University of Virginia Library

Colloquium

Expansion: 'The Fight Has Just Begun'

By KEVIN MANNIX

—Ed.)

The primary opposition to the
activities surrounding "University
Tuesday" comes from those who
challenge the anti-expansion forces
on whether all "legitimate
channels" have been followed.

The expansion problem first
became apparent at about the time
that the University began
contemplating coeducation. The
plan devised by the University
administration called for the
addition of women to the
enrollment instead of merely
lowering the barriers to equal
opportunity and including women
in the applicant pool. Over a
two-year period one thousand
women were added to the
enrollment of the University.
Strangely enough, the absolute
number of men continued to
increase at the same time. What
resulted was a tremendous amount
of added pressure on existing
facilities—all due to the fact that
the University refused to cut back
on the number of males in order to
achieve coeducation. Council
opposed this policy all along,
beginning in 1969.

Weekend Conference

Wouldn't it be advisable to have
a weekend conference with
administrators, faculty members
and students discussing the problem
of expansion before a
demonstration was found
necessary? On September 18, 19,
and 20, 1970 the University
administration sponsored its annual
discussion with students, better
known as the Mountain Lake
Conference. At the 1970
conference Student Council
members made expansion a primary
topic of discussion. As is the policy
with this conference
(unfortunately) no decisions were
reached.

Well, then, wouldn't it be
proper for Student Council to seek
a revitalization of the University
Senate so that students and staff
members could have some voice in
the decision making process? Student
Council has been seeking just such a
revitalization for at least three
years, with a lot of oral support but
little else forthcoming from the
University administration and the
faculties of the various schools.
After all, such a revitalized Senate
might actually initiate a full scale
study of the expansion problem,
and we just can't have that
happening outside of University
committee procedures, can we?

Housing

Since students are concerned
about housing and classroom space,
one might ask whether Student
Council even bothered to make any
proposals in this area. It just so
happens that Council initiated a
proposal for residential colleges in
1967, and stressed its continued
support for such an approach last
year. Ideas regarding residential
colleges are still being bantered
about, but they are just entering
the committee-consideration stage,
which means that they are
nowhere.

The major housing discussion
last year centered on the
development of additional student
housing near the central Grounds of
the University, particularly near or
on Lambeth Field. Student Council
has tried time and again to get this
committee to develop a type of
housing which students want.
Unfortunately, due to the fact that
the students were not properly
consulted regarding this proposed
housing development, the plans
have yet to come out in a form
acceptable to students, much less
the Charlottesville community.
Originally, high rise dormitories
were to be developed, even though
Student Council preferred student
apartments and/or residential
colleges. As soon as President
Shannon got the decision he
wanted out of the committee
—apartments to be built at the
discretion of the architect—the
committee stopped meeting.

Parking Facilities

Since students are so concerned
about the parking problems at the
University, why haven't they done
something "positive" about it? It
just so happens that last year the
Student Council spent a good deal
of its own time, money, and
resources in running a bus shuttle
system around the Grounds for a
four-week period in an attempt to
convince the University
administration that a busing
system was one means available for
easing the parking crisis. Many
students could ride the bus directly
to class while students, faculty and
staff (administration if they ever
gave up their reserved parking
spaces) could also park out at
University Hall and ride the bus
into the central Grounds. It was
expected that the University, with
its superior resources, would have a
bus system running at the beginning
of the fall semester. Somehow, it
just never happened—except on
"University Tuesday", when a one
day shuttle was set up just in case
some hapless administrator had to
walk as far as students do every
day.

Legislature Consulted

Well, then, if the administration
showed such a poor response, why
didn't we go to the legislature? We
did. In April of this year a
Student-Legislator Open Forum
was held in Richmond. This forum,
held for the first time, was designed
to improve communications and
relations between students and
legislators. Alan Botsford, then
Student Council Treasurer, served
as vice-chairman of this conference.
The expansion of the University of
Virginia was a major topic. We were
pleasantly surprised to find that
most legislators were not seeking
the expansion of the University,
and in fact were often opposed to
such expansion. Certainly President
Shannon is not being showered
with expansion funds which he has
not requested.

However,—the legislature is not
the only influential group in the
state. Did we ever bother going to
the Governor's office? In February,
Kent Ross and Phil Chabot, the two
Student Council coordinators on
the expansion issue, met with Mr.
Hetrick, a special assistant to the
Governor, regarding the expansion
problems at the University. Their
main concern was discerning the
source of the pressure to expand.
According to Mr. Hetrick, the
source was not the General
Assembly or the Governor's office.

Perhaps, then, Student Council
should have gone to the Board of
Visitors. It did. In a series of
meetings throughout the year, the
officers of Student Council
discussed all aspects of the
expansion problem and sought the
aid of the Board in curtailing the
expansion of the University.

Board Misguided

The Board seems to be
sympathetic to the student
position, but is unwilling to act.
Perhaps if they showed less concern
for Mr. Shannon's policies, and
more concern for the University's
students, they would act. Certainly
they are intelligent and sincere men
and women but they have been
misguided by the University's
administrations regarding the
gravity of the problems confronting
us at this time.

Perhaps the source of expansion
pressure is the State Council on
Higher Education. Mssers. Ross and
Chabot have been in touch with
Roy McTarnaghan, Director of the
State Council on Higher Education,
and he has indicated that the
decisions concerning expansion are
at the discretion of the University.

Perhaps, then, Student Council
should have tried working through
the faculty. It so happens that last
Spring the Faculty of Arts and
Sciences, after some debate,
defeated a proposal by its own
Admissions Policy Committee
which called for a limitation on the
expansion of the College (where
most of the expansion is currently
taking place) pending further
studies. Instead, the faculty opted
for a weak resolution calling upon
President Shannon to reconstitute
the Future of the University
Committee and study the entire
expansion question. The faculty
having let us down, we turned with
some hope to this committee on
the future of the University, which
held out some possibility for a
study of the entire expansion issue.

While this committee verbally
jousts with the problems of
expansion the problems continue to
exist. What is needed at this time is
not a committee, but a
commitment—a commitment by
President Shannon to stop his
policy of expansion pending
thorough study. Committees are not
of much use when you consider the
fact that they are all advisory to the
president. He can ignore them if he
wishes, and he has done so in the
past (please remember that he
appoints most of the members to
these committees, too).

Last year the Student Council,
still following the committee
system, fought for and achieved the

unanimous endorsement by the
University Admissions Committee
of a resolution calling for a freeze
or cutback in the size of this year's
entering class in order to
temporarily alleviate expansion
problems. Instead, we had more
people in this year's entering class
than were even projected originally.

Still More?

Yet one could still argue the
Council had not done enough. What
about petitions? How about
drafting a comprehensive report
analyzing the entire expansion
problem and potential solutions?
Wouldn't the drafting of such a
report, and its subsequent
distribution throughout the state,
particularly to the legislature and
the Board of Visitors, and a
publicity campaign about the
problems of expansion, lead to a
general movement by the people of
this Commonwealth to end, at least
temporarily, the "rampant,
cancerous expansion" of the
University? It just so happens that
petitions were presented to
President Shannon's administration
last year. Ken Ross and Phil Chabot
spent four months drafting and
publicizing just such a major report
(which, incidentally, is still the most
useful document regarding the
future of the University and
expansion available at this time).
The response from the University
administration? "We share your
concern."

We also went to the alumni.
They have passed a resolution
expressing concern over expansion,
and they are hopefully quietly
lobbying it within the
administration, but they will go no
further. They are not interested in
"making waves".

Throughout the summer the
Student Council's Expansion
Committee worked to prepare a
variety of materials to submit for
consideration. It was only recently
that the Council was told that the
Committee on the Future of the
University would primarily deal
with "academic" questions. Thus,
the hope for a thorough evaluation
of the expansion question from a
broad perspective was crushed. It
was only after the scheduling of
"University Tuesday" that
President Shannon agreed to allow
the committee to deal with other
aspects of the expansion question.
Yet this is not enough.

There you have it. Last year we
went to every potential source of
assistance in our efforts to end
expansion at the University, at least
until the whole issue could be
studied. We received a lot of
encouragement, but no assistance.