University of Virginia Library

It's Striking Time Again

Just as the sultry heat of summer days
seemed to foment racial street disturbances in
the 1960's, the annual revivification that
accompanies the arrival of Spring appears to
spark a combination of political consciousness
and spontaneous revelry in college students.
The political concern and awareness really are
not heightened by the new season, but the
spirit of the outdoors and the desire to raise
hell in it surely is raised to a fever pitch. It is a
curious rite of spring in which University
administrators sweat, politicians exploit,
commentators analyze, policemen brutalize,
and students erupt.

Undoubtedly historians will ponder why
student thoughts during our confused times
turned to thoughts of protest in addition to
the usual love. There will be some profound
explanations and a good many ridiculous
guesses, but for starters there should be
agreement that students had an excellent issue
on which to protest.

The war in Indochina has become the
symbol of the sham that has come to
characterize many aspects and personalities of
our governmental process. The invasion of
Cambodia and the accompanying rhetoric
that spewed from the White House and
Pentagon were unbelievable. Students
revolted. We must have been naive to believe
that the Cambodian operation was to be the
last broad ranging outrage of American
involvement in Southeast Asia. The incursion
into Laos and the tortured attempts by the
Nixon Administration to turn a disaster into a
"victory" and a "turning point" proves that
the war is far from being totally defused.

What will April and May bring to American
colleges and universities? During the fall
campaigns and the quiet winter everyone
wondered what direction the lethargic
atmosphere that had gripped the academic
communities would take when the snow
melted and the sun came back out. There was
some consensus, except in the confines of the
White House, that as long as the national
scene remained tranquil the campuses would
not explode. Discounting irrationality (there
seems to be a superfluity of it in the spring),
this is a sound hypothesis.

The temperature of the campuses will be
directly proportional to the events in the war.
The South Vietnamese troops in Laos are in
desperate straits. If President Nixon's
"protective reaction" there parallels the
invasion of Cambodia, we would not be
surprised to see the events of last May far
outstripped.

It is all so senseless. The war has to be the
perfect example for the philosopher of
absurdity, yet the reaction to it at times
becomes comic itself. Our crystal ball is no
clearer almost a year after we were shaken by
Kent State and our own small experience with
confrontation in Charlottesville. The future is
tied to one man who has already
demonstrated his insensitivity and
incapability in trying to lead this nation out
of an international quagmire and a domestic
polarization. What does or does not happen
this spring will be largely in his hands.