University of Virginia Library

Perhaps A Beginning

For 48 puzzling, frustrating and enlightening
hours last weekend, the University's
administration met with its "student leaders"
at the Mountain Lake biological research
station 200 miles southwest of Charlottesville.
Under the ground rules laid down by
President Shannon nothing was resolved, for
no decisions were to be made at the
conference. Instead, the time was to be
devoted to informal and candid discussion of
the problems that confront the University and
the thoughts of those attending as to what
might be done to solve them.

It would be impossible for any one
participant to fully evaluate the conference
and to predict from the discussions held and
positions taken what the course of student
-administration relations will be during the
coming year. About the only positive report
that can be made is that most of the group
preferred touch football to tether ball.

It would seem, however, that the stipulation
that no final decisions were to be
reached failed to insure free and open
discussion. Everyone there knew that he or
she was on stage and that the impressions
carried back by the other participants might
be decisively harmful at some time later in the
year. No one was forced to say anything or to
commit himself to anything, and many chose
not to do so.

To be sure, the conference had its positive
aspects. A great deal of useful information
was exchanged and many people came to
know, and perhaps understand, each other
better than before. Administrators who are
only rarely available to students were trapped
in the same sylvan glen with everyone else,
easy to buttonhole if not as easy to pin down.

Dean Ern from Admissions, whom some
students didn't even recognize, gave the
assemblage an idea of what he does on those
many days away from Charlottesville and
attempted to defend his office from the
charges levelled at it by many students and by
the report from the President's equal opportunity
committee. The group heard from John
Thomas of the Black Students for Freedom,
whom Mr. Shannon had not originally invited.
(He finally did so, in a cloud of persiflage, at
the behest of the Student Council.) His
presentation of three points which his group
feels is necessary for recruiting greater
numbers of black students highlighted the
first night's discussion.

Mr. Thomas called for a vigorous public
relations campaign to change the University's
white image, employment of more full-time
black recruiters whose efforts the University
should augment by underwriting recruiting
trips by black students, and an academically
competitive black studies program to be
headed by a black faculty member. Mr.
Thomas's proposals were listened to respectfully
and fairly receptively. It remains to be
seen how quickly they will be implemented, if
at all.

From there, the group moved on to an
inconclusive discussion of student power,
especially in relation to the University's
administrative committees and the desire of
some Student Council members to have
Council, rather than the President, appoint
the student members of the committees.
Coeducation and the role of women at the
University was the next and final major topic
of discussion. Here Mr. Hereford, chairman of
the Future of the University committee,
revealed the University's plans to admit a
quota of women to the College beginning next
fall without decreasing the number of male
enrollments, a plan that would leave the
University 350 beds short of the needed
dormitory space. The general consensus on
the question was that the Board of Visitors
would have to change its policy guideline of
not cutting back on the number of males
admitted if the women are to be accommodated.

********

What Mountain Lake will mean for future
student-administration relationships is another
question and one that is not nearly so easy to
answer. After last year's conference there was
a great deal of rhetoric tossed around about
"the spirit of Mountain Lake." That spirit
proved illusory in the months that followed
when communication and understanding
deteriorated under the pressure for commitment
supplied by the coalition and Student
Council. It is realistic to expect that a similar
situation this year will lead to a similar
deterioration.

Probably, the value of Mountain Lake will
not be felt in terms of harmonious relations
within the factions that make up the
University. Perhaps its only dividend will be
negative - it may help avoid violence, it may
forestall a total lack of communication.

If the Mountain Lake type of conference is
ever to achieve its goal, there must be many
more of them, perhaps not on such a grand
scale, but still providing the basic opportunity
to sit and talk. Given time, the formalities
might have worn away and there might have
been candid dialogue between the two sides.
As it was, neither students or administration
were completely able to forget their respective
roles and speak freely and undefensively.

Let it serve, then, as a beginning.