University of Virginia Library

Immoral Conduct

One cannot agree more with
Senator Bateman's resolution.
Obviously parents and alumni have
been outraged by the 'immoral'
conduct of college youth within
our state. Furthermore, the wise
salons in Richmond must know
what goes on behind those closed
dormitory doors. They were young
once too and can speak from
personal experience. Only one part
of the resolution seems to be
bothersome. That is, how is the law
to be enforced? One cannot pass
resolutions without having a way to
enforce them.

There seem to be four possible
means to enforce the goal of
stringent visitation hours. The first
three of these, however, are
impractical and would not lead to
strict enforcement of visitation
hours. Only the last would convince
students that the acts going on
behind closed doors will no longer
be tolerated..

The first way of enforcing new
strict parietal hours would be to
allow students to enforce thy rules,
set up by the University's
administration. Although one
expects students to follow most
rules, this method seems rather
idealistic. At present there are
stringent laws concerning the use of
marijuana, liquor, and cigarettes
and yet students have been
disregarding these state and federal
laws for years. Indeed, one cannot
hope to have students enforce new
parietal hours placed upon them by
the state and administration.

The second means to enforce
the new rules would be to allow
dormitory counselors to make sure
that each girl has a pass when she
enters a boy's dormitory room. The
ridiculousness of this idea is
pointed out when one tries to
imagine a counselor knocking on a
dormitory door, entering, seeing
some immoral act in the process
and saying. "Excuse me, miss, are
you over 21? No. Well, do you have
your parents' written permission to
be here?"

The third proposal would be to
station guards at each entrance to
every dormitory at the University
to check the passes of students' as
they enter a dormitory that houses
members of the opposite sex. While
this might work at the Observatory
Hill dorms where there are few
entrances, the McCormick Road
Dormitories have too many
entrances to allow a small number
of guards to efficiently stop all
students.