University of Virginia Library

Newsweek Notoriety

On the Monday afternoon following the
weekend of the Mountain Lake sojourn, a few
of the student leaders who had been on the
retreat joined a few other students and a lady
reporter from Newsweek Magazine, at the
invitation of Mr. Fishback of the Information
Service, on one of the porches of the Rotunda
to discuss the complexion of the University
relative to the changing complexion of
universities throughout the country.

The discussion lasted for about an hour
and a half and ranged from coats and ties to
Columbia-type activity. The reporter wanted
to know just how the student radicalism and
activism sweeping the country, as manifested
particularly at Columbia, had affected the
students of the University, if at all.

The product of the twelve or so man-hours
that went into that discussion is one sentence,
unfortunately a direct misquote, beginning on
page 63 of the current issue of Newsweek.
The article, entitled "Campus Rebels: Who,
Why, What," begins with an introduction
which makes general reference to the kinds of
activity that are becoming more and more
common on college campuses, and concludes
with the same questions, who, why, and what.

Before attempting to answer those
questions, the article is quick to point out, in
a section entitled "Niche," that the sort of
activity which it will consider is not of major
concern on "most U.S. campuses," where the
"overwhelming majority...unquestionably are
far more interested in football, fraternities,
dating, getting along in school..." As evidence
of this, the article quotes "Larry Altaffer, a
senior at gentlemanly University of Virginia,"
as having said, "I couldn't conceive of anyone
being militant here." Thus the University
becomes the article's symbol of those
institutions with which it is not really
concerned.

Again, unhappily, that quote is a direct
misquote. No one in that Rotunda discussion
suggested anything like what the "quote"
suggests; in fact, the students indicated that
there, was, indeed, militancy at the University.
The closest thing anyone said to what the
quote says was that the militants here were in
a very small minority, and that if they tried
anything like what happened at Columbia the
large majority of students would probably
oppose them very strongly. Also on the
subject of militancy, the students said that
they felt that the administration here, as
opposed to that at Columbia, for example,
usually responded to student demands so
quickly that no one really ever had time to
become actively militant. As evidence, they
cited Mr. Shannon's response to the demands
for funds to recruit underprivileged students
made last May by the Martin Luther King
Council on Human Relations.

Those were the opinions of the students
on the porch, and we think they were fairly
accurate. It is an obvious fact that there are
militants here, and happily so, but the number
of hard-core, looking-for-an-all-out-fight
militants, we feel, is very small. We regret that
the misquote represented the University as it
did, for it gives it no credit for what efforts it
has made in the past few years to keep in
touch with the world around it.

We hope those local militants whose pride
is hurt by this illegitimate national
discounting they have received will not be
moved to prove the error of the quote;
further, we hope outside militant interests are
not moved to come down here to change a
situation which has been misrepresented.