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Mesinger Challenges University To Coeducate Faculty

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By ANN BROWN

"I have never seen a university I like
better," says Education Prof. John F.
Mesinger.

The University, he adds, has very few
roadblocks in the way of things he hoped
to see done.

Perhaps that feeling explains why Mr.
Mesinger has set out to improve the
University by heading the busiest
committee on the Grounds.

Photo By Jay Adams

Education Professor John F. Mesinger

"... We have a choice between our own reasonable plan and one forced on us."

The Educational and Employment
Opportunities, Obligations, and Rights
Committee (EEOOR) is adviser to
University President Edgar F. Shannon.

According to Mr. Mesinger, the group's
"first focus very clearly was the problem
of a white university recognizing its
responsibility to black and poor white
students in the state."

In the last two years, what is often
referred to as the Mesinger Committee
has expanded its interests to include
other equal rights issues, including
coeducation and black faculty.

In a recent interview with The Cavalier
Daily Mr. Mesinger noted that committee
membership has included the "complete
range of student, faculty, and
administrative opinion" with views
ranging from extreme liberal to
conservative.

"I noticed that the extreme
conservatives stopped coming," he added.

The committee's reports, he said, are
usually somewhere in the middle. Last
spring's report was "as strong a report as
we could come up with-so strong that
there has been no response," Mr.
Mesinger said.

The EEOOR's primary concern this
year is the lack of women faculty at the
University.

Mr. Mesinger credited the dearth of
useful data with the committee's slow
start this year. He said he had found that
"the right kind of questions have never
been asked here."

Harvard and Indiana Universities and
the League of Women Faculty are among
the information sources for the
committee's work, he said. Most of the
investigation, however, "is taking place in
a university either already coed or
private."

None of the universities being studied
are just like this one, Mr. Mesinger said.
In addition, most of the schools are also
located in highly stimulating
environments like the Boston area.

In Charlottesville, however, there is
only one college to provide teaching
positions for a husband and wife team.

Mr. Mesinger suggested that the
University's unique qualities may
postpone scrutiny from federal agencies
enforcing equal employment
opportunities.

"HEW is going to look at schools that
should have been doing something for a
longer time" to determine whether they
are giving women faculty equitable
treatment, he said. This category would
include traditionally coed schools.

He added, however: "We don't have
the choice of putting our head in the
sand. We have to change but we have a
choice between our own reasonable plan
and one forced on us."

The Mesinger Committee will focus on
the recruitment of women faculty at the
University. It will try to develop more
sources of information for data purposes,
as well as determining the "climate of the
University in receptivity to change."

Mr. Mesinger noted that the University
has been successful in the past by not
changing. He also said that most faculty
members here do not even want to talk
about the lack of women professors.

The committee plans to deal with two
other problems of smaller scope.

The first, according to Mr. Mesinger, is
the Virginia law which states that a
woman who marries an out-of-state
student then loses her Virginia citizenship

for preferential tuition. The same rule
apparently says that an out-of-state
woman who marries a Virginian does not
qualify for preferential tuition.

The committee will try to learn when
and why this rule was promulgated by the
attorney-general and will attempt to have
it changed.

The second concern is whether
University buildings being constructed
without federal funds and their attendant
requirements, provide enough facilities
for handicapped people.

Mr. Mesinger, age 42, was born in
Indianapolis. He graduated from
Hamilton College, a small liberal arts
school in Clinton, N. Y. with an honor
system similar to the University's.