On Dec. 14, 1968, Leo P. McLaughlin, S.J., stepped down as president of Fordham, ending a tenure marked by new ventures that reflected the experimental spirit of the 1960s.
One of them was Bensalem College. Founded in 1967 and housed in an off-campus apartment building, it provided for student-directed study under the guidance of a faculty mentor, with no course requirements or grades.
Another program allowed students to graduate from Fordham Prep and Fordham in a total of six years. Among his other initiatives, Father McLaughlin launched the Lincoln Center campus’s College of Liberal Arts, which had a novel curriculum with an urban bent, and hired famous media theorist Marshall McLuhan, author of the seminal work The Medium is the Message.
