University of Virginia Library

The Demands of Students

I will mention briefly three areas
of special sensitivity: participation
in decision-making, the role of
faculties, and academic freedom.
This is a thicket I enter into with
great reluctance. Each of these
poses difficult questions to which
there are no easy or unequivocal
answers.

The demand for student
participation in decision-making
ranges all the way from
membership on boards of trustees
to selection of presidents and
faculty and determination of
curriculum. If the full sweep of this
demand were met, the present
structure of higher education in
America would be dismantled and
replaced by the type of student
power found in many South
American Universities. It hardly
need be said, I think, that no
responsible college administrator or
board of trustees could accede to
this type of demand for power.