University of Virginia Library

Responsibilities

More specifically, you charge the committee
"this year" to examine enrollment as it relates
to "academic improvement" and
responsibilities to the Commonwealth.
Responsibilities to students regarding the
quality of their environment are "also" to be
given some consideration. We see in this
language no hint that the present preoccupation
with increasing enrollment will end. We see no
suggestion that any credence is being given our
contention that the physical facilities that are
or will be available are inadequate for the
present student body. We perceive no
recognition that the future "physical and
budgetary exigencies" that you mentions
already exist.

As popularly elected officers and members
of the Student Council we have a responsibility
to a constituency of 12,000 that has
unmistakably indicated to us its belief that the
University's physical ability to expand in
enrollment is inseparable from its ability to
maintain academic excellence. The latter-goal,
we feel, cannot be reached without giving
paramount consideration to physical
limitations. In recent years, these limitations
have been given but slight consideration. While
your new charge would certainly be an

Peter Gillespie

Vice-President of the Student Council

improvement over the present situation, if the
committee undertakes its secondary role with
vigor, we have neither assurance nor indication
that it will attempt to do so, nor that it will be
allowed to by narrower-scope committees on
fundamental decisions concerning facilities.
And we have no intimation that if the
committee plays its secondary role with the
vigor required, any recommendations that are
not in accord with present policy will be given
effect.

We have not suddenly discovered the
problem of perilous growth. While we
sought, through every available avenue a
thorough review of present policy, conditions
have reached or neared crisis proportion in
classroom space, housing, traffic and parking,
and food services; the library's decline seems
accelerated.