University of Virginia Library

A Good Man Is Hard To Find

If there is a vortex of forces from which
most of the University's power over student's
lives emanates, it is the office of the
Vice-President for Student Affairs. Students
are subjected to the decisions of almost every
division of the University's power structure,
but the Student Affairs Office, especially to
first-year students and those living in the
dormitories, exerts greater influence toward
shaping their existence here than any other
department or office.

With the resignation of D. Alan Williams as
Vice-President, the University has a vital
position to fill, and it must be filled with the
right person. The special committee chaired
by Faculty Dean Robert D. Cross has before
it a unique opportunity and a singular
responsibility to find an individual whose
talents and temperament best fit the job.

What sort of person should the Cross
Committee be looking for? More than any
other single factor, the committee should
demand an active person, not a well-disguised
professional bureaucrat. This does not suggest
that the present Vice-President is not active,
but that the office is too vulnerable to
administrative control to risk entrusting it to
a mediocre professional administrator who
will shout the caveat of the President from
the rooftops, but somehow misplace the plea
of a roach-ridden dormitory dweller on his
crowded desk.

The new Vice-President should be clever,
but not deceptive; he should embody the
concept of honor that the University holds
sacred. He should be bright and receptive, not
given to suppressing his true feelings to either
students or colleagues. He should be a man
who has demonstrated that he is willing to
accept the risk of supporting his beliefs in the
face of unpopularity, but who has also shown
a willingness to listen and learn from the
opinions of students.

What this university needs is not another
second-rate bureaucrat whose office in the
basement of a dormitory is his monument to
his mastery of the Peter Principle, but whose
office is a receptacle of the collective wisdom
and imagination of the entire University. We
need an idea man, a man who understands the
wholeness of a university and does not bury
himself so deep in forms, channels, and
procedures that, for all the good he is doing
students, he might just as well be a computer.

The Office of Vice-President for Student
Affairs needs a good man or woman; indeed,
at times it needs a remarkable one. To
intelligently, efficiently, and compassionately
handle the responsibility of the office, we
must really demand a combination
doctor/lawyer/educator/ executive/public
relations expert and innovator. It is a large
demand, and it has been partially filled in the
past. But the Cross Committee must expend
some energy, and really work to find someone
who approaches being proficient at all of
these jobs.

It may very well require a painstaking
search outside the University community to
find someone who meets our standards, but a
success would make all the effort worthwhile.