University of Virginia Library

This University

Despite all of the press and television
reports filled with pictures of police, tear gas,
and jeering crowds, universities have not
surrendered all of their immunity from the
immediate presence of today's realities and
tensions that surrounds them. Despite the
existence of pressures which have at times
threatened to rip them apart, universities have
maintained the machinery for academic study
and education.

The University of Virginia is no exception
in that it too is a center for academic study,
yet feels the tensions and pressures brought
upon it by student activism. What seemed an
impossibility only a year before, happened
last May when club-wielding state police
chased harried students about the Grounds.
The stillness of the academic community had
been irrevocably shattered.

As entering students, you will find that the
issues at the University are much the same as
those at almost all universities—ROTC, the
Indochina war, racism, the draft, ecology, and
the like. You will see that you can ill afford
to ignore our government's domestic and
foreign policy or decisions within the University,
both of which affect your daily lives.
And you too, beset with frustration, will
probably protest some time in some way. We
encourage you not to be apathetic, but to
take thoughtful interest in and constructive
action on these controversial issues.

Hopefully you will not let your academic
education lie fallow during your stay at the
University. While you are poring over rocks in
Brooks Museum or writing about colors found
in Spencer's Fairy Queen, it is likely that the
question of "relevance" of the academic
pursuits will come to you. It is an easy
argument that dismisses all of your class work
as "irrelevant" and meaningless to your path
in life. But it is too simple an argument.

The academic studies that are offered here
are designed to teach the student to think, to
discipline his mind. They also compose a
concentrate of culture and "liberal arts"
which the founder of the University hoped
would help to humanize and liberalize student
before he left the ivy confines of the University.
They definitely are more than pointless
intellectual games created to keep youths out
of the streets and peaceably occupied. By the
time you take your degree, you might find
that thought can be exciting and enlightening.

There is another sphere in the life of a
student that is just as important to him as his
academic and political interests. Perhaps you
have heard your father, after a few cocktails,
start to reminisce about his rollicking "College
days". The next few years can be very
rewarding for you socially as you make lasting
friendships both at the University and at
neighboring schools. Even though Charlottesville
does not quite offer all of the entertainment
of New York or San Francisco, it does
possess a certain charm peculiar to this area of
the country.

The University community offers a wide
array of intellectual and cultural activities and
events catering to a myriad of interests. For
those with an affinity for the of outdoors, the
Virginia countryside provides the student
with a vast playground of mountains and
lakes. The athletic facilities are good places
to keep your circulation going during those
cold winter months and to combat that ever
expanding belt line.

We hope that you will take advantage of at
least some of the many opportunities available
to the entering students in the political,
academic, and social spheres of the University.
You can your years at Virginia a challenging,
enlightening, and exciting educational
experience.

We hope that this special issue of The
Cavalier Daily will provide information that
will make your entry into the University more
pleasant and profitable. We hope you read it
all and wish you good luck and a warm
welcome.