Education: Report Card

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¶Despite the hallowed U.S. tradition that a state campus should take in all qualified comers. President George Cross of the University of Oklahoma sadly announced that he no longer can. Because of lack of room and faculty, he told the state legislature, he will have to limit next September's freshman class to 2,500 (previous enrollment: 2,688).

¶In Irving, Texas, a suburb (pop. 25,000) of Dallas, voters ended a strange school battle by a drastic expedient: they voted to abolish the Irving school district (by consolidating with Dallas), and thus ousted the seven-man school board that had 1). fired Superintendent John L. Beard, and 2) dismissed seven out of eight principals and some 200 pro-Beard teachers and employees who had protested Beard's firing by refusing to show up for work. Beard, who insists that he was fired because some of his teachers sided against Governor Shivers in the last gubernatorial primary, still has a $300.000 suit against the board for libel and slander.