Spec Staff Quits, Hits Dean's Action

NEW YORK, Aug. 28-Weeks of dispute between the managing board of the Spectator, Columbia undergraduate paper, and Columbia's Emergency Council, wartime substitute for the College Student Board, came to a head this week with the resignation of Spec's regular staff, authoritative Morningside campus authorities disclosed yesterday.

Spec's managing board, unable to decide who should be editor-in-chief for next year, last week submitted the question to arbitration by the Emergency Council. The Council selected Edward Gold, Columbia '46, and the choice was unanimously accepted by the Spectator staff.

McKnight Steps In

The Emergency Council then announced that the newspaper staff had demonstrated its incompetence to select a board of editors. Nicholas McD. McKnight, associate dean of the College, entered the picture at this point with the suggestion that a committee be formed to submit a list of names to the Emergency Council for its determination of the Spectator's managing board.

McKnight's motion was passed by the King's Crown Advisory Board, which has general direction of Columbia's undergraduate organizations. It was also accepted by the Emergency Council. A faculty committee of three was formed, with McKnight as its chairman, and members of the Spec staff were invited to submit their qualifications for managing board positions to this novel body.

Inexperienced V-12er Named Editor

Almost no qualifications were submitted by regular members of the staff, who considered the committeee's action unjustified and unlawful. But other students complied with the committee's request, with the result that Stanley Smith, V-12, a star football tackle of Coach Lou Little's forward wall, was named editor-in-chief. Smith had no status or experience on the staff; he had never been a candidate for the paper.

Spec Staff Quits

For sports editor, the committee picked Harry Coleman; another V-12 student, who was active with the Columbia crew. Coleman had been a candidate for the paper for one semester. Other editors named were veterans of the Spec staff, but as they considered the entire handling of the matter a violation of all precedent and of the Spectator constitution they, along with the other old members of the staff, refused to serve under the new editorial regime.

The Dean's office committee selections were immediately approved by the Emergency Council. This action drew swift and vociferous protest from almost all extra-curricular leaders.

Jester Editor Resigns

McKnight took offense at a letter published in the Spectator from John Crossett, Columbia '46, editor of the Jester, undergraduate humor magazine. As a result, Crossett resigned his position, but in his last issue before resignation, he published a front-page editorial blast denouncing the Emergency Council for "toadying" to McKnight's whims.

The Emergency Council struck back by barring distribution of all copies of the Jester to which were not stapled a mimeographed letter expounding the Emergency Council's position and deprecating the stand of the humor magazine. This act, along with that of the student government in naming the editors of the Spectator, is generally regarded as being without precedent in the recent history of Ivy League colleges.

McKnight Pushes Farther

McKnight has further buttressed his position by describing the Emergency Council's action as constitutional in the most recent edition of "Morning side Memorandum," Columbia's official publication for its men in the armed forces.

The de facto board under Smith has already published one issue of the Spectator, but the question is regarded as far from settled