University of Virginia Library

Where Will It Go?

Student Council's recent resolution to
request the Administration to set aside
Founder's Day for an open forum on the
future of the University demonstrates the
sorry state to which communications between
the two groups have fallen. No one knows
better than the Council members that
precious little innovative and constructive
thinking could be expected to come out of
such a meeting. Given the present tenor of
student-administration relations, it would
undoubtedly degenerate into an oratorical
sideshow, polemical rather than inquisitive, a
confrontation rather than a dialogue.

The Council's instincts, however, are good;
every institution, the University as much as
any other, needs to continually evaluate itself
and adjust its course. It needs to be open to
and to seek out constructive and well researched
criticism. And the University
administration has done nothing to encourage
the development of this kind of thinking. By
its inaction, the administration has driven the
students to believe that, with rare exceptions,
confrontation is the only kind of student
voice it generally hears or respects.

Take, for example, the almost-forgotten
Student Council report on the rights of
students. It was carefully researched and
thought out by a group of third-year law
students. It was presented to the administration,
which smiled benignly and then did
nothing. Action might have come if the
Administration were seriously interested in
intelligently and cooperatively communicating
with students and adjusting its practices to the
well-formulated requests of students.
Apparently it wasn't. So, in the absence of
student pressure, the Administration did little
or nothing to implement the report. The
violations of due process in dealing with
students are still with us.

Or take, for another example, the recent
sesquicentennial. An anniversary such as this
would have been an obvious time to take
stock of the University's institutional
strengths and weaknesses. The money was
available; the administration might have
arranged for several distinguished and free
thinking educators to spend a year at the
University taking a broad and critical look at
its goals and performance and then to publish,
at the climax of the anniversary, their report
and recommendations. Instead, it chose to
spend its money on processions and champagne.
A lot of dignitaries had a lovely time,
and a few scholars came in for a day to give
vague lectures on the future of Western
thought.

So it is little wonder that Student Council
has reached the point where it can resolve that
the University should cancel classes for
something as vague and potentially unproductive
as the open forum that has been
suggested. One only wonders where things will
go from here.