University of Virginia Library

Mrs. Shannon Provides A Woman's Touch

PROFILE

By Sharon Mayes
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

Being the President's wife at a rapidly
expanding University has presented
several interesting challenges to Eleanor
Shannon while living at Carr's Hill.

One problem she has found is that
while she enjoys having an opportunity to
meet many of the interesting people in
this community, she regrets not having the time
to see these people more often.

Mrs. Shannon finds that she prefers smaller
functions over larger ones, because then she can
talk to people on a more personal level.

However, she intentionally tries to vary the
activities she plans throughout the years,
particularly in order to avoid sponsoring the
same event twice in a row. She also wants to
avoid establishing any patterns that would be
confining or that would lead to definite
expectations.

One of the greatest challenges Mrs. Shannon
faces is to constantly initiate ways for her
husband and herself to meet more students and
to take part in more activities.

Another challenge that Mrs. Shannon has
encountered in her position is that she must be
careful in what she says because of her
connection with her husband. This has been
hard for her at times, because she readily
admits that she and Mr. Shannon don't think
alike on a number of issues.

She says that sometimes she forgets that
what she's saying might be attributed to him
because she speaks freely as an individual,
espousing her own views, and not necessarily
those of her husband.

Mrs. Shannon comes well-qualified as a
University President's wife. She received her
B.A. at Sweet Briar College, her M.A. in history
at Cornell University, and did another semester
of graduate work at Columbia University and
Union Theological Seminary.

In addition, she taught history to college
students and was acting Dean of Women
Students at Southwestern University in
Memphis for six years. In this capacity she feels
she has gained valuable experience working with
students.

She feels that she was more involved with
students at that time, and wishes that she could
talk with students more now. Mrs. Shannon
believes it is important to get to know as many

members of the University community as
possible but at the same time feels that she
should not be as involved on an independent
basis as President's wife.

When asked about her thoughts on the strike
last May, Mrs. Shannon responded
enthusiastically about the communication that
occurred at that time. She definitely feels that
violence is counter-productive.

However, she added that she probably got to
know more students last May than she's known
during the entire twelve years she has been
here. She liked the feeling of support that was
given to her "as a person" at the time of the
strike.

Even now, when she runs into these
students across the grounds, the President's
wife sees her relationships with the students she
dealt with then as being of a more personal
nature. These students were "remarkably
understanding," and didn't just look to her as
the President's wife.

Mrs. Shannon then asked the question that
many students are now asking. Why, since
people talked to each other so much and on a
different level in May, didn't this
communication continue? She is disappointed
that there seems to be little positive effect from
these lines of communication that were
established.

Mrs. Shannon has done a lot of thinking
about the feelings of students today. She feels
that students are getting tired of negative
attitudes, and are instead working for strong
personal relationships and are putting their
efforts into individual projects that have an
impact on their environment.

She used Madison Hall as an example of this.
She pointed out that it had grown from a small
effort to a large group of over 800, and that
Virginia Mental Health now counts on these
students.

It would be a truly worthwhile goal, she
said, for the University community consciously
to work at creating positive, strong
relationships between students and professors.
This would fill two primary needs that she sees
at the University.

On the one hand, this goal would unite
everyone in a positive effort, instead of people
uniting through common dissent, which is so
often the case.

On the other hand, it would help the plight
of the student today, whom she believes is
feeling even more isolated than ever before.

She sees this isolation as resulting from two
main sources, the decline in the function of the
fraternities, and the increased freedom of the
individual on campus. When the students is thus
left to his won resources, she believes that he
often doesn't know where to turn.