University of Virginia Library

Letters To The Editor

Negro Admissions Policy Misstated

About six weeks ago a letter
appeared in The Cavalier Daily
from Mr. Michael A. Collora indicating
that he had accepted as
accurate a statement he had read
in a student magazine to the effect
that the University of Virginia
has a policy of refusing admission
to Negro students from
outside the State.

I immediately wrote Mr. Collora
(a former University student now
enrolled at the Harvard Law
School) that a check of our enrollment
records against the voluntary
designations of race or color
made by students at registration
time showed that at least five
Negro students enrolled here last
fall are from states other than
Virginia.

This is not to say that this
number of out-of-state Negro students
in the University is adequate
to meet the challenges of the time,
but rather to say that we will
be able to progress faster if students,
faculty and staff will work
together to prevent the spread of
harmful fictions about the University.

If Mr. Collora has not yet
written you on this point, for
the information of your readers I
hope you will publish this letter.

Proposed Penalties

Either the Student Council or
The Cavalier Daily is suffering
from a delusion if it actually
believes that the newly proposed
penalties for the operation of unregistered
motor vehicles are
"much more harsh than they were
under the old system (C.D., Wed.
1 May, 1968)." The truth is that,
if enacted as outlined in Mr.
Adams' report of council recommendations,
the new penalties
would be less harsh and, to be
sure, much more reasonable.

I speak, needless to say, from a
personal experience of the arbitrary
methods of dealing out punishment
in such cases employed by
the administration in the past. As
an Echols Scholar, an active fraternity
man (which point, I concede,
is but one point against
you, when dealing with the Dean's
office), and in good academic
standing, and with no prior probations
or suspensions of any kind
on my record, I was "awarded"
in November, 1965, a one year
suspension by the Dean of the
University for a first offense motor
vehicle violation. The "offense"
was operating an automobile unregistered
due to an insufficiently
high grade-point average.

Indeed, the Dean of the University,
in letters to myself, my
parents, the Department of Security,
the Registrar, and the Dean
of the college, professed his incredulous
shock that a student
would, without the required
G.P.A., operate a motor vehicle in
the forbidden areas. His shock,
however, stood in bold contrast
to the public statement which he
had made earlier that same year,
admitting that a large number of
students were doing just that.

Proposed revisions of motor vehicle
registration policy sound promising;
however, I would offer one
bit of advice to the potential "offender:"
beware of trusting too
much in the supposedly set regulations
now in existence, or in any
which may replace them in the
future—at least until there is a
new resident at Pavilion VIII,
East Lawn.

Conrad Kudos

Because Mr. Conrad has a talent
for pointing up the contradictions
of America (and the world), the
CD is to be applauded for their
decision to carry his cartoons. But
the May 6 CD carried a cartoon
which was outstanding. The cartoon
was one in which a student
(a "bearded-hippie-communist-pervert"
no doubt) was
standing in the ruins of a university
and telling a professor—"We
had to destroy the university to
save it." The parallel that Conrad
draws between extremist policies
of governments and student movements
is all too much a manifestation
of the contradictions of
our times as well as the pitfalls
of bigoted, subjective thought. Not
until the leaders, of the existing
student, anti-war and government
institutions, realize what will be the
conclusion of their present policies,
can hope exist for creating a better
world. "Let us not talk falsely
now, the hour is getting late," to
quote a great contemporary poet.