University of Virginia Library

First Things

We were fighting traffic the other day near
Scott Stadium when the thought occurred:
editorials whose first lines, like these, cast
gratuitous droppings before the scrupulous
reader (for instance: WELCOME TO MR.
JEFFERSON'S UNIVERSITY!), such sludge
exceeds the limits of metonymy, abuses all
license, and flows like the contents of a dirty
oil pan.

To that, at the risk of offending you, we
may only add: Welcome.

The University of Virginia needs no
lengthy exegesis. Assuming a good majority of
you are, as Dean Em's staff assures us, superior
in most wars to the classes which have gone
before, one feels safe in recognizing that each
new student has his or her satisfactory reasons
for coming here this week. Indeed if test
scores from Princeton do not lie, perhaps we,
jaded by the years, should be seeking your
advice.

In any case, as the year proceeds you will
discover as a class your own self-image. You
will determine your won priorities. And likely
you will survive the bone-crunching
machinations of the first few weeks only to
learn you form a group with more potential
power for change than any other single bloc
within the University's political structure.

The system, of course, will attempt to
deny you this insight from the first. Endless
waiting in lines; the horror when you find
that the English course you selected at home is
already oversubscribed; these and
innumerable other small indignities comprise
that monster of bureaucracy whose rationale
lies hidden in the calculus of mental robots in
Garrett Hall, and whose language is
computerese.

Nor is that all. The political system, while
increasingly receptive to innovation, will seek
to obfuscate your role in shaping events. Yet
one knows full well that freshmen, since they
like together, tend to vote together, and in
larger numbers than upperclassmen. Note
then the glint of awe in the eyes of the
politicos as they carry their solemn
pilgrimages to the dorms in search of your
votes. If they seem to condescend, understand
their fear of you.

We who have been here a few years take a
small measure of pride in the notion that our
experience at the University has run parallel
with a period of change so sweeping as to beg
the term "revolutionary." Last year saw a
turn away from this trend, here and in the
nation: countless polls of freshmen began to
reveal signs of a slackening pace, a taste for
simpler pleasure than the politics of
confrontation (dare we say it? More
marijuana yet somehow less Consciousness
III).

What ever your decisions, whatever your
reasons, you would be mistaken to believe all
the battles have been fought, all issues
determined. Yours is a fresh perspective, and
in the existential sense your impressions of
this place indeed may be neared truth than
any. Seize them early and act on them. Only
in this way will you avoid being processed like
so many manufactured items.

And only in so acting-not without an
occasional glance at a tradition which merits
attention-will you begin to take part in what
(with luck) might prove itself a continuing
process of creation.