The Cavalier daily :: Thursday, October 23, 1969 :: University of Virginia Library

Acting on a motion by Tom Gardner,
the Student Council last night voted to
ask the Registrar's Office to no longer
allow the American Council on Education
survey questionnaire, reportedly designed
to help control student unrest, to be
circulated at the University.

The motion also asked that the
Registrar's Office destroy any completed
questionnaires it still possesses and to
attempt to recall any questionnaires from
ACE that it has already sent in. In the
past the survey has been distributed to
entering students sometime during orientation
week.

Two Objections

Mr. Gardner said that he had two primary
objections to the survey. First, the students had
to sign their names on the questionnaire. Also,
he claimed that college admissions offices can
use the survey to determine the stereotype of
the typical student activist and be able to
exclude all applicants who fit these characteristics
from the entering class.

To support his charges, Mr. Gardner cited a
statement made by a research director for ACE,
as reported in the October 9, 1969 issue of the
New York Review of Books.

According to the article, the director,
Alexander Astin, "suggested to reporters that
the results of the study might be used to
construct a profile of 'protest-prone students'
so admissions directors could keep them off
campus if they wished."

Potential Protest

Mr. Gardner said that the University of
Wisconsin had already made such a study,
determined the activist profile and did indeed
use the survey to exclude certain applicants
who were part of the potential protest
population.

ACE, according to Review, "is primarily a
trade association of the managers of the higher
education industry its Board includes
PRESIDENTS Kingman Brewster (Yale),
Kenneth Pitzer (Stanford), James Hester
(NYU), and Grayson Kirk (formerly of
Columbia).

Condemnation

"ACE led such associations in issuing a
strong condemnation of student disruption of
'normal' college processes like ROTC and
military research," the article said.

An ACE advisory committee statement
admitted that, "the study is not a comprehensive
investigation of the causes of campus
unrest, since it necessarily neglects the role of
social, political, economic and historic factors."

A letter to the Review claimed that this
admission by the committee supports the claim
that the study "is addressed to the Student
behavior it wished to control."

Compile Scenario

According to the Review letter, one ACE
project attempted "to compile a scenario of the
biggest recent protest, including the main
actors, photographs, tapes, statements, etc.

"So dangerous did this part of the ACE
enterprise seem that two colleges, Oberlin and
Swarthmore, refused to participate," the letter
reported.

The ACE questionnaire circulated in recent
years at the University has been a four-page
pamphlet asking for answers to questions in
about 30 areas.

Some of the questions in this year's survey
were concerned with probably field of study,
information about family background, and
information concerning the student's high
school career.

However, Mr. Gardner objected to a number
of questions in particular.

Objectionable Question

One of the questions Mr. Gardner found
objectionable asked the students to tell to what
extent, ranging from eliminating all programs to
initiating new cash programs, they though the
Federal Government should be involved in
issues like the control of firearms, school
desegregation and the control of student
activities.

Chance Of Protest

Another section asked the students to rate
the chances, ranging from very good to none,
that they would do things in college like protest
against U.S. military policy, protest against the
college's administrative policy or protest against
existing racial or ethnic policies.

Marijuana Legal?

Also, the survey asked the students how
they felt, from agreeing strongly to disagreeing
strongly, on questions like should marijuana be
legalized, should college officials have the right
to ban persons with extreme views from
speaking on campus and should students have a
major role in specifying the college curriculum.

Political Characterization

Finally, the questionnaire asked the students
if in high school they had demonstrated for a
change in racial, ethnic, military or administrative
policy and asked them to characterize
themselves politically.