Kristen Townsend 

Contributing Writer

Dr. Howard Foster Lowry served as president of The College of Wooster from 1944 until his death in 1967. He is widely credited for creating the Independent Study (I.S.) program at Wooster, elevating Wooster’s academic reputation. 

He was also a serial stalker. 

Lowry had a well-documented pattern of identifying and pursuing recent female graduates – who were often decades younger than he was – through increasingly intimate letters and gifts. These included large bouquets of roses, specifically-created positions at the College designed to bring his targets back to campus and, in one case, a full-length, sheer, powder-blue negligee. He regularly arranged “business trips” to their locations, under the guise of fundraising, but with the clear purpose of seeing them. 

Even within the “boys will be boys” culture of the mid-20th century, Lowry’s conduct towards students and recent alumni was extreme enough to be noted by his contemporaries. Wooster alum and current Life Trustee Jerrold Footlick wrote in his 2015 book An Adventure in Education that Lowry was a “nineteenth-century Romantic who cherished the company of attractive young women yet somehow could not bring himself to marry one.” 

In 2021, alum Irene Dardashti and several others came forward, working with then-Editor-in-Chief of The Wooster Voice Maggie Dougherty to give a name to what they had experienced as undergraduates: sexual harassment. 

In response, the Board of Trustees formed a Special Committee to investigate Lowry’s actions, and hired the law firm BakerHostetler to conduct the investigation. Although the evidence showed that Lowry pursued multiple women shortly after their graduation, the committee concluded that he had committed no legal violations or misconduct involving students. The Board further stated that “when Dr. Lowry was made aware that his romantic advances were unwelcome, he ended them.” 

Does that include the sheer negligee he sent to Dardashti, a “gift” she has not touched in the more than sixty years since she received it? Does that include the time he traveled to Washington D.C. to personally ask George Browne’s fiancée to end their engagement? 

The board entirely ignored the profound power imbalance at the heart of these interactions. What options did a young woman in the 1960s have when the president of her college, a man forty years her senior, pursued her? Social norms told her she should be flattered. 

Today’s students see this differently. Sexual harassment is not something to be minimized or romanticized. But institutional memory is short. Students are here for only a few years, and much of the College’s history is never passed down. 

Even with the full knowledge of Lowry’s behavior, the Board of Trustees had an opportunity to rename the Lowry Student Center and align the College’s actions with its modern values. Instead, the name remained because one donor objected. The renovated student center was funded largely through a $10 million donation from Board member Richard Bell, and the name stayed because Bell’s money insisted on it. The scandal faded, and the building’s name remained. 

Yes, Lowry was a brilliant academic leader. Yes, he was not found to have broken any laws. And yes, his behavior remains profoundly disturbing. 

Honor his academic legacy where it belongs: in the Independent Study database and institutional history. But the hub of campus life should not bear the name of someone whose actions caused fear and harm. The alumni he targeted should not be made to walk through a building honoring the man who traumatized them. 

For those who wish to learn more, I strongly recommend the following Wooster Voice articles: “The complicated legacy of president Howard Lowry: As our values evolve, do our heroes change as well?” by former Editor in Chief Maggie Dougherty; “Will Dr. Lowry Remain The College of Wooster’s Hero? Board of Trustees Release Findings of Inquiry and Students Respond” by former Editor in Chief Aspen Rush; and “Another Plea to Reconsider Howard Lowry’s Legacy” by alumna Irene Dardashti. Their reporting and perspectives provide essential context, and far more that I can capture here.