University of Virginia Library

The Scranton Report

Over the weekend the President's
Commission on Campus Unrest released its
major report, and while attention
immediately was centered on the
recommendations for the President and
government, we feel that the
recommendations dealing with students and
universities deserve equal attention. It took
nine prominent citizens 90 days to prepare
the report, and took Vice President Agnew
only three days to decide that the report was
a "pablum for permissivists." Rather than give
you our opinion on the Scranton Report, we
publish the recommendations dealing with
students and the University.

For The Students

Every university must improve its
capability for responding effectively to
disorder. Students, faculty, and trustees must
support these efforts. Universities must pull
themselves together.

The university should be an open forum
where speakers of every point of view can be
heard. The area of permitted speech and
conduct should be at least as broad as that
protected by the First Amendment.

The university should promulgate a code
making clear the limits of permissible conduct
and announce in advance what measures it is
willing to employ in response to
impermissible conduct. It should strengthen
its disciplinary process. It should assess the
capabilities of its security force and determine
what role, if any, that force should play in
responding to disorder.

When criminal violence occurs on the
campus, university officials should promptly
call for the assistance of law enforcement
agencies. When faced with disruptive but
nonviolent conduct, the university should be
prepared to respond initially with internal
measures. It must clearly understand the
options available to it and be prepared to
move from one to another if it is reasonably
obvious that an earlier tactic has failed.

Faculty members who engage in or lead
disruptive conduct have no place in the
university community.

The university, and particularly the
faculty, must recognize that the expansion of
higher education and the emergence of the
new youth culture have changed the makeup
and concerns of today's student population.
The university should adapt itself to these
new conditions. We urge that the university
make its teaching programs, degree structure,
and transfer and leave policies more flexible
and more varied in order to enhance the
quality and voluntariness of university study.

We call upon all members of the university
to reaffirm that the proper functions of the
university are teaching and learning, research
and scholarship. An academic community
best serves itself, the country, and every
principle to which it is devoted by
concentrating on these tasks.

Academic institutions must be free - from
outside interference and free from internal
intimidation. Far too many people who
should know better - both within university
communities and outside them - have
forgotten this first principle of academic
freedom. The pursuit of knowledge cannot
continue without the free exchange of ideas.

Obviously, all members of the academic
community, as individuals, should be free to
participate actively in whatever campaigns or
causes they choose. But universities as
institutions must remain politically neutral,
except in those rare cases in which their own
integrity, educational purpose or preservation
are at stake.

One of the most valid criticisms of many
universities is that their faculties have become
so involved in outside research that their
commitment to teaching seems compromised.
We urge universities and faculty members to
reduce their outside service commitments. We
recognize that alternative sources of
university funding will have to be developed
to take the place of the money attached to
these outside commitments. Realistically, this
will mean more unrestricted government aid
to higher education.

Large universities should take steps to
decentralize or reorganize to make possible a
more human scale.

University governance systems should be
reformed to increase participation of students
and faculty in the formulation of university
policies that affect them. But universities
cannot be run on a one-man, one-vote basis
with participation of all members on all
issues.

Universities must become true
communities whose members share a sense of
respect, tolerance, and responsibility for one
another.

For The University

Students must accept the responsibility of
presenting their ideas in a reasonable and
persuasive manner. They must recognize that
they are citizens of a nation which was
founded on tolerance and diversity, and they
must become more understanding of those
with whom they differ.

Students must protect the right of all
speakers to be heard even when they disagree
with the point of view expressed. Heckling
speakers is not only bad manners but is
inimical to all the values that a university
stands for.

Students must face the fact that giving
moral support to those who are planning
violent action is morally despicable.

Students should be reminded that language
that offends will seldom persuade. Their
words have sometimes been as offensive to
many Americans as the words of some public
officials have been to them.

Students should not expect their own
views, even if held with great moral intensity,
automatically and immediately to determine
national policy. The rhetorical commitment
to democracy by students must be matched
by an awareness of the central role of
majority rule in a democratic society and by
an equal commitment to techniques of
persuasion within the political process.

The commission has been impressed and
moved by the idealism and commitment of
American youth. But this extraordinary
commitment brings with it extraordinary
obligations: to learn from our nation's past
experience, to recognize the humanity of
those with whom they disagree and to
maintain their respect for the rule of law.

The fight for change and justice is the
good fight; to drop out or strike out at the
first signs of failure is to insure that change
will never come.

This commission is only too aware of
America's shortcomings. Yet we are almost a
nation of enduring strength. Millions of
Americans - generations past and present -
have given their vision, their energy, and their
patient labor to make us a more just nation
and a more humane people.

We who seek to change America today
build on their accomplishments and enjoy the
freedoms they won for us. It is a considerable
inheritance, we must not squander or destroy
it.