University of Virginia Library

Founder's Day 1970

Robert Penn Warren, in his Founder's Day
Address Monday, told the 1,500 people who
could fit into Old Cabell Hall that "a
University is simply the place where people,
young and old, come together to try and
understand the past in order to create the
future." For the better part of an hour Mr.
Warren stressed the necessity for an
understanding of history by each citizen.
Monday, the University stopped its normal
routine for a few hours to indulge in a
ceremony dedicated to the parts of its past
that we can take pride in.

This year, for the first time, the students
marched in the procession ahead of the
faculty, perhaps to show that this day was not
merely a ceremony for some visiting
dignitaries. There were no student protests
this year, save for a few students concerned
about the government department. This is not
to say that the protest is gone. It was merely
more organized Monday than in past years
and took place largely in the afternoon panel
discussions. Even President Shannon took
some note of it when he praised students for
their "activism" which resulted in community
service.

We wish more students had been able to
hear Mr. Warren's speech. It has become
increasingly clear in the past several years that
Old Cabell Hall, which seats about 1500
people, is just too small for Founder's Day.
Perhaps next year, with some good weather,
the ceremony could be held on the South end
of the Lawn, to accommodate everyone.

We thought that Mr. Warren's remarks
were extremely relevant, to use that
overworked term, to the University in its
present period of change. Given the
remarkable legacy the University enjoys, it is
faced with the task of deciding which of its
traditions have something to offer in future
years and which are merely quaint.

We are always amused by the pessimists in
our midst who maintain that now that the
"old" University is giving way and a new
breed of active students is being admitted, this
place is going to hell. Too often these critics
seem to forget that for too many years the
University was a snobbish, aristocratic and
bucolic institution that cared much more for
its drinking reputation than its academic one.
Mr. Jefferson never intended that sort of
University.

Equally amusing to us are cultural
anarchists that would have us ignore much of
our usable past. Part of the problem of
adjusting to the future for the University is
finding which of our traditions are usable and
which are not. Certainly some of the ideals of
the "old" University — honor, gentlemanly
behavior, well rounded competence in a
number of fields — can be happily married
with the new University.

We hope no one will quarrel with the
assessment that this University is doing its
basic function — educating students — better
than ever before. The addition of the papers
of William Faulkner to Alderman Library will
attract many scholars in the near future to the
Grounds and can only enhance the
University's academic reputation. It is
interesting to note that on Robert Penn
Warren's last visit to the University he spoke
on "William Faulkner and his South."
Nineteen years later this University has
received a gift that will enable it to become
the leading center for the study of Mr.
Faulkner's works in the nation. Soon the
University will be sending its own scholars to
other schools to lecture on Faulkner. Mrs.
Faulkner, her daughter, Mrs. Paul Summers,
and the other Directors of the William
Faulkner Foundation, certainly deserve a
collective thank you from the University
community.

There were other pleasant happenings on
Founder's Day. The tremendous ovation given
to this year's recipient of the Thomas
Jefferson Award, given each year to a member
of the University community who "inspires
those high ideals for the advancement of
which Mr. Jefferson founded the University,"
is indicative of the feeling for Dr. Thomas
Hunter by all members of the University
community. Dr. Hunter is currently working
on finding a means whereby the University's
capabilities cam be focused on problems
relating to what he terms "the survival of
man," which is in peril.

Founder's Day is always a pleasant one.
For those who have come to think that the
problems facing the University are
insurmountable, it restores a degree of faith
by showing just how far we've come in a little
more than one hundred and fifty years.

But there are problems facing the
University now that need to be solved soon.
We are certainly ashamed that no more than a
handful of black students are currently on the
Grounds. It will take a large amount of work
to change this "tradition." The women
entering next fall will discover, as have those
who are here already, that they too are
considered second-class citizens by a sizeable
portion of this "academic" community.

But by studying this University's past, and
honoring it and its founder, we dare hope that
Mr. Jefferson's dream of making "the
University of Virginia the future bulwark of
the human mind in this hemisphere" may
some day come true.