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Johnston survived the reorganiztion with its academic integrity intact and many of its programs still functioning. It maintained a remarkable vitality despite being virtually ``occupied'' by the University. But the decisions demoralized everyone. Students left in large numbers, and faculty adopted a doomsday approach. The end of the college was no longer in question -- the issue was when it would finally occur.
But the time was certainly not without its high points. One such high point of the late seventies at Johnston was Kevin O'Neill's semester-long study trip to Greece. ``The trip was unique in that it followed a very rigorous schedule of site and museum visitations and class meetings but otherwise left the students to fend for themselves. They had to find their own meals and hotels, make their own travel arrangements and otherwise adjust to living in a foreign country. Thus there was no break between living and learning. The experience of travel itself became one of the trip's contracted classes, equal in value to the study of classical texts and the site visitations.'' Yet the College's low enrollment was devastating for the college. Out of 280 residential students in the fall of 1974, only 92 were enrolled in 1978. This incredible downward trend seems to be the result of, on the one hand the nation's slacking interest in alternative education, and on the other hand the administrative takeover of the college, which both crippled the admissions numbers (the University took over the admissions duties of Johnston college in 1976) and dramatically decreased the retention. Some students and faculty responded, creating their own admissions program to travel to high-schools and get students interested in Johnston, as well as for students to personally answer inquiries (by phone and by mail) to the school.
The new President of the University in 1979, Douglas Moore, under very serious University deficit pressures, which he attributed to the balkanized image of the University,[SEE FOOTNOTE] dissolved Johnston College just less than a year into his tenure, firing just over half the faculty[SEE FOOTNOTE], and creating an internal degree program called the Johnston Center for Individualized Learning in the place of the College.