University of Virginia Library

Reluctant Councilmen

Although it is still early in the academic
year, we have noticed an unhealthy trend
which threatens to make this year's Student
Council the most unproductive in recent
history. It seems as if a sizeable majority of
Council members think that their only duty is
to show up at the Council's weekly meeting
and nothing more. Tony Sherman, who resigned
from the Council Tuesday night for
good reasons, cited his own "feeling of
apathy" in his letter of resignation. Perhaps
other councilmen would do well to resign
also, inasmuch as they are more of a burden
to the Council than an asset.

For during the meetings of the Student
Council inordinate amounts of time are spent
by the ten or eleven Council officers and
representatives who do work hard, to inform
the remaining majority just exactly what is
going on. The fifteen or sixteen councilmen
and women who just can't seem to get their
committees organized or who almost never
take charge of looking into an area of student
concern are largely responsible for much of
the ridicule leveled at the entire Council. At
meetings they present motions based on
whims or prejudices which, when investigated,
prove to be unfounded.

There have always been members of the
Student Council who were less active than
others. Four or five years ago the representative
who wrote a report or who showed up at
the Student Government office for more than
a few hours a month was a rarity indeed. But
the trend towards student activism, which hit
other institutions of higher education long
before it reached Charlottesville, finally did
arrive and after the University Party, the
Anarchists, and the Virginia Progressive Party,
the Council was just quite not the same. This
new Student Council quickly took up such
subjects as black enrollment, and succeeded in
awakening the entire University.

Even the more conservative members of
the Student Council, when they investigated a
particular area within the administration,
frequently became "radicalized" when they
realized the way students were being treated.
In time it became very popular to look out
for student interests but unfortunately the
Council's work diffused to include the interests
of grape pickers in California or electrical
workers in Waynesboro. In short the Council
became perhaps overly active.

Now we think it is fine for the Council to
abandon some of these peripheral concerns.
But for Council members to neglect such
things as academics, the library, athletics,
housing and food services - to name but a
few - is to insure little or no student input
into these areas of student concern.

In the past it has been common for
members of the Council to put in one or more
semesters of good work and slack off a bit
during their final semester, leaving the activities
of the Council largely in the hands of the
younger members. But this year it seems as if
a great many of the more lackadaisical councilmen
are the new ones. We don't know what
motivated them to run for the office in the
first place, perhaps merely to jot down
another activity on their brag sheets.

But we do know that if they have no
intention of putting in the time required, they
should resign.