University of Virginia Library

Rod MacDonald

Some Hopeful Signs

It is a well known fact that
many prospective black students
have turned down a chance to
attend the University in recent
years because they see it as an
environment hostile to them. One
of the biggest hurdles, then, in
overcoming this atmosphere is the
lack of black faculty members, to
which the U.S. Department of
Health, Education and Welfare has
made several protests so far this
year.

The addition of black faculty
members has an obvious dilemma,
of course, in that setting a "black
quota" is tokenism in its most
blatant form. As Dean David
Shannon, through whose office
most prospective professors in the
college are recruited, said, "If any
of the men we seek thought they
were being brought here to be black
ornaments, they would refuse to
teach here and be quite right in
doing so." Yet to make the total
environment more hospitable to
black students it is obvious that
there should be black faculty
members here as well. Such a
situation as there exists at the
present, then, calls for definite
steps to change the existing
imbalance.

Both Dean Shannon, and President
Edgar Shannon, who is at
present in England, began some
personal recruiting at Virginia State
College in Petersburg before the
start of the school year, attempting
to set up a possible exchange
program to swap faculty members
here for some from Va. State. While
the exchanges would not be made
directly but through a pool, Virginia
State has been hesitant to give
up its better faculty members.

"They're very much afraid of
raiding on heir faculty, and frankly
they've much to fear from non Virginia
institutions," said Dean
Shannon. Many larger schools,
particularly those with huge endowments,
pay large salaries to recruit
the better-known professors who
have come up through the ranks of
the less well-endowed Negro colleges.
After a scholar makes a name
for himself and indirectly for his
college, a bigger university may try
to lute him away. Unlike big
universities, a small college cannot
easily replace a superior faculty
member who has been "raided,"
and the smaller colleges are resulting
leery of giving up their men.

Virginia State

One such case has been Virginia
State. This year, when the black
studies program was begun, it was
hoped to have a prominent black
historian to lead the program. Dean
Shannon then sought, through the
Dean's office at Virginia State, to
negotiate for such a scholar. The
Dean there said, "You mean Edgar
Toppin," who reportedly is a
scholar of such high reputation.
After some conversations the
school declined to release Mr.
Toppin, and so the director's job
went to Paul Gaston of the
University's own history department.
To provide a bare minimum
of black leadership in the special
program, Virginia State did loan
Joseph Jenkins, an able specialist in
black literature, for a series of
lectures; but the overall program
will still be led by a white faculty
member, however well qualified as
a historian.

Settle For Less

Dean Shannon said he would
settle for someone less eminent
than Mr. Toppin, but he was unable
to gain access to a scholar regarded
highly enough to lead the University's
program. And in that
dilemma is another problem: does
the University seek only highly
eminent professors to bring here?
In the past, such a conclusion was
probably true, and many students
and faculty members who had
hoped to have some black faculty
members were disappointed that
once the University had failed to
get an outstanding scholar it was
unwilling to settle for a regular
faculty member who was also
black. And the competition is steep
among major universities making the
number of renowned scholars far
less than the number in demand.

New Approach

This year the approach may be
different. Dean Shannon said that
different departments were seeking
several qualified professors on the
assistant, associate, and full professor
levels. With some success, the
University could see its first significant
faculty integration next fall, a
change that would certainly help
the minority of black students to
feel less alienated from their school.
It is hoped that the University will
not give up its efforts to integrate
the faculty, and that it will not quit
once the cream of the crop has
been gobbled up by national
universities. The real criterion, of
course, will be results, but this year
at least there is some realistic hope
for success.