University of Virginia Library

Right Idea, Wrong Plan

The Student Council's
motion that its
president be an ex officio member of the
Board of Visitors is founded upon considerable
misunderstanding of the make-up and
operation of the Board. The simple fact is that
student interests would be represented better
by one of a number of other arrangements, to
any of which the Board would be more
receptive than it would to the one proposed.

At a meeting of students with Mr.
Shannon, Mr. Cooper (secretary of the
Board), and various administrators in January,
and at a similar meeting with members of the
Board, it became quite apparent to the
students present that a full-time student
member of the Board was, for a variety of
reasons, impossible, and that such an arrangement
would not achieve what students want
anyway. The work of the Board is done by its
committees. The whole Board meets relatively
briefly to receive the reports and recommendations
of its committees, which it almost
invariably accepts. A meeting of the whole
Board, then, consists of rather perfunctory
consideration of committee reports, which, as
any Board member will attest, is boring at
best. A student member of the Board would
be functionally impotent in such a meeting, as
discussion is minimized and his vote would be
all but worthless.

The committees are composed of members
of the Board, and any member can sit in on
the meetings of any committee. The Student
Affairs and Athletics Committee is the one
through which virtually all student proposals
must come, so it is there that student input is
necessary. A full-time student member of the
Board would not be guaranteed of membership
on this crucial committee; he might
therefore be worthless for student purposes.

The Council's proposal is objectionable
further because the whole Board considers
many matters of no real interest to students,
many matters of which students are hardly
knowledgeable, and many matters which must
be kept strictly confidential for a wide variety
of reasons. Also it would be a tremendous
burden on the Council president to attend all
the sessions he would have to attend in the
three-day meetings, to attend meetings out of
Charlottesville, and to attend meetings in the
summer. In short, the Council is asking for
much more than students need and for an
arrangement which would be less than
effective for having student points-of-view
aired.

What is needed, again, is significant student
input at the level of the Student Affairs and
Athletics Committee. The consensus from the
two meetings in January was that this could
be achieved best in either of two general ways.
The obvious way would be for a student,
probably the president of the Student
Council, to sit ex officio on the Student
Affairs committee (but not on the Board),
either as a full member or as a "witness" to be
heard. In either capacity he would be able to
present student proposals and student feeling
on various matters, as well as likely student
reaction to possible decisions. Whether or not
he voted would be of little consequence. The
all-important consideration is that students
would be represented and that the committee
would be exposing itself to some student
opinion.

The other way to achieve essentially the
same communication would be for the
committee to set up regular meetings of the
sort it held in January, when the heads of
certain student organizations met with its
members in a reasonably informal discussion.
The advantage of this arrangement would be
that it would allow for an all-important wider
range of student feeling to be heard than one
in which there is only one student representative.
The disadvantage of it, though, would be
that the students involved would not necessarily
be privileged to all the matters
considered by the committee, and that the
committee would very likely take them less
seriously than it would one of its own
members. Also, unless the meetings were
absolutely guaranteed, with full attendance by
committee-men and students, there would not
be the same assurance that at least some
student opinion would be represented effectively
that there would be if one student were
a member of the committee.

Thus the former plan assures students of
representation under any circumstances, but
the latter allows for better and more thorough
representation. Either comes nearer to achieving
what the students want and need,
functionally, than would the Council's plan. If
students can be assured that their positions
are represented to the committee whose
recommendations, in effect, are the decisions
which affect their lives, then most of the
"battle" is won. It is representation of this
sort that the Council should seek.

We hope the Council will withdraw its
proposal in favor of a more realistic one, and
we hope the Board and its Student Affairs
committee will allow a plan like one of those
described to be instituted, at least on a trial
basis. Only when they do can we be certain
that their decisions are made in full
knowledge of the matters involved - and of
student opinion on them.