University of Virginia Library

Let Students Drive

There has been a great deal of discussion
in Richmond over the familiar topic of
students and automobiles after an editorial
in the Richmond Times-Dispatch entitled
"The Student Car Menace."

The editorial opposed the possession of
cars by students on the following grounds:

"(1) The cost of higher education is
already astronomical and going up, but the
notion that every student must have a car
to maintain 'status' is making the cost almost
prohibitive;

"(2) Students abandon their campuses on
weekends en masse, thus frequently neglecting
their studies and maiming or killing
themselves in smashups;

"(3)Student cars are cluttering up many
campuses intolerably, and bringing traffic
almost to a standstill, a condition which
will get much worse, unless drastic action
is taken to prohibit most students from
having automobiles."

Lest we think of the editor of the Times-Dispatch
as too narrow-minded on this
question, he did allow that certain students
should be allowed to have cars. These include
"commuters, the physically handicapped,
and married students whose wives
or husbands have jobs which necessitate a
car." All other students would presumably
walk.

The points made by the editorial are
basically valid, but we feel they bear closer
examination.

Undoubtedly the cost of education is
rising, and the cost of the automobile is
rising, and the combination of these two
leads naturally to a higher overall cost.
But the student with a car is more often
than not a student who can afford both an
education and transportation. Hence the rule
prohibiting recipients of scholarships from
operating a car in Charlottesville.

In his second point, the editor seems to
have a vision of a campus void of life from
Friday night until Sunday. Perhaps this is
so in Richmond, but we have never seen
the University thus emptied. And if indeed
this is the case, our experience has shown
that the lack of one's own car hardly
restrains the student if he decides to go
down the road.

The third point strikes close to home.
While the University is hardly cluttered intolerably
with automobiles, parking is a
serious problem. But prohibiting most students
from having cars is hardly a workable
solution.

Perhaps there is much that could be said
for the proposal to curb student cars in
Richmond, but we cannot see such a move
in Charlottesville. The automobile is not
a necessity, but it is tremendously convenient
in a city such as the one in which we live.
Most of the first-class restaurants, for example,
are not within walking distance of
the University. In addition, the entertainment
facilities in our city are famous for
their lack of variety and quality. Nothing
needs to be said about the length of highway
between here and the nearest girl's school.

We can agree with the Times-Dispatch
that there is a problem with student cars,
but we feel that viewing them as a sort
of creeping menace is a bit overdone. The
"fatuous notion that every college student
has to have a car in which to ride in state
a few blocks to class or to his fraternity
house" is in the editor's own mind, we
fear. And his "poor harassed Papa,
burdened already with spending several
thousand dollars a year to send Junior to
Old Siwash," whom he pictures as "having
to dig up another thousand or two to enable
a young man to tootle around the ivied
halls at all hours of the day or night"
is not the impression we have either of our
father or of the University.

DKS