William and Mary’s modest requests, state officials must have reeled at such grandiose demands for the new educational behemoth they had just created in eastern Virginia. The chancellor’s office was on the William and Mary campus and only a few hundred yards from President Paschall’s office. Such proximity generated uncomfortable problems for Paschall as he tried to direct the College’s daily operations. Chandler insisted on being involved in all decisions, large and small, and kept up a steady barrage of directives, inquiries, requests for information, demands for action, and carping criticism. For example, when Paschall suggested that the Board of Visitors appoint a committee to review the athletic program, Chandler sharply rebuked him. The College itself should study the matter, then present the facts to the Board, he wrote. “This policy as far as I am concerned applies to all matters affecting the Colleges of William and Mary.”^[204]

At Norfolk College, President Webb, who had enjoyed years of relative autonomy, suddenly found himself having to clear with Chandler such matters as hiring faculty and staff, granting leaves of absence, submitting budget requests, reviewing scholarly publications, acquiring property, and authorizing building plans. Chandler never hesitated to castigate Webb for any independent action.^[205] Similarly, President Oliver at the Richmond Professional Institute and Directors Cunningham at Christopher Newport and Carson at Richard Bland constantly received letters, memoranda, and directives from Chandler in his efforts to manage all operations at all campuses. When he communicated with them, he wrote, he expected immediate replies. He constantly reminded them that he was the chief executive officer of the colleges.^[206]

Perhaps the most demeaning manifestation of Chandler’s disdain for the presidents and directors came during the Board of Visitors meetings. The chancellor, of course, attended the entire meeting. In contrast, the heads of the five colleges sat outside, like schoolboys, until summoned to report on their colleges.^[207] If these men chafed at Chandler’s autocratic style, they could say little openly, because all but Webb owed their appointments to Chandler, who had recommended them to the Board. Their only relief would come from working quietly behind the scenes.

As time went on, Chandler pressed his long-held view that the colleges should provide different types of education to meet the varying demands of the people of Tidewater Virginia. Thwarted only a few years earlier in his effort to establish schools of Education and business administration, he convinced the Board of Visitors to authorize such schools on a systemwide basis. The Williamsburg campus would have the School of Education; the Norfolk campus, the School of Business Administration. Both began in September 1961. That same year still another school—Marine Science—came into being and operated in conjunction with the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory.^[208] Many William and Mary faculty and alumni believed that these professional schools would change the College’s character and dilute the value of its degree, and they expressed even more dissatisfaction with the entire system. As displeasure with the colleges rapidly mounted in many quarters, the whole apparatus began unraveling. Although precise details of the demise of the system remain murky because the leading players left no paper trail of correspondence for later historians to track, it is nonetheless possible to reconstruct the probable course of events leading to the dissolution of the Colleges of William and Mary.^[209]

In early 1961, after learning of Webb’s extreme unhappiness with his role, Paschall described Chandler’s constant interference with routine administration to Board member T. Edward Temple. No admirer of Chandler, Temple enlisted the aid of two other members of the Board with similar feelings—Judge Hooker and Edward P. Simpkins, Jr. These men had often discussed among themselves how the Richmond Professional Institute and Norfolk College should grow up and serve their own communities without William and Mary’s paternalistic supervision. Now they would help bring about such independence.^[210]

Their determination meshed well with the activities of the State Council of Higher Education, which was developing an overall educational plan for the commonwealth.^[211] The council held its March 1961 meeting at William and Mary and discussed with Chandler the whole colleges system. Chandler, who “was always at odds with the state agencies that had any control or supervision over the college,” pushed hard for council approval of a doctor of philosophy degree in marine science at William and Mary and berated the council for its policy of cooperative doctoral programs.^[212] Tempers flared and Chandler antagonized the entire council, including the chairman, Dabney S. Lancaster.^[213] Later, the council discussed “certain problems regarding the development of the College at Williamsburg as related to the total William and Mary system.”^[214]

Next, the council’s Advisory Committee on Coordination of Public Higher Education met in May. The Board of Visitors had named Hooker as its representative to this committee, and he attended the May meeting.^[215] Agreeing on a cooperative approach to higher education, the committee instructed all institutions to draw up statements of purposes and programs. The State Council would then fine-tune the statewide system by avoiding duplication, strengthening present programs, and creating necessary new ones. Still opposed to cooperative doctoral programs, Chandler led a William and Mary delegation to talk with Governor J. Lindsay Almond, Jr., and State Council representatives in another effort to establish the doctor of philosophy in marine science as well as this same degree in clinical psychology at the Richmond Professional Institute. Sensing the governor’s negative reaction, Chandler planned to carry the matter directly to the General Assembly in 1962.^[216]

As the summer wore on, the State Council began drafting its biennial report, which would be sent to the governor and the General Assembly. Providing information for the council’s study were the mission statements of the five William and Mary colleges. Ready in August, these documents clearly revealed the divergent purposes and goals of the three senior colleges.^[217] Part One of the council’s report, released in September, discussed statewide policy and coordination for the commonwealth’s colleges and universities. The council kept Part Two of the report secret for two more months, and curiosity increased as rumors began surfacing that the report would recommend major reorganizations of several of the state’s institutions, including William and Mary.^[218]

The State Council invited the Board of Visitors to its meeting on October 23, but only four could attend: Hooker, Temple, and Simpkins—all interested in disbanding the colleges—and J. Asa Shield, who held the opposite view. The council discussed its upcoming proposal of beginning the decentralization of the control of state colleges, which would start with the William and Mary system. Norfolk College and the Richmond Professional Institute should have separate boards and new names without William and Mary in them, and the chancellor’s office should be moved off the Williamsburg campus.^[219] Such independence fitted into a “strong state tradition of decentralization,” explained William H. Mcfarlane, the council director.^[220]

Reacting with alarm, Rector Robertson called a special meeting of the Board for October 29 in Richmond. He allowed Chandler, Paschall, Webb, Oliver, Cunningham, and Carson each a short time to give their views on the State Council’s recommendations, which the Board then rejected by secret ballot.^[221] Next, eleven Board members attended a State Council meeting on November 6 when more discussions and arguments took place. The council approved its final draft of the controversial Part Two of the biennial report.^[222] The flurry of activity did not escape the newspapers’ notice, and rumors and speculation ran rampant. Leaks filtered from Capitol Square that there would be a complete administrative reorganization of the colleges, but the major participants remained silent.^[223] Even Lieutenant Governor A. E. S. Stephens, who was on a cruise, could not learn of impending events.^[224]

Finally, on November 8, Part Two of the council’s long-awaited report went to the governor, the General Assembly, and the colleges involved and became public the next day. Since it believed that no single Board of Visitors could assume the burdens of a five-campus system, the State Council recommended separate governing boards for William and Mary, Norfolk College, and the Richmond Professional Institute, leaving William and Mary to continue to manage its two junior colleges. The ancient College in Williamsburg must preserve its name, its traditional character, and its principal purpose as a center for undergraduate arts and sciences. The council postponed a decision on William and Mary’s request for a doctorate in marine science and did not endorse the proposed doctoral degree in clinical psychology at the Richmond Professional Institute. As part of the trend of decentralization, the council also suggested separate boards of control for Longwood and Madison Colleges, then managed by the State Board of Education.^[225]

But many wondered if these radical changes would downgrade William and Mary’s role as the educational leader of eastern Virginia. To assuage such fears, the State Council issued a supplementary statement in mid-December, reaffirming William and Mary’s primary mission as an undergraduate college with some master’s degree programs. It encouraged a doctorate in colonial history and master’s degrees in government, dramatic arts, chemistry, and biology; but it again postponed a decision on a doctoral program in marine science. The statement continued with a convoluted explanation of how establishing the Colleges of William and Mary in 1960 was but a step in the long-range evolution that would result in the independence of the three senior colleges just two years later.^[226]

Meanwhile, a concerned Board of Visitors had appointed a committee to study the colleges’ organization.^[227] In early January 1962, this committee recommended keeping the system but weakening the chancellor’s role as chief executive officer by allowing the presidents and directors to report directly to the Board, moving the chancellor’s office off any campus, and changing the system’s name to the College of William and Mary in Virginia and Associated Colleges. It suggested offering the doctorate in history, government, physics, and math, as well as clinical psychology at the Richmond Professional Institute. The Board approved these recommendations by a nine to five vote, with those favoring breaking up the colleges voting in the negative.^[228] Rector Robertson, hoping for executive intervention, sent the Board’s recommendations to Governor Almond and Governor-elect Albertis S. Harrison, Jr., but Almond declined to become involved, leaving the matter to his successor.^[229]

Before the General Assembly gathered, many groups brought pressure on the delegates to approve the State Council’s recommendations. Most intense in Norfolk, a ground swell of support came from President Webb, the Alumni Association of Norfolk College, newspapers, the Norfolk City Council, and civic groups such as the Chamber of Commerce.^[230] Judge Hooker took every opportunity to encourage mounting public pressure, maintaining that “there isn’t the slightest justifiable reason why Norfolk should not be permitted to go on its own.”^[231] The propitiously timed accreditation of Norfolk as a four-year college in December 1961 lent more credence to the demands for independence.

In Williamsburg and Richmond, many more alumni voiced their concerns that the colleges system was not advantageous to any of the senior colleges and began contacting their delegates about the State Council’s report. When the board of directors of William and Mary’s Society of the Alumni came out in favor of the breakup, Chandler, who had been uncharacteristically silent during this whole furor, commented, “The board has spoken and so has Judge Hooker.”^[232] One “very influential” but unnamed Richmond alumnus [probably Hooker] approached Russell M. Carneal, the Williamsburg area’s delegate to the General Assembly, about introducing appropriate legislation.^[233] Carneal agreed to sponsor a bill to dissolve the colleges, but Hooker left nothing to chance. Board member T. Edward Temple remembered a train ride on which Hooker accompanied General Assembly members from Richmond to Roanoke. By the end of the trip, Hooker had commitments from about 90 percent of the legislators.^[234]

When the General Assembly convened, Harrison, in his first gubernatorial address, supported implementing the State Council’s recommendations to establish separate governing boards for William and Mary, Norfolk College, and the Richmond Professional Institute.^[235] After Carneal introduced House Bill 156 to dissolve the William and Mary system, Hooker continued his efforts by appearing before the legislature and by maintaining pressure on individual members.^[236] Cameal’s bill passed the House of Delegates by a resounding eighty-six to two vote and, with minor amendments, sailed through the upper house with a thirty-three to three margin. Harrison signed the bill into law on February 16, to be effective on July 1. In addition to authorizing autonomous governing boards for the three colleges, the new law abolished the position of administrative chancellor. Each of William and Mary’s remaining colleges—the home campus, Christopher Newport, and Richard Bland would have a president reporting directly to the Board of Visitors. The Board would also appoint a chancellor or coordinator for the two-year colleges.^[237]

The unwieldy system had ended for a variety of reasons, but one Board member, M. Carl Andrews, bitterly complained that it had ”been destroyed to get at one man.” Bursar Robert English thought it was “purely … [Chandler’s method of operating] … that caused the Colleges … to be abolished,” while Christopher Newport President Cunningham attributed the breakup to growth patterns in Richmond and Norfolk.^[238] But from a broader viewpoint, the breakup of the Colleges of William and Mary was the first step in the sweeping decentralization of the control of state institutions. Madison and Longwood Colleges failed to get their own governing boards until two years later when they, as well as Radford and Virginia State College, became autonomous.^[239]

At the 1962 session, the General Assembly passed other legislation that vitally affected William and Mary. The Virginia Fisheries Laboratory at Gloucester Point, managed cooperatively by the College and the Virginia Commission of Fisheries since 1940, became the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS)—an independent research and service agency supervised by its own board of administration. The director and staff of VIMS still served as the dean and faculty of the College’s new School of Marine Science. Yet another far-reaching change allowed William and Mary, along with the University of Virginia and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, to contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to operate a space radiation effects laboratory in the Hampton Roads area.^[240] This agreement would radically alter the College’s traditional mission as an undergraduate institution.

When the Board of Visitors met in April 1962, it had to decide what to do with Chancellor Chandler and Comptroller Sisson, whose jobs would end on July 1, when the colleges system ceased to exist. A few weeks later, the Board named Chandler honorary chancellor and also coordinator of Christopher Newport and Richard Bland Colleges. Sisson resigned from his post. Chandler only served as coordinator of the two-year colleges until September 15 but continued to perform the ceremonial chancellor’s functions until 1974.^[241]

As Chandler left William and Mary, he bequeathed twin legacies of great accomplishment and of even greater bitterness. His intentions were good: he wanted to create a magnificent college in Williamsburg and later, a system of colleges that would meet the educational needs of eastern Virginia. Service to the state always remained his primary goal. Not an educator by training, he was, nevertheless, innovative in many ways. To his credit as president must go scandal-free intercollegiate athletics and a more highly qualified faculty that enjoyed increases in salaries and benefits. His insistence on raising academic standards resulted in William and Mary’s becoming a more selective college. Realizing the need for a self-study, he was years ahead of such a mandatory requirement by any accrediting agency. Curricular modifications, adult education, and master’s degree programs diversified the College’s offerings. He encouraged the cooperative programs of the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory and the Institute of Early American History and Culture, tried to secure funding for a badly needed new library, and introduced a business management administrative style.

But it was his expansion programs that clearly showed his vision and his perception of coming trends.^[242] He initiated an ambitious building program in 1954 and the master plans of 1959 and 1960; all anticipated the future needs of the College and paved the way for his successors. Although Chandler did not approach the massive construction of his father’s era, he added the power plant, four buildings, and two wings to Bryan Hall. He accomplished much in nine years. In recognition of Chandler’s presidential achievements, the University of Pennsylvania, Brandeis University, and later, William and Mary awarded him honorary degrees, and the College’s Society of the Alumni selected him as its medallion recipient in 1958.^[243]

Chandler’s dream of a multicampus system serving all of Tidewater Virginia preceded a national movement of later years. This dream came true in 1960 when the five-campus Colleges of William and Mary became a reality, and he was named administrative chancellor of the far-flung educational empire. But the colleges system was doomed to failure even from the beginning. Three senior colleges with growing enrollments and widely divergent purposes could not survive under one Board of Visitors. Simultaneously, the State Council of Higher Education began its decentralization of the control of educational institutions and decided to start with William and Mary. Its recommendations for independence for Norfolk College and the Richmond Professional Institute coincided with increasingly strident public dissatisfaction with the unified colleges and with Chancellor Chandler. Undoubtedly, the breakup of the system would have come in time, but Chandler’s personality must have contributed substantially to the early demise of the colleges system.

Chandler’s accomplishments as president and chancellor might have been far greater if his personality had been less abrasive. He had an unerring genius for antagonizing most people by his quick temper and his dogmatic, authoritarian leadership style. He never understood why he could not direct a college or a system of colleges as he would a military unit or why his subordinates reacted negatively to chains of command and strings of orders. After his inauspicious beginning caused by the Board of Visitors’ method of selecting him, he failed to win the faculty’s support because of his heavy-handed attempts to strip it of its decision-making and deliberative powers.^[244] His maladroit methods of quelling student unrest, especially during the uprisings of 1955, demonstrated a marked lack of understanding of young adults. He often differed sharply and emphatically with his chosen administrative staff.^[245] One dean commented that Chandler “created as many problems as he solved.”^[246] As chancellor, he could not let the presidents and directors of the five colleges exercise their normal administrative duties. Finally, he began antagonizing the very Board of Visitors that had selected him for the presidency, as well as the State Council of Higher Education and other high-ranking commonwealth officials. He was, in fact, his own worst enemy. But perhaps the saddest legacy of the stormy Chandler years was that the College, collectively, lost its sense of humor. It was a grim place where no one laughed anymore.

Fueling the confusion of the Chandler era were the shifting directions and purposes of the College. Pomfret had clearly stated his goal of turning William and Mary into an outstanding liberal arts school. Chandler, emulating his father, helped to change this mission to one that provided a multicampus system with a variety of educational services for all of Tidewater Virginia. When Chandler left in 1962, renewed hope swept the campus. Perhaps President Paschall, now free to act on his own, could restore the peace and fulfill the vast potential of the ancient College.