University of Virginia Library

Colloquium

Shorties Condemn Society

By SCOTT DEDMAN

Ed.)

Recently I have been
pleased to observe the efforts
of the Student Council and
The Cavalier Daily to eliminate
the University's blatant
discrimination against minority
groups. However, I and many
others have long been aware of
discrimination against a small
and often overlooked group, a
"minority" in the true sense of
the word-students of little
stature, or short people. Yes,
staturism has long been a curse
to the human race and the
American society, and has
recently invaded even our own
university.

In today's staturist society,
the little man is ridiculed,
refused desirable employment,
and perpetually scorned by
taller women. Most men less
than 5′4″ tall are rejected from
the American armed forces,
and thousands of angry and
disappointed men daily are
turned away from amusement
parks simply because they do
not reach the "You Must Be
This Tall" mark in the ferris
wheel waiting line.

But this is not a problem
only for the little men of today
and tomorrow. Staturism has
pervaded every annal of human
history, cropping up in all
ancient civilizations and in a
surprising amount of man's
literature. In Luke 2:52 we
find that the young Jesus
increased in......stature and in
favor with God and man."
Now I am sure that even the
most staturist giant would not
agree that Jesus increased in
favor with God because of his
greater height; however, this
verse obviously implies that
Christ gained favor with man
for that very reason. And later
in Luke one sees that when
Jesus visited the home of
Zacchacus, a despised man
"small of stature," the
townspeople murmured, for He
had "gone in to be the guest of
a man who is a sinner." Jesus
and Zacchacus obviously were
cursed with prejudiced peers.

Seventeen hundred years
later the ignorance of society
remained, and history's biggest
bigot was exposed when
Jonathan Swift's Gulliver was
told by the 60 foot tall king of
Brodingnag that the midget
"humans" were "the most
pernicious race of little odious
vermin that nature ever
suffered to crawl upon the
surface of the earth." A low
blow indeed. And now
consider the undesirability
even in today's society of being
"short - changed,"
"short-sheeted" or "cut down
to size."

A small group of small
University students, aware of
the problems facing them and
other U.Va. miniatures, have
recently formed the Students'
Anti-Staturist Society, a
chapter of the nationally
known Anti-Staturist Society.
15 students, all measuring less
than 5′6″, held their first
meeting last week backstage of
the Little Theatre in Minor
Hall. From this meeting was
born a resolution which, passed
unanimously by the SASS,
stated the organization's
concerns and requests for
improvement:

We the Students'
Anti-Staturist Society, in
knowledge of the fact the
University is a fundamentally
staturist institution, hereby
express our concern over the
following matters:

1) The absolute absence of
small administrators in
responsible positions, and
the near absence of short
professors.

2) The blatantly staturist
policy of recruiting and
giving scholarships to
basketball players, the
absence of short
team-members, and the
complete lack of
non-athletic small
students.

3) The question
concerning height on the
University Application for
Admission, obviously used
to exclude minority
students, (Subversive
letters within the
administration referring to
"token midgets" have
been uncovered.)

4) The refusal of the
administration to limit
expansion, thus
demonstrating their belief
that big is actually best.

Because of these University
policies, we request the
following changes to be
effected immediately: