NATION : Professor Leaves Dartmouth

A black music professor has resigned from Dartmouth College, “liberating” himself from repeated attacks during the past seven years by a conservative, off-campus student weekly newspaper.

The Dartmouth Review targeted William Cole in what it said was a crusade against the decline of higher education, once describing him as part of “Dartmouth’s Dynamic Duo of Mediocrity.” The Review began attacking his teaching ability and personality in 1983. An article that year called one music course he taught “the most outrageous gut course on campus.” The newspaper also described him as a “lean, scruffy fellow” who “looks like a used Brillo pad.”

Cole filed a $600,000 libel suit against the paper that was settled out of court two years later for no money.