University of Virginia Library

Personalities, Factions, Goals, Of Student Council Analyzed

By Tom Adams
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

Next Tuesday night the Student Council will meet for
the fifth time this year. Though it is too early yet to tell
what the Council will accomplish this year, the 21
representatives to the Council have already shown definite
patterns of thought.

Gone completely from the Student Council is last
year's large and often colorful "conservative" faction -
Parker Brown, Jeff Gates, Beverly Crump and Foster Witt
no longer take their seats every Tuesday evening.

They have been replaced by a group that is primarily
moderate and pragmatic. Gone also is Jacques Jones, the
first University Party candidate ever elected to the
Council and perhaps the most "liberal" councilman ever
to serve in that office, and Frank X. J. Homer, another
"liberal" who served as the Graduate Arts and Sciences
representative for three years. Mr. Homer's departure is
especially felt since he was the perennial treasurer, and his
lengthy tenure made his memory the only accurate filing
system the Council ever had.

In losing these men, the Council has not, however,
been left as a colorless collection of unknowns. Last
spring two candidates were elected to the Council, Walker
Chandler and Charles Murdock, who spurred an often
apathetic electorate to give them enough votes to finish
first and second, respectively, out of a field of sixteen
candidates, with unprecedented vote totals.

Anarchy Test

A test as to whether the Anarchists can become an
established political party on the Grounds will come
Friday in a special election in the Graduate School of Arts
and Sciences for a Council representative to replace
Robert Yuhnke, who transferred to Columbia University
before being able to serve on the Council. One of the
three candidates in the graduate college is running on the
Anarchist ticket.

In last spring's student Council election Jackson Lears,
a University Party candidate, campaigned frequently with
the two anarchist candidates, and he was elected to the
Council. These three newly elected councilmen, Messrs.
Chandler, Murdock, and Lears, form a definite and new
faction in this year's Student Council.

The leader of this trio is Walker Chandler. He received
the largest number of votes ever cast for any single
candidate in a Student Council election, although some
observers felt that students cast most of their ballots as a
joke. One of Mr. Chandler's critics on the Student Council
claims that "he thinks every single one of those 1,000
votes was cast out of conviction."

Mr. Chandler claims he represents the "radical middle"
of University students. His constituents, he claims, are
those "who want to be able to take a date into their
rooms, smoke pot without University interference and
have a car here if they want." He has also stated he has a
"mandate to destroy the Council" if he deems it
necessary.

At the Council meetings one of the anarchists presents
a motion, which is seconded by the other. Mr. Lears then
speaks in support of it, but usually votes against it, and
their motion invariably fails miserably.

It was the University Party that began the new
campaign style adopted by the Anarchists over a year ago
when Jacques Jones was elected to the Council. He ran on
a platform and was an independent. In the elections held
during the first semester of last year, two more University
Party candidates were elected to the Council, Pieter
Schenkkan and Gordon Calvert, while a third, Bill Wright,
was narrowly beaten out.

Skull and Keys and Sceptre, the two traditional
fraternity parties are still that, traditional and
fraternity-dominated. The University Party claims to have

a large segment of fraternity men in its ranks but there are
few fraternity men in the University Party from the older,
more established houses on the Grounds that have
traditionally supplied a large segment of the University's
student leaders.

Every member of the Student Council attended the
Mountain Lake retreat hosted by President Shannon. At
that conference, students, faculty and administration
personnel discussed various aspects of the University
although no consensus was reached. Shortly after that
retreat Council President Martin Evans and Pieter
Schenkkan began an informal arrangement which has
made those two the second, and smallest, faction of the
Student Council.

Mr. Evans is now in his second term as President of the
Council. He is by far the most important single
personality on the Council and is perhaps the best
President that organization has ever had. He could
easily go on to serve as President for a third term.

Mr. Evans does a great amount of work in his job as
Student Council President and Mr. Schenkkan is one of
the few Council members he will delegate work to. Those
critics of Mr. Evans resent his keeping the important
Council matters within a small circle of people because it
tends to keep those members of the Council with less
initiative uninformed.

The Other Half

Pieter Schenkkan, the other half of this group, led the
field of candidates in Student Council elections during the
December elections of last year. He has one of the finest
minds of any councilman and has more enemies among
the councilmen than any other council member, as his
critics claim he does little work and loves the limelight.
He is never slow in mercilessly picking apart a ridiculous
motion or wooded thinking of his colleagues, a facet that,
as much as anything else, causes much resentment
towards him.

This resentment never surfaces at the Council
meetings. If anything, he is shown a great deal of respect.
He has been partly responsible for a great deal of the
more serious legislation passed; by the Council during his
stay on the Council. He is often sought out by various
members of the Council for his advice and assistance in
planning motions. Mr. Schenkkan knows a great number
of key administrators and students about the Grounds,
another one of his assets in the eyes of his fellow
councilmen. In addition, he has been involved with
forming many student movements and organizations, such
as the University Forum, and as a result is considered one
of the leaders of the "radical" sector of the student body.

The results of this alliance became apparent at the
year's first meeting as Mr. Schenkkan presented three
motions calling for extensive revision of dormitory
regulations, both in their enforcement and regulation.
These ideas are generally considered to have originated
with Mr. Evans after the retreat. The motions called for a
great deal of student rule in these areas. All three sections
of the motion passed unanimously after much debate, but
will not go into effect immediately.

The largest and potentially most powerful of the
factions is the large group of moderates. Though this
group has no formal or open agreement to unite them,
their similarity in thought and goals makes them the third
faction of the Council.

McMillan And Company

The leader of this group is George McMillan, one of the
representatives from the Law School. Articulate and
possessing one of the better minds on the Council, he ran
for President against Mr. Evans last semester but narrowly
lost. Mr. McMillan is generally well-liked by his fellow
councilmen and has accomplished a great deal of work
outside of the meetings, including last year's
anti-discrimination regulations.

His confederates are usually Gene Angle, Tom Slater,
Joe Fioravanti, Pat Saul, Ron Hickman and occasionally
other Council members.

There is still a large body of councilmen who have yet
to join any faction. The most important of these, perhaps,
is Gordon Calvert, the founder of the University Party.
Mr. Calvert is chairman of the second-most powerful
committee of the Council, the Political Societies and
Elections Committee, which controls all student elections.
His predecessors in that post have all been fraternity men,
and its into the hands of an independent shows
the different emphasis of the Council from last year.

Chandler Philosophy

Mr. Hickman is chairman of the Council's most
powerful committee, Organizations and Publications. This
group is the authority that recognizes student
organizations and recommends allocations of funds. As
vice-president of the Council and chairman of this
committee, Mr. Hickman is one of the most respected
members of the Council. His present task is to gain the
power of the purse for the Council.

Student Council may only recommend how the money
may be spent, but generally their recommendations are
followed. Although the Student Council possesses little
actual power, their prestige is great, particularly among
officials of the administration, who aren't quite sure just
what the Council does or the actual extent of its power.

One of the reasons the Student Council was denied
control of the Student Activities Fund was that it had no
files or other reference system to cover past allocations of
money. Mr. Hickman is now compiling such a file, for use
by the organizations and publications committee.

This points out the Student Council's great weakness:
it has very little actual power over University student
policy. Mr. Schenkkan's motions on dormitory
regulations must be approved by the Board of Visitors. It
is this power of student self-regulation that the Council is
trying to gain for the students, led by Mr. Chandler's
philosophy of "student power."

The goal of Mr. Evans and Mr. Schenkkan is more
student power, and here they are in conflict with no other
councilmen. Where the controversy lies is in how much to
ask for, and when. Messrs. Evans and Schenkkan want to
ask for only what they believe in and think they can get,
and preparation, often extensive, is made of any plan they
might submit to President Shannon or the Board of
Visitors. Above all they do not want the Student Council
to make a fool of itself, as they are working hard to create
an image of a responsible body of students for the
Council.

Because of the success of the Mountain Lake retreat,
what they hope to accomplish is far greater than anything
contemplated by last year's Council.

Opposed to much of this theory are the Anarchists.

Power Of The Purse

Walker Chandler feels that the Council should not worry
about requesting only those things that have a chance of
getting through. "Who can know," he asks, "what will?"
He is for letting the administration know exactly what the
students really want in the way of car rules, visitation
privileges and other rules.

Mr. Chandler and his faction have a certain tactic they
can use if the votes continue to go against them. He senses
that Rick Evans wants to make the Council a respected
body and he can introduce comical and foolish motions
anytime he wants to thwart that effort. "I was elected as
an Anarchist," he said, "and I can always revert to that
role if necessary."

The role of the third faction in all of this is not yet
clear. On occasions, Mr. McMillan and some of his
confederates have supported the anarchists, seemingly to
remind Mr. Evans that he does not run the Student
Council.

This year's councilmen will, in spite of these factions,
work well together. There are really no great ideological
differences separating them. A great many of the
newly-elected Council members have yet to become
accustomed to the Council's style of operation; when
they do, they could be a major force. What is clear
already, though, is that there is a genuine desire on the
part of all Council members to do something more for the
students this year than the usual handling of petty
student gripes.