University of Virginia Library

Coalition Clarifies Demands For Administration

The following articles are concerned with
issues raised by the Student Coalition and other
groups in the last two weeks. They are
presented here to provide further insight into
the principles and ideas underlying various
specific proposals.

The Student Coalition wants to make it
clear to everyone that we have not impugned
President Shannon's motives or sincerity. We
believe him when he says he supports "equal
opportunity" and has done so for years. We
would like to see cooperation among students,
faculty, and staff to such an end.

But it is essential that everyone, including
President Shannon, recognize by word and deed
that "Equal opportunity" is not "equal" at all.
It is as inherently unequal as separate schools.

Even when we reach agreement on this, we
will only have begun a long struggle. But we
must take this first step together.

Having felt for some time now that clear
lines of communication were not open between
the administration and the students, and that
this lack of a precise channel for student
expression of grievances has caused great
misunderstandings between the Student Coalition
and the administration, the Coalition has
decided to publicly clarify the issues, so that no
further misunderstandings will occur.

University Wage Problems

Dignity has its price, Supporting a family
with dignity takes money, and the dignified life
does not start at $3000. Many people at the
University have been content to pay employees
such wages, but many are not. As one picket
sign at the demonstrations had it, LEGISLATORS:
LET US PAY A LIVING WAGE.

We want the state employee wage scale
raised substantially, and the University given
the option and money to raise its own wages
above the minimum scale. This is necessary
because Charlottesville's cost of living is one of
the highest in the state. A minimum wage which
is adequate in Danville is not in Charlottesville.

We have also called on the legislature to give
our employees the right to organize, bargain,
strike, and affiliate with national unions. Until
they can do so, they are powerless. They must
depend on largess - ours if not the
legislature's.

Existing state laws and Attorney-General
Button's rulings absolutely prohibit collective
bargaining and striking, with harsh penalties.
Without the recognized right to bargain and to
strike, permission from the legislature for
University employees to organize is meaningless,
even hypocritical, as is President Shannon's
endorsement. What are they going to organize -
dances?

We also proposed that the Board of Visitors
direct President Shannon to prepare a desegregation
program for the University.

This is a request for moral leadership. White
students, much less black citizens of Virginia,
are understandably skeptical of our University's
statements of good intentions concerning social
justice, since they almost never see the
University take positive action except under
great public pressure. Only when we prepare
and commit ourselves publicly to a step by step
program of de- segregation will we have shown
ourselves sincerely interested in something more
than avoiding embarrassment.

President Shannon's answer to this proposal
was, as our response notes, a "flippant"
comment that we seem to want a 90 per cent
female college (so that the whole University
could be exactly 52 per cent female). What we
want is a University which has substantial
numbers of blacks, women and poor people. We
want some practical approximation of representation.
We want a genuine commitment by this
state to high-quality education for all its
citizens, including those who are born black,
poor or female.

Such an education is a citizens right when
his society can provide it. This one can if it
wants to.

Worth noting, too, are the basic faults in our
own education at the University we presently
attend. We live and study in a male,
upper-middle class, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant
ghetto. We are ill-prepared psychologically
to live in, much less lead, a nation and a world

threatening to explode from the tensions of
diversity.

We have also urged the Governor to make the
Board of Visitors more representative of
Virginians, in race, age, and sex, by means of
future appointments.

Many accusations of naivete have been
leveled against this proposal. We are told that
the Board doesn't do anything anyway, and/or
the Board makes all kinds of intricate financial
decisions requiring business expertise.

But the Board does make decisions, crucial,
sweeping ones, such as coeducation, to which it
has apparently committed itself, and desegregation,
to which it hasn't. Such decisions affect
all Virginians; representation of all their
interests is therefore essential.

The business decisions of the Board are
made on the basis of the recommendations of
specialist staff and consultants. Black people,
women and people under 50 are fully as
capable of understanding the advice presented
to them as the current members of the Board.

Even is the Board were irrelevant to the
decision-making process of the University -
which it is not - its membership would still
matter. If the Wheatley issue proves nothing
else, it makes the symbolic importance of the
Board unmistakably clear. Say what you will, a
100 per cent white upper-class businessmen
Board announces to the world that this
University is for white upper-class future
businessmen. Negroes, women, poor people
need not apply.

These issues must be pressed at the state
level, certainly. Public "moral leadership" from
President Shannon would be a priceless step
forward, but we are fully conscious that by itself
it would be insufficient. We are considering
more public pressure, such as a motorcade to
Richmond and a demonstration here.

Much criticism has been directed at our
tactics. We make no apologies at Thomas
Jefferson's University for exercising Constitutionally-protected
rights of assembly, free
speech and petition, as we have done in an
orderly and peaceful manner. We have not
thrown "bricks through the windows of the
rooms on the Lawn," as one reactionary critic
has claimed.

To radical criticism we say we can and will
succeed with our approach, if we have your
help in reaching the whole constituency of
conscience at the University. You may ask
justly where we were four years ago, or last
year. The only answer is that we are coming
now, and trying to get others to join us.

-Pieter Schenkkan

Chase Stuart Wheatley

Why Wheatley? C. Stuart Wheatley bears
heavy responsibility for the deplorable effects
of Virginia Massive Resistance to school
desegregation in 1959. As a member of the
General Assembly, he introduced the tuition
grant program which allowed the state of
Virginia to give money to children attending
private schools. This in effect allowed a city or
county to close its public schools, and replace
them with all white private academies. In Prince
Edward County - the most extreme
manifestation of massive resistance - public
schools were closed for six years and many
black children went without formal education.
The action of Wheatley and the other leaders of
massive resistance retarded the growth of a
truly equal educational system within the Old
Dominion which would provide the best
education possible for all of the state's citizens.

The difficulties many black students encounter
at the present time in meeting the
standards for admittance to the University are
rooted in the substandard separate and unequal
educational system Mr. Wheatley and other
sought to perpetuate.

Our intentions are not that Mr. Wheatley be
made a scapegoat. His guilt is shared by most
white Virginians, including other members of
the Board of Visitors. Yet, because of his
central role in massive resistance it seems
incumbent upon Mr. Wheatley to publicly
repudiate the principles behind massive resistance
- principles it might be suggested which
were less rooted in the preservation of states