University of Virginia Library

8. EIGHT

The Passing
of the Old University

THE DECADE OF the sixties and the early years of the seventies
witnessed significant changes in the size and makeup
of the university's student body, and this, in turn, brought
drastic revision of some time-honored attitudes, traditions,
and customs. The enrollment of hundreds of blacks and thousands
of women in the seventies could not fail to bring farreaching
breaks with the past. The Honor System was affected
in important ways, and this will be given detailed attention in
chapter 10. But the institution's faculty, academic standards,
and intellectual level were sharply upgraded, and the students
manifested a greatly augmented concern for the less fortunate
elements of society. The university's élitist image as a sort of
academic pleasure dome where partying and drinking had
been regarded—erroneously—by segments of the public as
almost the sole interest of the undergraduates underwent considerable
modification.

In the years immediately following World War II the prevailing
student attitude was "complete opposition to any
change whatever," Dean Raymond C. Bice wrote in the University
of Virginia Magazine for April 1961. Also, a popular divertissement
of the boys was shooting out the lights on the
Grounds with rifle fire as soon as they were installed, with the
result that "concertgoers found it necessary to carry flashlights
when attending events in Cabell Hall," Dean Bice recalled.
And John A. Carter, Jr., '53, a brilliant student at the
university and later a leading member of the Wake Forest faculty,

wrote from that campus: "Should the whole continent of
Europe be destroyed tomorrow by nuclear power, it would not
surprise me to read letters to the Cavalier Daily which discussed
the effect of that catastrophe upon the parking problem
and rushing regulations."

Despite such attitudes and the cantankerous behavior of the
postwar generation of university students, they "continued to
behave as gentlemen," Dean Bice wrote. "Generations of faculty
members have observed that University of Virginia students
are a joy to teach because of the consistently courteous
and cooperative attitude. On the other hand . . . the post-war
student seemed satisfied with a `C' grade, and the `never-stickyour-neck-out'
attitude was prevalent."

The "turning point for the University of Virginia student
body" came during the middle and late fifties, Bice wrote. It
was then that the students "began placing emphasis on excellence,
rather than the previous emphasis on being permitted
unlimited freedom." A general tightening up of academic
standards brought no serious complaints from the undergraduates.
Also, there was "an immense increase in interest in
the affairs of the university, the nation, and the world."

The Honors Program, begun in 1937, had developed remarkably
in the ensuing decades. It was "unique" and "the
bravest program, the most thorough-going of any in the nation,"
David C. Yalden-Thompson, the professor in charge,
and a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge, said in 1962.
The program called for rigorous study, a weekly conference
with the faculty tutor, auditing of lectures thought desirable
by the tutor, in addition to those regularly attended, preparation
of papers and often of a thesis in the final year, extensive
reading both during the session and the summers, and final
honors examinations. The average number of students taking
the course was six until after World War II, when the number
increased gradually. There were twenty-five in 1957 and
thirty-five two years later, seventeen of whom were candidates
for degrees with honors.

As for student customs, one of long standing had undergone
considerable modification, Prof. Robert K. Gooch said in
an address at the 1965 Finals. This was the practice of not
speaking to another individual to whom one had not been introduced.
And the custom of donning coats and ties was

89. Edward Younger, professor of history and dean of the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 1966-69.

gradually fading out, until in 1969-70 and especially in
1970-71 the wearing of these habiliments stopped. Many students
also wore no socks. When pictures were taken for the
annual, a number of the boys were inclined to dress up, but
under ordinary circumstances coats and ties were seldom
seen.

Prof. Jesse Beams noticed a young man outside his office
window who was so frightfully dirty and unkempt that he sent
his secretary to tell him that whereas "we no longer expect
students to wear coats and ties, we can't have them going
around looking as though they had just crawled from under
a freight car." He urged the youth to take a bath, put on a shirt
and shoes, and shape up. When the secretary returned from
delivering the directive, she said, "Do you know who that is?"
"No, who is it?" asked Beams. "That's your new assistant professor
of physics from Berkeley." At about this time Dean of
the Faculty Fredson T. Bowers admonished the professors
concerning their dress. "This is certainly no order," said his
memorandum, "but it is a strong suggestion that persons who
meet their classes in less formal dress than many of their students
have very little idea of good manners or of the proper
dignity that ought to accompany this profession." A senior faculty
member remarked that he and several of his friends had
stopped going to faculty meetings because so many of the
younger members were attending in their bare feet. Such capricious
behavior by a minority of professors was a temporary
phenomenon.

A fundamental difference between the university of this era
and that of four or five decades earlier was the lack of participation
in campus affairs by students in the professional
schools and members of the principal athletic teams. Before
World War II, class officers, editors of publications, and members
of ribbon societies and other social organizations were
often students in the law or medical schools, prominent athletes,
or both. But in later years this was no longer true, at
least not to anything like the same extent. The embryo lawyers
and doctors were kept so busy with their studies in that highly
competitive age that they had little time for anything else. Besides,
the lawyers were separated geographically in their new
home on the North Grounds. As for the athletes, notably the
football and basketball players, they underwent such intensive

training for so much of the year that they too were no longer
able to participate in other extracurricular activities.

However, some students, almost all of them in the College,
were more involved in university affairs than ever before. In
1967, for example, they had asked for and obtained membership
on many committees that formerly were composed entirely
of faculty and administration representatives. These included
the committees on fraternities, housing, the calendar,
university catalogues, awards, student activities and fees, registration,
and the sesquicentennial.

Stricter discipline was imposed on the students when B. F. D.
Runk took over as dean of the university in 1959. Upon him
devolved the duty of enforcing the new rules, and there were
not many dull moments for him during the ensuing years.
Inevitably he was the target of brickbats from students who
resented all efforts to control their misbehavior. In the words
of Corks and Curls, "It is Mr. Runk who is called to the station
at two in the morning to bail a student out, and it is he who
presents the students' complaints to the Board of Visitors. He
is in the ticklish position of trying to be friend and disciplinarian
at the same time." The dimensions of Dean Runk's problem
also may be glimpsed in the statement of Prof. T. Braxton
Woody concerning the "tradition of freedom" at the university:
"Those who cherish this tradition believe in the inalienable
right of every student to do as he pleases, to live where he
pleases, to take whatever courses he likes, to cut classes, to
drive a car and park it anywhere, to get drunk, to get a real
education, not merely to earn a diploma by passing a fixed
number of courses."

There was a frightful uproar, for example, when rules were
promulgated that forbade students from bringing whiskey
bottles, buckets of ice, sixpacks of beer and similar drinkables,
and their auxiliaries to the stadium at football games. This
regulation was intended to achieve compliance with the state
law that banned consumption of alcoholic beverages in public.
But the student reaction was predictable: "Virginia is becoming
just another prep school," "One more evidence of stateUism,"
and similar observations. "Get thee to a nunnery!" was
the admonition of one student to the dean. All this brought
various students to Runk's defense, one of whom wrote: "I,

for one, am fed up with his role as scapegoat. The number of
people who make him a scapegoat, thereby betraying their naiveté
and stupidity, is astonishing." The student added that the
problem was not Dean Runk but the university's skyrocketing
enrollment.

Two student riots in early November 1961 brought the university
much unfavorable publicity and resulted in a ruling by
President Shannon, concurred in unanimously by the Student
Council, that any student participating in a riot would be suspended
and that presence at a riot constituted participation.
About four hundred students took part in both disorders,
along fraternity row on Rugby Road. The first was said to
have been triggered by a reduction in the Thanksgiving holiday,
although the reduction had been announced a year previously.
Several nights later there was a more serious riot when
parties ended in the fraternity houses on Openings weekend.
Twenty-one persons were arrested, only six of them students.
This latter disturbance was blamed by the authorities primarily
on outsiders who had come to the fraternities' "open
parties." It was announced that no more open parties would
be held.

University Chief of Police Rea Houchens sounded an encouraging
note two years later when asked if the behavior of
the students had improved during his thirteen years as chief.
He said it certainly had. "Back in 1950," said Houchens, "we
had a bad bunch of GI's here. Now they [the students] are
much less rowdy."

The drug problem was growing more menacing in the late
sixties, at Virginia and on campuses throughout the land.
Dean Runk issued a warning against the use of "hallucinogenic
drugs, particularly marijuana and LSD," saying that
their possession or use by students "is considered an indication
that they are not constructively interested in academic
work in this university community, and may be given an immediate
opportunity to withdraw or be suspended." This
warning was repeated by D. Alan Williams when he succeeded
Runk in 1968. Later, in commenting on his retirement from
the deanship, Runk said concerning the demonstrations and
other disorders that were mounting near the end of the decade,
"I don't think I could have lived through the turmoil."

Smoking of marijuana, or grass, by the students was growing
rapidly in 1966-67, according to one student publication,
and eight fraternities were said to have had "internal problems
with marijuana" during the session. An unnamed seller
of the drug was quoted as estimating that "at least one thousand
students" were smoking it, many regularly and others
occasionally. He said he was "sick" over the fact that "speed"
and heroin were also being used by some students. The prevailing
view seemed to be, however, that drug use at the University
of Virginia was below that at many other institutions.
But by 1971 state narcotics agent Carl Deavers said the heroin
problem had "grown immensely in the last year, not only at
the university level but at the high school level as well." Charlottesville
was said to be the center of the drug traffic in central
Virginia, with the university grounds its "nucleus." Marijuana
was so much in evidence at concerts near the opening of the
1972-73 session that students were warned that the events
might be called off unless the smoking ceased. Several girls
left one concert for fear of getting high from the grass being
smoked around them.

The university community was shocked in the spring of
1973 when seven members of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity
were arrested on "flagrant" drug charges. It was Zeta Beta
Tau's second offense, since it had been put on probation two
years before on similar grounds. The university, in conjunction
with the fraternity's national headquarters, revoked recognition
of the local chapter until 1976. This prevented ZBT
from conducting any kind of rush or participating in any interfraternity
functions for three years. It changed its name to
"The Anchorage," and the spokesman said that although it
was not recognized as a social fraternity, it fully intended "to
campaign for and take in new members this year, just as will
all the fraternities."

A poll sponsored by the Student Council in 1973 indicated
that drug use at Virginia was below the national average.
Based on a 7 percent "representative sample," the returns
showed that 53.6 percent had used marijuana as against 67
percent in the nation; of those at Virginia almost 60 percent
said they used it only once a month or less. Use of hallucinogens
(LSD, peyote, mescaline, etc.) was 17.4 percent as against
27 percent nationally, with 95 percent of those at the university

using these hard drugs no more than once a month. As
for alcohol, 91.3 percent of the sample said they had drunk it
compared with 98 percent nationally. About 88 percent declared
that they had begun using it before they came to the
university.

The fraternities were the source of many of Dean Runk's
problems. He believed in them, provided they behaved themselves
reasonably well and kept their houses in decent order,
but their behavior and their living quarters often left much to
be desired. Contrasting conditions in the houses in the 1920s
and those prevailing some forty years later, Runk said that in
the twenties the boys "liked to keep them up and liked them
to look neat and orderly," and they were "entirely different
from the hovels which are there today."

Fraternity houses were sometimes almost wrecked by the
big weekend parties of the sixties and seventies. "It seems like
some students get the idea that party weekends are occasions
for the systematic demolition of furniture, walls, doors, etc.,"
the Cavalier Daily said in 1967. "The more frustrated members
of the [student] community exercise their frustration by reducing
windows and pianos to fragments." On the morning
after parties the terrain in front of the houses, notably along
Rugby Road and Madison Lane, was often littered with beer
cans by the hundreds, whiskey bottles, and other debris. The
student newspaper compared the university's fraternity houses
to those at VPI, "the school you find so uncouth." It said those
at VPI were "immaculate . . . the furniture like new, the walls
clean, the stairs and doors in excellent shape and the party
rooms veritable show places."

Early in the decade the dean put six fraternities on social
probation for celebrations held in connection with Bid Sunday.
Then Father William A. Stickle, Roman Catholic chaplain
at the university, said it was "a sin for a Catholic to join a
fraternity which follows morally objectionable practices." He
provided no specifics, and contented himself with references
to fraternity parties "or practices" and "immoral conversation."
Lee Farris, a Catholic layman and Charlottesville schoolteacher,
said in a letter to the Cavalier Daily that he considered
Father Stickle "woefully misinformed . . . if he is convinced
that serious sin of any kind takes place at the fraternity parties."

90. Charles C. Abbott, dean of the Graduate School of Business
Administration, 1954-72.

The Interfraternity Council pointed out that "each
fraternity must have a local adviser to both aid and guide it,
and a university-approved chaperone to insure proper conduct
at all social functions."

For each of the preceding ten years the scholastic average
for fraternity men had been below that for all male students.
This despite the rule that a pledge had to make a grade of at
least 2.0 out of a possible 4.0 to be initiated. Also, any house
with an overall average of less than 2.0 was put on social probation.
The IMPs gave a trophy for the highest academic average
achieved by a fraternity. At about this time Alderman
Library sent emissaries into the fraternity houses, with no
questions asked, looking for books that were missing from the
library's shelves. They returned with seven truckloads.

The session of 1965-66 brought improved conditions in
the Greek letter organizations. For the first time in a decade
their overall scholastic average was better than that for the
university's male population as a whole. As Corks and Curls expressed
it, the fraternities were "attempting to help themselves
through constructive action, constant evaluation and
continual activity." Improved service to the community was
stressed, as well as better scholastic performance. "New projects
. . . were added to our standard Children's Rehabilitation
Carnival, as all thirty-one houses gave their helping hands to
Charlottesville through orphan parties at Christmas, work for
the Recording for the Blind, collection drives for the Salvation
Army, and contributions to the Rescue Squad," said the university
annual. "The IFC aided the UGF throughout Charlottesville
and also lent support to underprivileged children in
`big-brother' campaigns."

Yet the fraternity system was heading into an era when it
would be under heavy attack and when its influence would
reach its lowest ebb in the university's history. Leading fraternity
men freely predicted during this period, when all aspects
of "the establishment" were being assailed, that the Greek letter
organizations might well be on the way out. Dean of Student
Affairs D. Alan Williams said that while he did not foresee
their "immediate demise," they would have to improve in
order to survive.

Addressing a specific phase of the problem, the University of
Virginia Magazine (November 1967), edited by Lawrence Siegel

and Robert Aaronson, referred to "the yet almost completely
unbroken agreement of non-integration between the
Jewish and Christian fraternity houses. . . . The great enforcers
of this . . . have been the fraternities themselves; undoubtedly
the Jewish fraternities have been the most adamant supporters
of the previous status quo, but the Christian houses
have not been far behind. This year's rush has been officially
declared open by the IFC. . . . We of the UVM hail the event."

Rules covering rushing were an almost constant subject of
controversy. The period when rushing was to take place and
the conditions that had to be observed were changing from
time to time. Various fraternities were charged with violating
the rules in an effort to gain an advantage over their rivals.
"Dirty rush has never been more rampant," said the student
newspaper in 1968, "and there is some evidence that the despicable
practice of extracting rushees' invitations from their
mailboxes has occurred again."

By the session of 1969-70, when the university and many
other institutions of higher learning were in turmoil over the
war in Vietnam, the fraternities were being sharply assailed in
Cavalier Daily editorials. Robert B. Cullen, the editor, referred
at the opening of the session to the fraternity system as "a
slowly dying anachronism" and advised first-year men, "Don't
rush, don't pledge." Yet Rod MacDonald, the paper's managing
editor, took an adversary position in a signed reply. He
suggested that the incoming student "weigh the real facts and
meet the people himself before deciding whether to join." The
student should not be "bullied into passivity by the ballyhoo
of opposition," he declared.

At the 1970 Easters fraternities at the university embarked
upon one of the most incredible forms of diversion in the annals
of education. Students and their dates created artificial
mudholes by hosing down areas in front of their fraternities
and in Mad Bowl behind Madison Hall, and slithered around
prone in the gunk. Large cans of grain alcohol mixed with
fruit juice added zest to the occasion as the boys and girls got
mud in their eyes, in their hair, down their necks, and all over
their clothes. The affair was pronounced such a howling success
that it became larger, noisier, and more frantic each succeeding
year, with electronically amplified rock bands on
Rugby Road providing an unbelievable din, passing motorists

splattered with mud, and kindred spirits arriving from up and
down the East Coast for what Playboy magazine described as
"the best party in America." After this had gone on for three
of four years, some ten thousand persons, many from distant
parts, were estimated to be participating. The university's
plumbing was being stopped up on a gigantic scale by students
who repaired to their dormitories to remove the mud. Eight
of the McCormick Road dormitories were turned into "mud
torrents" in April 1972, an irate Dean Alan Williams declared.
He pronounced it "the worst mess I've seen in my fifteen years
here." Showers were plugged with mud, entire floors flooded
and several dorm entrances "sealed with mud." On top of all
else, the dorms had just undergone a major renovation. Students
would be expected to clean the buildings and would be
assessed for any needed repairs, Williams said. By 1974 it was
becoming obvious that a halt would have to be called on these
stupefying collegiate gambols.

By that year it was also obvious that fraternities were staging
a comeback, not only at Virginia but in most institutions
throughout the land. In 1973 the largest number of first-year
pledges in the university's history, approximately 45 percent
of the entering class, were signed by the various lodges. Fraternities
were once more important in the university's undergraduate
affairs.

A number of pranks, most of them involving the Rotunda,
occurred during the Shannon years. The first was the flying
of a Confederate flag from the roof of the building on Feb.
26, 1961—the one hundredth anniversary of the flying of a
similar flag from the Rotunda dome on the eve of the Civil
War. Seven students apparently clambered up after midnight,
despite high winds, and flung the banner to the breeze, where
passersby saw it next morning. The Rotunda dome was again
in the spotlight on May 5, 1965, when persons on the Lawn
noted a calf lying tied on the roof. Investigation showed that
students had somehow gotten the animal up there in the
middle of the night, after sawing through the latch designed
to prevent such monkeyshines. The young Angus steer was
given a tranquilizer and brought down. It died a few hours
later from unknown causes. The episode got into the press,
worldwide, and an avalanche of protesting letters arrived at
the president's office from animal lovers. The students who

were responsible doubtless were much grieved over the young
steer's unexpected demise.

The Rotunda clock came in for some undergraduate attention
in 1967 and again in 1971. In the former years, the countenance
of Mickey Mouse suddenly shone forth from its face
on the weekend of the University of North Carolina football
game, and in the spring of 1971 Vice-President Spiro Agnew
peered forth from the same spot. Nobody could ascertain who
was responsible for these hazardous escapades.

What could have been a much more serious prank occurred
on Saturday evening of the Easters weekend in 1968 when
parties unknown toppled the statue of Thomas Jefferson from
its pedestal in front of the Rotunda. It was found lying on its
head in the grass. Fortunately, the bronze figure was not damaged.
The halyards on the nearby flagpole also had been cut.

The fad for "streaking," that is, running about in public
with few or no clothes on, swept the country's educational institutions
in 1974, and the University of Virginia was no exception.
Several male students were streaking about the
Grounds on Feb. 20, despite the wintry atmosphere. One, clad
only in a Batman's cape, sprinted across the Lawn, while another
raced through Alderman Library wearing a motorcycle
helmet and nothing else. Two days later dozens of streakers,
including several coeds, appeared, especially in the McCormick
Road dormitory area. A number of male students
were arrested on Feb. 25 for displaying unwonted portions of
their epidermis in public.

Homosexual students at the university began coming into
the open in 1972. On May 12 of that year the Cavalier Daily
devoted two pages to the subject and appeared not unsympathetic
to this once-despised lifestyle. The Gay Student Union
(GSU) had been formed shortly before, with some thirty
members, and had adopted a written constitution "formalizing
their commitment to the liberation of homosexuals at the
university." "As many as 40 gays came to a GSU private party
in the dorms last month," said one article. In the following fall
the Student Union voted 12 to 9 in favor of allocating $45 to
the Gay Student Union, but the Board of Visitors, on recommendation
of President Shannon, vetoed the plan. The board
held that "the GSU cultivates and advocates a style of sexual
life," and "this is a private and personal matter which has no

relationship to the educational purposes of the university. . . .
The board has no power to authorize a disbursement of funds
unrelated to the purposes of the university." The Cavalier Daily
assailed Shannon and the board for their decision.

Although barriers to the enrollment of black students had
been breached in the middle fifties, only a few had matriculated
a decade later. Wesley Harris entered the Engineering
School in 1960, and was graduated with honors in 1964. He
was the first black student to be given a room on the Lawn.
Harris endured many "venomous racial slurs" during his four
years, according to Bryan Kay's "History of Desegregation at
the University of Virginia: 1950-1969." The first black professor,
Nathan Johnson, a former school superintendent in
southside Virginia, joined the School of Education faculty in
1967. In the middle and late sixties there was much agitation
among certain elements of the faculty and students for an end
to what was termed "racism" in the institution. Some three
hundred paraded down the Lawn in the rain in a "sympathy
for Selma" demonstration, exhibiting solidarity with the civil
rights leaders who were under heavy fire in Selma, Ala.

As the end of the decade neared and agitation of various
kinds swept the Grounds, the race question was much to the
force. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People claimed that the university's Student Aid Foundation
was discriminating against black athletes, but President
Shannon replied that "the established policy of the university
is not to discriminate against any persons by reason of their
race, color, religion or national origin." Difficulty was being
experienced in getting blacks of all kinds, whether athletes or
not. The first black athlete was enrolled from Lane High
School in Charlottesville for the session of 1967-68, but others
were slow in coming. The university demanded high academic
performance, and some blacks felt that there were few
opportunities for social diversion and contacts in and near
Charlottesville.

President Shannon resigned from the Farmington Country
Club because it did not admit blacks as members. Explaining
his action later, he said: "I felt we just couldn't possibly . . . be
in good faith if we were using that facility and reimbursing
people for those expenses." Comptroller Vincent Shea accordingly

91. D. Alan Williams, vice-president
for student affairs, 1970-73.

[ILLUSTRATION]

92. Lawrence R. Quarles, dean of
engineering and applied science,
1955-73.

sent each department head a written notice that university
funds could not be used for entertainment at any segregated
facility. Some alumni criticized the decision, but the
Board of Visitors backed it as did the Student Council and
students in other leadership positions. As early as 1966 the
council, by a 10-4 vote, had declared off limits every local
business that refused to serve anyone for racial reasons. The
Cavalier Daily attacked the action, saying it was taken with
seven council members absent and that the stand was "inconsistent
with freedom of the individual and freedom of choice."
But the following year the Student Council was threatening to
request copies of the various fraternity constitutions with a
view to determining whether they contained racially discriminatory
clauses. In 1968 it voted unanimously that all university
organizations should be prohibited from using segregated
facilities. By then the council had one black member, elected
by the student body.

The Cavalier Daily, edited by Charles C. Calhoun, a future
Rhodes Scholar, was now a militant advocate of better attitudes
toward the treatment of blacks, but it denied that the
university was "racist." Richard B. Gwathmey, Jr., who succeeded
Calhoun as editor, was still more militant. "The University
of Virginia, wallowing in its whiteness, like a hippopotamus
in the mud, took the first step toward lumbering out of
that whiteness when it hired a black admissions officer last
month," Gwathmey wrote in 1969. The paper demanded that
any advertisements placed in its columns seeking housing for
students' dates be accompanied by a signed agreement not to
discriminate on racial grounds. Student Council passed a
unanimous resolution urging university personnel to boycott
barber and beauty shops that refused to accept black patrons.
It also took a stand against racial discrimination in any student
organization officially recognized by the council.

The university reacted to the murder of Martin Luther
King, Jr., in early April 1968 by flying the Rotunda flag at half
mast, taking part in the march to services in Zion Baptist
Church, and holding services of its own in Cabell Hall on the
"national day of mourning," with President Shannon and
Dean Robert J. Harris as speakers. During King's funeral,
classes at the university were made optional for both faculty
and students.

Mrs. Elizabeth Johnson, a black on leave from the Virginia
Union University faculty, was appointed full-time assistant
dean of admissions, succeeding Fred T. Stokes, who had been
serving only part-time. She would travel over the state talking
with black high school seniors in the hope of doubling the
university's Negro enrollment. Two blacks, John Thomas of
Norfolk and George Taylor of Hampton, were appointed student
assistant recruiters who would also travel in search of
matriculates.

On Founder's Day 1969 the relatively small group of students
who had been agitating for some time, albeit in orderly
fashion, against what they termed "racism" at the university,
staged a rally at the Rotunda. They urged those present to
write their legislators in criticism of university practices. Having
held their rally they moved to Cabell Hall for the
Founder's Day ceremonies. On the program was a special humanitarian
award of the Seven Society for promoting racial
harmony in the community. The agitators against "racism" apparently
assumed that the recipient would be "just another
racist," and they stamped out of the hall as President Shannon
rose to make known the name of the winner. They were left
looking decidedly sheepish when they found later that the
winner was the Reverend Henry B. Mitchell, the black rector
of Charlottesville's mostly black Trinity Episcopal church.

As early as the session of 1966-67, President Shannon had
issued a directive that where there was a black and a white
applicant for a faculty or staff position and qualifications of
the two were approximately equal, the black should be employed.
Prof. William A. Elwood of the English Department,
who was named subsequently an assistant to Shannon as coordinator
for programs to further equal opportunity, said that
in 1967-69 "there was quite a turnabout in student opinion
here. . . . Students recognized the need to actively seek blacks
and said so." In 1969 Shannon appointed a committee of both
faculty and students, headed by William Rotch, to study the
problem of increasing black enrollment and make recommendations.
It reported in August of that year and urged appointment
of a dean who would serve as coordinator of all activities
relative to recruitment and retention of black students and
faculty" and creation of "a new administrative position of significance
responsible for generating and coordinating the development

of a more broadly based student body." President
Shannon "was able himself to administratively implement
about 90 percent of the recommendations," said Vice-President
and Provost David Shannon. He stressed the difficulties
in getting qualified blacks for this and other university programs
and pointed out that of all the Ph.D.'s in the United
States, only 1.3 percent were black. "We have to pay them
more than a white person with similar qualifications, simply
because of the market," David Shannon said.

Two courses dealing with the history of the Negro in
America were added to the curriculum at about this time, with
Edgar Toppin of Virginia State as the instructor. Some seventy-five
students showed up for the first lecture, but only
eight or ten were black. An interdisciplinary course in AfroAmerican
studies, to be conducted in part, by visiting black
lecturers, was offered as the first portion of a new AfroAmerican
studies program. Paul M. Gaston, associate professor
of history, was the director. The student Committee on
Fraternities passed a resolution affirming the university's
stand against racial discrimination in the fraternity system.
Among the 578 students pledged on Bid Sunday in October
1969, five were black. The Negroes had no fraternities of their
own, but several of their fraternities and sororities would soon
establish chapters at the university. These fraternities were
"service oriented," they emphasized, and were not primarily
social organizations. Their "major goal," they said, was "to
serve the university and the surrounding community, aiding
them through such projects as working for the March of
Dimes, taking blood pressure readings, holding blood drives
and sponsoring Boy Scout troops." These fraternities and sororities
at the university had no chapter houses and were in
need of a suitable place to hold meetings.

Summer programs to aid disadvantaged high school juniors
and seniors in preparing for college were launched at the university
in 1969. Also, there was a special institute for minority
students who had graduated from college and wished to attend
law school. High school students were given an opportunity
in the summer, as part of the Upward Bound program,
to learn more about college life and what might be expected
of them and to undergird their academic performance.
Would-be law students were given six weeks of intensive orientation

designed to improve their analytical and verbal abilities
and also aid them in deciding whether, after all, they
wanted to attend law school. The institute was one of ten in
the country held under the auspices of the Council on Legal
Education.

Recruiting efforts at Virginia were paying off as total black
enrollment in the fall of 1970 was 236, compared with 102 the
year before, or almost 2.2 percent of the student body as
against 1.3 percent. By the fall of 1971 the figure had been
increased to 344. The university was praised by the National
Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges for
using black students as recruiters.

An important advance for the minority group came when
James R. Roebuck, Jr., of Philadelphia, a black student in the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, was elected president
of the Student Council. Two years later Linda Howard, a black
from Petersburg, was chosen president of the Law School.
There were 31 Negroes in that school out of a total enrollment
of 911.

Black Culture Week was being held annually, under the auspices
of the University Union and Black Students for Freedom.
There were exhibits, lectures, films, and discussions, all
dealing with the general theme of black culture's influence in
the United States. Many whites attended. Black History Week
was held simultaneously. The Students for Freedom changed
their name to the Black Students Alliance and provided a variety
of services, including advising first-year black students
on how to study and to cope with academic problems, acquainting
undergraduates with members of the Charlottesville
community, and providing dances, cookouts, and theater
trips. The Muntu Fine Arts Guild, which began as the Muntu
Drama Guild, and included a dance group, was organized.
Black Voices of the University of Virginia, an organization of
gospel singers, gave renditions in and near Charlottesville.

Despite the foregoing, there were vehement protestations
from students of both races that there was no equality of treatment.
Tom Collier, white president of the Student Council,
declared in 1971 to a protest meeting on the Lawn that "we
live with racism every day at this university." Willie Ivey of the
Black Students Council read a list of grievances. He called a
meeting of his organization in Newcomb Hall to discuss these

problems and ousted two white students who sought to attend.

An Equal Opportunity Counseling Program was set up in
the summer of 1973, with Paul Saunier, Jr., who had been
named Equal Opportunity Administrator, and the Student
Council cooperating. Larry Sabato, president of the Student
Council, was a leader in establishing the program. By that fall
four national black fraternities and one sorority had chapters
on the Grounds, and the black enrollment had risen to over
five hundred. Numerous members of that race had been
added to the university faculty and staff.

The Student Council and Cavalier Daily began a crusade in
1974 intended to persuade members of the university community
to resign from the Farmington Country Club, since it
had no black members. "Our worst suspicions have been confirmed,"
said the student newspaper, edited by Tim Wheeler.
"Farmington Country Club is a racist, all-white, discriminatory
organization." It rapped university administrators who
belonged to the club and praised President Shannon for resigning
some years before. The paper published an entire
page of interviews supporting its position. It called on Frank
L. Hereford, Jr., who had just been elected president of the
university as successor to Shannon, to resign from the club.
He replied that he intended to remain as a member and to
work within the organization for a change in admission policies.
The Cavalier Daily praised the IMP Society, saying that "it
has in some ways taken the lead," by electing to its membership
"students who may have been left out of other groups,
especially women and blacks."

Black students in 1974 were taking their places more and
more as integral parts of the university scene. They were
being elected to high office by the white students and chosen
as members of the honor societies and ribbon societies, not to
mention IMP and Z. A few were elected to the predominantly
white fraternities, but many preferred to join their own organizations.
In athletics they were making a significant contribution.
All in all, despite openly expressed dissatisfaction by
some black matriculates, integration was proceeding at the
University of Virginia, and to a degree that would have been
unthinkable a few decades earlier.

93. Irby B. Cauthen, Jr., professor of English and dean of the
College, 1962-.

Women students in the middle sixties were limited principally
to the graduate and professional schools, but they could enter
certain undergraduate schools if they had had two years of
college work elsewhere. Two were elected to the Student
Council in 1966. More and more discussion was being heard
concerning the desirability of admitting them to all schools on
the same basis as men.

Attention at that time was focused primarily on requests
from male students for permission to have their dates visit
them in the dormitories, within certain specified hours. The
Student Council voted unanimously in 1964 in favor or requesting
permission for such visitations in the Alderman Road
and Monroe Hill (graduate) dormitories. It was noted that few
of the students in the Alderman Road dorms belonged to fraternities
or had cars and that consequently they had only limited
facilities for entertaining young ladies. Modest hours for
visitations were suggested—Saturdays from 11 A.M. to 9 P.M.
and Sundays from 11 A.M. to 7 P.M on Alderman Road, and
11 A.M. to midnight both days on Monroe Hill. Dean Runk
turned down the request. "I am opposed to unsupervised visiting
of females in male dormitories at any time," he said.
"Likewise, I am opposed to males visiting in females' dormitories.
I do not believe this is in accord with the sound educational
philosophy and progress of the university." He added
that he also did not think "the counselor system should be
burdened with the problem of enforcement." Years before, in
the Darden administration, a similar request had been turned
down. In 1966 President Shannon rejected another request
that girls be permitted to visit in the Alderman dorms. These
rejections accorded with prevailing opinion at the time, although
attitudes appeared to be shifting and in a few years
would be completely reversed.

Mary E. Whitney, assistant to the dean of women at Northwestern
University, was appointed dean of women at Virginia
in 1967, succeeding the much admired Roberta H. Gwathmey,
who retired after serving for a third of a century in that position.
When women were admitted in 1970 on the same basis
as men, the position of dean of women was abolished.

The male contingent, which some years before had deplored
the spectacle of coeds appearing in shorts, now deplored
their wearing slacks. "We find it quite appalling," said

the Cavalier Daily, "that women students are beginning to wear
slacks to classes. . . . Most girls look rotten in slacks; they (the
pants, not the girls) reveal quite a bit which under a skirt or
dress might best be left to the male imagination. . . . They
hardly seem proper attire for young ladies attending classes. . . .
Ladies, let the men wear the pants around here, please." A few
months later the paper repeated what it had said many times
before, that it looked "with horror" upon the prospect of a
"large-scale female invasion, other than for the purposes of a
party weekend, of these traditionally male Grounds."

During the season of 1967-68, it was decided by the Board
of Visitors and the president that the boys could have girl visitors
during specified weekend hours in the living areas of upperclassmen's
dormitories and in rooms on the Lawn and
Ranges. This decision was the result of a year-long study by a
faculty-student committee. Student committees were appointed
to supervise enforcement of the new regulations. The
first visitation by girls in the dorms occurred on the football
weekend of Sept. 29-Oct. 1, without untoward incidents. In
the spring of 1969 the rules were liberalized again to allow
first-year men to have girls visit in their rooms on Fridays,
Saturdays, and Sundays at specified hours. Another novelty
of that year was the appearance of female cheerleaders at
football games.

Rules for visitations in the dormitories between members of
the opposite sex were modified in a few years to allow this
around the clock. One of the principal advocates of lowering
the barriers was the Reverend Charles Perry, assistant rector
of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, who said in a sermon in 1967:
"If you wish to raise up men who will conduct themselves with
honor, give them the privilege of entertaining women in their
dorms. A community which limits assignations to automobiles,
motels, and apartments is no more moral for it. If you wish to
raise up men of honor, remind them that honoring a woman
is far more important than honoring an exam pledge or the
rules of a card game, and then let them have the freedom to
exercise that honor." The foregoing strange reasoning may
have had an impact on opinion in the university, although
there was a nationwide trend at the time in favor of allowing
male and female students to live together in university dormitories,
and this would doubtless have happened at Virginia

in any event. The newly adopted practices extended on a
more informal basis to the fraternity houses, where girls had
no hesitation about partying upstairs as well as down. The
contrast between the rules and conventions of 1970 and 1920
could not have been more glaring.

Discussion of the desirability of admitting women to the College
on an equal basis with men had reached such dimensions
in 1967 that the Board of Visitors accepted President Shannon's
recommendation that a study be made of the "need for
admission of women to the College of Arts and Sciences."
Shannon appointed a committee from the faculty, headed by
Prof. T. Braxton Woody, to make the study. An important factor
behind the scenes was realization that if the university
didn't admit the ladies voluntarily, the courts in all likelihood
would order it to do so. Such was the opinion of Rector Frank
W. Rogers, a prominent Roanoke Lawyer, and others.

However, opposition to the move at the university had diminished
steadily over the years. The committee circulated all
faculty members of professorial rank, and those who replied
were 15 to 1 in favor. Members of the leading student honor
societies were about evenly divided. A letter to the forty thousand
alumni brought only ninety-eight replies, of whom twothirds
were opposed. After an eighteen months' study, the
seven-member Woody Committee recommended in favor of
the ladies with only one dissent, that of History Prof. Julian
Bishko. The final conclusions of the six other members were
that the existing arrangement "unfairly discriminates against
women. . . . The quality of academic life at Charlottesville
would be strengthened by coeducation. . . . The social life of
students of both sexes . . . would be improved, and coeducation
would better prepare the students for the relationships of
later years." The committee found that the University of Virginia
was "the only state university in the nation which, by
closing its main-campus college to women, forces them to attend
a separate, autonomous college sixty-five miles away
from the parent institution."

An aspect of the problem that gave the committee much
concern was the effect admission of women might have on the
Honor System. Its concern was especially acute, since the
Honor Committee had concluded, after an investigation, that

"coeducation will hurt the Honor System, and thus should not
be recommended." The Honor Committee based this opinion
to a large degree on the findings of William J. Bowers of Columbia
University in his Student Dishonesty and Its Control in College
(Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University,
1964). Terming this work "generally recognized as the most
comprehensive and authoritative . . . of its kind," the committee
pointed to Bowers's conclusion that "an honor system at a
coed school is slightly less than half as effective as an honor
system at an all-male school." It conceded that its own correspondence
with honor committee chairmen at thirty colleges
and universities brought inconclusive results. Some thought
coeducation would not harm the Honor System at Virginia,
others thought just the opposite, and still others felt that it
would have no effect.

Although the Woody Committee was disturbed by the conclusions
of the Honor Committee, it believed that coeducation
would not, in all likelihood, harm the Honor System. It was
impressed by the fact that at Princeton, which has an excellent
honor system extending to all academic matters, 85 percent of
more than two thousand undergraduates responding to a
questionnaire said they did not think the system would be affected
by coeducation, while 7 percent felt that it would be
strengthened. Spokesmen for the University of Virginia
Honor Committee conceded that "they saw no detriment to
the effectiveness of the Honor System in the present enrollment
of some 1,000 women in the university."

The Woody Committee's report was made in November
1968, and the Board of Visitors directed President Shannon
to prepare a plan for the gradual admission of women. As one
evidence of changing opinion, the Cavalier Daily commented
that the committee's conclusions "doubtless proved gratifying
to most students (and faculty)." By the following fall the newspaper
was strongly favoring the committee's recommendations.

But before the administration could put the plan even partially
into effect, a suit was brought in federal court designed
to force the immediate admission of women on a wholesale
scale. This despite the fact that rooming facilities, toilet facilities,
and many other accommodations could not be made
available to that many female students within a few weeks or

months. Fortunately, the three-judge U.S. Circuit Court allowed
two years for full compliance—much less than was felt
to be wise by the university authorities, but greatly preferable
to forced compliance at once, as the suit demanded. The administration
agreed to admit 450 women to the College in
September 1970 and 550 more the following September, with
open admission thereafter.

The hundreds of girls who entered in 1970 seemed to want
to outdo the boys in the slovenliness of their dress. As was the
prevailing custom during that period throughout the United
States, both groups garbed themselves in patched, faded,
frayed blue jeans. The boys wore long, unkempt hair and
beat-up shoes. Both groups began dressing more neatly as the
years passed, but in 1970 the emphasis was on the sloppiest
conceivable attire.

Barriers to women in various honor societies and social organizations
around the Grounds were not long in coming
down. The Ravens, IMPs, and Tilkas soon took them in, as
did the Air Force ROTC. The Jefferson Literary Society maintained
its male chauvinist stance until 1972, when the threat
of a suit caused it to relent. Omicron Delta Kappa leadership
society began electing women in 1974. Eli Banana, the last
holdout of importance, had not admitted any by that year and
gave no evidence of planning to do so in the future. The privilege
of living on the Lawn and Ranges was accorded to leading
women students in the early seventies.

With women admitted to the university on the same basis as
men, there was the problem of how to arrange for their housing
in the dormitories. Some dormitories were set apart exclusively
for women, some for men, and the remainder were
mixed. Where the two sexes were placed in the same building,
they were on different floors, and the women had a good deal
of control over who came and went. Sexual relations took
place in the dormitories between male and female students,
especially between those who were "going steady," but probably
not to the extent that some imagined. Many of the girls
objected to promiscuity and did what they could to prevent it.
President Shannon felt that students should have the choice
of living in mixed dormitories or in those reserved for a single
sex, and he saw to it that they had the opportunity to choose.
Nationwide changes in mores concerning relations between

94. Joseph N. Bosserman, dean of architecture, 1966-.

the sexes had brought about a brand-new situation at Virginia
and at nearly all other colleges and universities.

Applications from women for entrance to the university increased
150 percent in 1971 over those for the preceding year.
About twenty-five hundred sought to enter the College compared
with 970 the year before. Applications from out of state
nearly trebled. The number of women who were full-time faculty
members rose to 92 for the session of 1971-72, or nearly
10 percent of the whole. They were mainly in the College,
Graduate School, Medical School, and School of Nursing. The
number increased to 131 the following session and to 155 the
session after that, or about one-eighth of the full-time faculty.
There were then over one hundred women on the faculty fulltime,
in addition to 47 in the School of Nursing. A still greater
increase in the part-time women faculty members was shown.

By 1972 it was being said that nearly everybody thought
complete coeducation was a good thing. Malcolm Scully, '63,
wrote after a visit of several days to the university: "In conversation
with students and faculty members and administrators—old
and new—I found no one who had serious doubts
about the move to coeducation. They all agreed that women
had improved the university's intellectual, cultural, and social
atmosphere." The following year Frank Hereford said the admission
of women was "a change that was very much for the
better. . . . It really hasn't been as dramatic as many alumni
who have been away a good many years may think." A disturbing
aspect was the increase in rapes. There were twelve rapes
or attempted rapes on or near the Grounds in 1972 as compared
with seven the previous year. These events led the university
to establish an escort system for women returning to
their lodgings late at night. A more gratifying result of coeducation
was seen in the fact that the male students were under
less temptation to "roll" (to drive down the road) to nearby
girls' colleges. These expeditions were not only distracting
and time consuming but risky in that all too often the boys
drank too much, and some were involved in fatal automobile
crashes.

At the end of the two-year transition period, women constituted
39 percent of the entering class, and the College was 45
percent female. Two years after that, at the session of 1974-75
the first-year class of 2,317 was 42 percent female. Total enrollment

in the university was 14,200, with two-thirds of the
first-year class Virginians and 80 percent from the public
schools.

Entry of women into the university on the same basis as men
has been the most important development in the history of
the institution since its early years. That, and acceptance of
blacks, another event of the most far-reaching significance,
has changed Mr. Jefferson's university so drastically that a
graduate of, say, 1920 or even 1960 finds the university to be
a greatly altered institution. Many of its basic virtues remain,
but its outward manifestations are often in direct contrast to
those of earlier days.

Among the areas in which the students of today have shown
marked improvement is that of community service. The radical
tendencies of the 1969-70 era have been transmuted into
a remarkable solicitude for the disadvantaged. In direct contrast
to the almost total lack of social concern on the part of
earlier student generations, at Virginia and almost everywhere
else, many of today's undergraduates are anxious to aid
the underprivileged.

Between 1969 and 1973 more than one thousand students
at the university were involved in projects of this type, under
the sponsorship of what was then Madison Hall. They devoted
several hours each week to this unselfish activity. Operation
SCRUB was created in 1969 to aid victims of hurricane Camille,
which devastated nearby Nelson County and adjacent
regions. After the hurricane victims had been aided, the project
was expanded in order to help meet local housing needs.
Operation SCRUB received a citation from the National Center
for Voluntary Action in Washington, which termed it the
best project of its type in the United States.

The original Madison Hall, long the home of the YMCA,
underwent a complete transformation when it was sold to the
university in 1971, along with Mad Bowl, for $725,000. The
charter of the university "Y" was revised to sever connection
with the International YMCA. Madison Hall's usefulness, as
the home of the Student Union, had declined steadily after
the opening of Newcomb Hall, which provided facilities formerly
available at Madison Hall and a great deal more. It was
accordingly decided to redirect the "Y's" resources, so the Office

of Volunteer Community Service was established, with
headquarters in another Madison Hall on Lewis Mountain
Road across from Memorial Gymnasium. This institution provided
Operation SCRUB, Big Brother-Big Sister programs,
tutoring, companionship therapy, medical services, consumer
information and professional services, action line, and youth
recreation. In recognition of its extraordinary contributions
over the years, the Seven Society gave Madison Hall its Organization
Award for 1971.

Then there was the role of an agency called the University
Year for Action, launched in 1973, with offices in Peabody
Hall, which offered participants an opportunity to obtain
academic credit. On its agenda were programs dealing with
mental health and retardation, community and children's
education, counseling in cases referred to the police, and improvement
of foster care and day care.

In addition to all this, university law students belonging to
the Virginia Legislative Research Service worked on proposed
legislation for members of the General Assembly, while classmates
did legal and environmental research on ecological
problems. Furthermore, about two hundred fifty students
from the Graduate School of Business Administration and the
Schools of Commerce and Law provided free assistance each
year to area residents in preparing their tax returns. Students
in Alpha Phi Omega, a national service fraternity for undergraduates,
installed playground equipment at a rural Virginia
school and built a riding ring for Holiday Trails, a unique
camp for handicapped children. Some seventeen hundred
students participated regularly in service activities through
the Interfraternity Council and the fraternity houses. Twentytwo
houses formed basketball teams of Charlottesville boys,
ten to twelve years old, and set up a basketball league. Preparations
were being made at the end of 1974 to transfer headquarters
for student volunteers from Madison Hall to newly
constructed Madison House at 170 Rugby Road, an independent
nonprofit corporation supported by private and public
funds. Madison House was not linked officially with the university
but would draw nearly all of its volunteers from the
university community.

The foregoing is only a partial list of the community and
humanitarian activities in which University of Virginia students

have engaged in recent years. It should be noted that
these unselfish manifestations are by no means unique to the
university. A Gallup Poll in 1974 found that approximately
half of all college students had participated to some degree in
volunteer social work, with about four hundred thousand on
seventeen hundred campuses contributing their time on a
regular basis.

A change in the traditional Finals exercises on the Lawn was
instituted in 1962. The president conferred all degrees there,
but graduates, except those in the College, went later to separate
ceremonies for their respective schools and were given
their diplomas. In past years graduates had sometimes waited
for hours in the hot sun to get their sheepskins, whereas now
the exercises were much briefer, and were described as "more
dignified and meaningful." The Student Council evidently
disagreed, since it had voted 16 to 1 in April not to change the
format of the exercises. The Council was overruled.

The university's College Bowl team won five straight contests
in 1963 over national television with that number of institutions
and received a $9,000 scholarship, while each of the
team members was given a $500 scholarship for graduate
studies. Prof. T. Graham Hereford, the coach, was awarded
$500 for postdoctoral work. Students announced that they
would raise funds to supplement the $9,000 fund. Members
of the winning team, the ninth from the entire country up to
that time to remain undefeated in the College Bowl, were Michael
Bennett, captain; Talmadge Wyatt, Jr.,; Richard Greer;
and John Mortensen. Virginia defeated four of the five institutions
by wide margins, namely, Oregon State, Ohio University,
Drake University, and Washington State. It barely nosed
out the University of Maine. Graham Hereford, who coached
the team, was a University of Virginia Ph.D. who was associate
professor of English in the School of Engineering and assistant
to the dean of the school. Regarded as a dedicated and
effective teacher of English, he also did an exceptional job
with the College Bowl team.

University debaters were making excellent records during
these years. The team tied for second place in competition
with thirty other schools at the St. Joseph's College debate
tournament at Philadelphia in 1961. Among teams they defeated

were those from Dartmouth and Carnegie Tech. The
following year debaters from the university won first place
against thirteen schools in the Alleman Interstate Novice Debate
Tournament at Louisville, and they also won the Atlantic
Coast Conference Debate Tournament at Duke University. In
1963 the debaters from Charlottesville were victorious for the
first time in sixteen years in the District VII eliminations for
the National Debate Championship at Wilkes-Barre, Pa. The
top record in the Ford Motor Co. Invitational at Oberlin,
Ohio, in 1971 was made by Jim Poe and Greg Bittner of the
university, in competition with eighty-eight of the ablest debaters
on the East Coast. Other highly creditable records were
made during these years by the university's representatives.

Considerable controversy arose in 1963 when the John Randolph
Society at the university, a conservative student organization,
invited Gus Hall, secretary of the Communist party
U.S.A., and George Lincoln Rockwell, commander of the
American Nazi party, to speak on the Grounds. President
Shannon and the Board of Visitors agreed that the invitations
were ill-advised but took the position that since they had been
issued the programs should proceed, provided assurances
were given that order and decorum would prevail. Both
speakers addressed capacity audiences in Cabell Hall. A few
catcalls and hisses were heard, but there was no disorder. The
Board of Visitors admonished all student organizations "in
the future to exercise an increased sense of responsibility toward
the impact of their actions on the welfare of the University."

Martin Luther King, Jr., was heard by a large audience in
Cabell Hall the following month, under auspices of the Virginia
Society of Human Relations. He said the special objective
at the time was to double Negro registration in the South,
and added that integration was proceeding much too slowly.
There was no disorder of any kind.

Coveted scholarships were being awarded to outstanding secondary
school seniors both inside and outside the state. The
University Regional and Honor Scholarships had been established
in 1952 in tribute to Philip Francis duPont, whose
$6,000,000 bequest in 1928 had approximately doubled by

95. W. Dexter Whitehead, director of the Center for Advanced
Studies, 1965-, and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and
Sciences, 1969-.

and was providing about $240,000 annually in scholarship
funds. In a more or less typical year, 1962, Regional Scholarships
were awarded to twenty-one outstanding high school
seniors, fifteen of them from Virginia. Another eighteen were
granted Honor Scholarships, the next category of awards,
while regular one-year scholarships went to twenty-eight
promising high school seniors.

A still more coveted series of merit scholarships was established
in 1963 by concerned alumni. Known as the University
Honor Awards, they were offered annually to a select group
of secondary school seniors. Counted among the thirty-five
Honor Award holders, representing four classes enrolled in
the 1966-67 session, were numerous Echols Scholars, staff
members of the three major student publications, varsity lettermen,
honorary society members, a number of participants
in the university's counseling program, and past and present
Honor Committee chairmen. The awards carried an annual
stipend of $1,000 for Virginians and $1,500 for non-Virginians,
without regard to financial need, and were renewable for
each of a student's four years, provided the recipient maintained
a dean's list average and participated in other phases of
university life.

Since the cost of attending the university was said to be considerably
higher than for most state universities, the need for
scholarships was especially great. A survey by the student
newspaper in 1968 found that the average undergraduate at
the University of Virginia paid $1,704 per year for tuition,
fees, room, and board, whereas the approximate cost at other
state universities was $1,160. The survey at the university included
the graduate and professional schools, whereas the paper
did not know whether the figure for other state universities,
compiled by the National Association of State Universities
and Land Grant Colleges and Universities, included them.

Students in need of financial assistance could often find it
through the Student Aid and Placement Service, with offices
in Minor Hall. Directed since 1959 by Frank A. Williar, with
Robert Canevari as his assistant, it provided scholarships,
loans, and part-time employment. A counseling service also
was part of the plan. Alumni in need of new positions found
the service helpful.

Guidance of a different type was provided by the university's
Counseling Center, directed by Earl Glosser, and established
in 1967. Four full-time counseling psychologists and
five half-time counseling interns were providing the service.
Advice was furnished to students seeking to cope more effectively
with themselves and their surroundings, Glosser explained.
Once the student had achieved greater self-understanding,
he or she was referred to the Aid and Placement
Service for any additional guidance.

The number of students in the College who were on the
dean's list had risen steadily, with the result that in 1972-73
the figure was over 50 percent. This was, in part, a reflection
of higher and higher standards for entrance, but the rise was
related to the fact that grading throughout the United States
had become more lenient. Students at Virginia from the state's
public schools were getting the best grades of any secondary
school group, a survey for the period 1958-64 showed. Next
came graduates of out-of-state public schools, with Virginia
private schools coming in third and out-of-state private
schools fourth.

Greater intellectual, cultural, and social exchange between
faculty and students was the aim of the Serpentine Society,
formed during the 1961-62 session by a group of upperclassmen
who were members of St. Paul's Episcopal Church. It expanded
rapidly, and professors and students of various religious
backgrounds were brought in. The society met informally
in the homes of faculty members for "social seminars"—pleasant
evenings for animated discussions of current topics, usually
led by a specialist in some particular field. Bedford Moore
of the School of Engineering's English faculty was faculty adviser.

The Society of the Purple Shadows, a secret organization
which, in the words of Marvin Garrette in the Richmond
Times-Dispatch, "borrowed several of the Sevens' traditions,"
was formed in 1963. Like the Seven Society it had a page in
Corks and Curls, but no list of members. There was no further
information concerning it or its activities.

Another organization formed at about this time was the Society
of the Cornish Game Hen. It recognized fraternity and
nonfraternity men "who have given outstanding service but

who," in the words of the Cavalier Daily, "have not been recognized
by the other honorary societies because their participation
was in lesser known or recognized organizations, such
as the University Union or the Virginia Debaters."

The mysterious P.U.M.P.K.I.N. Society emerged during
these years. About ten pumpkins were delivered annually to
that number of recipients, both faculty and students. The basis
for selecting those thus honored was not altogether clear.
Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, one of the chosen, kept his pumpkin
on his dining table "for several months, until it disintegrated
to the point where visitors couldn't tell it from a
squash."

Another altogether different organization was the Walter
Reed Society, with thirty-two charter members and others
added in subsequent years. Medical students and house staff
officers were eligible, together with research fellows of the
Medical School and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
A prize was awarded annually for the best paper in the field
of medical research.

Returning students in good standing who had completed at
least two full semesters with a cumulative grade average of 2.0
and were not receiving financial aid were allowed to have automobiles
under rules approved in 1968. These privileges
were extended to first-year men two years later on substantially
the same conditions.

The Student Council inaugurated a bus system for students,
faculty, and staff in the spring of 1971 in an effort to cope with
traffic and parking problems. Busses were leased from a local
firm on a trial basis. A survey the previous session had shown
that there were 9,700 students, and only 5,831 parking spaces
for 7,220 cars. The university attacked the problem in the fall
of 1972 with a comprehensive bus service and a plan for pay
parking. Visitors were required to park at metered spaces.

Campus politics was rather hectic at this period, reflecting
the somewhat turbulent conditions prevailing at the university
and throughout the country. A new party calling itself the Anarchists
emerged in the 1968 College elections, announcing its
intention to "put life in the Student Council." It elected its
candidates with record-breaking pluralities and then disappeared.
The Virginia Progressive party took its place at the
next election, with some of the same candidates and supporters

as the Anarchists, and they too were highly successful. The
conservative Jefferson party emerged in the fall of 1969, and
 Skull & Keys  and Sceptre (formerly Lambda Pi), which had
been influential in College politics over the years, albeit with
many ups and downs, voted themselves out of existence. In
the spring of 1970 the Jefferson party swamped the opposition
with a clean sweep of all offices.

The Student Council was being rapped in 1973 for "apathy
and inaction," and "the failure of an alarming number of
council members to work." Students, furthermore, were not
attending council meetings and were unfamiliar with what the
organization was doing.

The Council was galvanized into action when Larry Sabato
of Norfolk was elected its president in 1973. An extraordinary
number of programs were launched under his dynamic leadership,
including a campaign before the General Assembly for
a new undergraduate readers' library, testimony before the
Housing Study Commission, expansion of the university's
transit system, support for appointment of an ombudsman
and off-grounds housing complaint service, publication of
several booklets for students and for women's safety seminars,
publicizing the equal opportunity counseling program, supporting
new landlord-tenant legislation, improving alumnistudent
relations, and various other programs. Sabato was
successful in achieving many of his objectives. President Shannon
praised his "prodigious leadership." He was chosen a
Rhodes Scholar.

Residents of the first-year dormitories were getting more
constructive attention from older students. As the Alumni
News expressed it in 1973: "This year there has been a variety
of activities in the dorms not seen often before, ranging from
seminars on human sexuality, which sound provocative, to
bull sessions with the football coach, which don't. In between
there have been both formal and informal undergraduate
classes and orientations, both academic and social, lectures
and mixers designed to give students more than just a feeling
of living in a room in a building." The counselor system had
its inception in 1950-51, when the new dormitories on McCormick
Road opened; it developed in various directions in
the intervening years.

Byrd S. Leavell, Jr., cochairman of the resident staff's firstyear

component in 1973 and winner of the Arthur P. "Pete"
Gray IV Memorial Award the previous year, said that the objective
was "to keep things happening in the dorms," and to
offer "everybody a chance to become involved in something
that interests them." A novel feature was the plan whereby
coeds briefed the incoming first-year men on university traditions,
an innovation that, in earlier days, could have brought
older alumni to the verge of apoplexy. Resident advisers, who
were either instructors or graduate students, also lived in the
dorms with a view to aiding students with academic or other
problems. The university administration credited the counselors
and advisers with a major role in achieving a dramatic
decline in the number of first-year dropouts.

Counseling in the upperclass dormitories was concerned
primarily with academic orientation and career guidance. A
program also was instituted for the 85 percent of the thousands
of upperclass and graduate students who were living
off-Grounds. They were mainly in houses and apartments,
and seminars and social events were arranged for their benefit.
Transfer students were given special attention, including a
garden party during orientation week, when they could meet
student leaders.

The rapidly mounting enrollment, well beyond expectations,
was receiving much attention. An ultimate maximum of
18,000 students, double the figure for 1969, was seen by the
administration as acceptable. Much of the increase already experienced
was accounted for by the sharp reduction in the
academic failure rate which, in turn, was tied to the steady rise
in the qualifications of entering undergraduates.

But many of the students were greatly disturbed over the
prospect of so rapid an increase in enrollment. As early as
1967 the University of Virginia Magazine expressed alarm lest
the university become another "State-U" with a huge number
of undergraduates and mediocre standards. It was concerned
lest "the vital character of the university be lost." Four years
later an enrollment of 18,000 by 1980 was officially envisaged.
But ere long serious doubts began to arise in the administration,
the Board of Visitors, and the Alumni Association's
Board of Managers concerning the desirability of allowing enrollment
to rise that high.

The students became greatly agitated. They pointed out
that housing, classroom space, and parking were already critically
inadequate, and in the fall of 1971 their opposition became
louder and louder. On the night of Oct. 19 some twentyfive
hundred marched through the Grounds in vehement disapproval,
and five hundred spent the night on the Lawn, despite
temperatures that dropped into the forties. They carried
signs with such legends as "United We Stand Because We
Can't Sit Down," "Help Stop Expansion, Eat a Student," and
"Hell, No, We Won't Grow." Next day they staged a "study-in"
at Alderman Library and an "eat-in" at Newcomb Hall, designed
to show the inadequacy of facilities. The result of all
this was that the Board of Visitors decided to limit enrollment
to 16,500 for the foreseeable future.

Getting into the university was not easy. College board Scholastic
Aptitude Test (SAT) scores for university entrants in
1974 were 592 verbal and 623 math for the College, 562 verbal
and 659 math for engineering, and 608 verbal and 662
math for architecture.

The student body was much more cosmopolitan than that
of most state universities. President Shannon was quoted as
saying that "outside of the University of Colorado we have
more out-of-state students than any other state university."
The large number of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton graduates
who attend the University of Virginia has been noted.

The university has always been among the top institutions
in the country in the number of its students awarded Rhodes
Scholarships to Oxford University, and far ahead of all other
state institutions. Its total of thirty-five scholarship recipients
through 1973 was the same as that for Stanford and was exceeded
by only Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the U.S. Military
Academy, and Dartmouth. The University of Washington is
runner-up among state institutions with twenty-five, while the
University of Mississippi is second in the South with twentyone.

Use of university facilities for meetings of officially recognized
religious groups was approved by President Shannon in
1973, provided there was no discrimination by race, creed, or
sex. This was a reversal of a long-standing rule, adopted and
maintained in deference to Thomas Jefferson's insistence

upon complete separation of church and state. Shannon made
his decision on the recommendation of the Calendar and
Scheduling Committee, which felt that such meetings would
not conflict with Jefferson's desires. Shannon had taken the
opposite position in 1966.

The religious composition of the student body had undergone
radical changes in the preceding decades. By 1973 and
1974 the percentage of Roman Catholics had grown to approximately
double that of the second largest denomination
on the Grounds. For generations the Episcopalians had led,
but now the Roman Catholic percentage was nearly 22, or
twice that of the Episcopalians, who were in a virtual tie with
the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists for second place.
It was one more bit of evidence that the university had entered
a new era.