University of Virginia Library

Counter-Founder's Day

A lot has been said in the past week about
the Student Coalition's plan to bring Dick
Gregory to the University for a speech on
Founder's Day and the coalition's proposed
boycott of the official University sesquicentennial
ceremonies that afternoon. The time
has come to take an objective look at the
coalition's plans, to evaluate them without
concern for motivation, and without the pious
self-righteousness which has characterized
much of the criticism heard thus far.

Mr. Gregory's qualifications as a speaker
who deserves to be heard in the University
community are beyond dispute. The University
Union's offer to sponsor his appearance
on any other day but Founder's Day supports
this contention. The sesquicentennial year has
thus far failed to realize its potential with
respect to outside speakers and lecturers. Dick
Gregory is the first person of national
eminence to agree to address us. Many
undoubtedly consider him a maverick of sorts,
but this is a community badly in need of fresh
thinking, desperate for imaginative ideas. The
coalition has acted upon that need.

But the coalition has insisted on being
afforded the platform of Founder's Day to
present its dissenting speaker. Many have
criticised this, believing it to be only a ploy to
discredit the University's ceremony and drag
its name through a little undeserved muck.
Founder's Day, however, it held to honor a
man, and a glance above to our masthead
should indicate fairly precisely what that
man's feeling on the matter would be. It is
only proper that dissent and free discussion be
permitted and encouraged on Founder's Day,
when the University pauses to remember a
man who wished his creation to be a citadel of
dissent. A ceremony honoring Mr. Jefferson
would be hollow indeed if its staging
necessitated an abrogation of that tradition.

Dick Gregory's speech will do nothing to
retard such a free exchange of concepts. It has
been carefully scheduled to avoid a conflict
with other events, affording everyone in the
community an opportunity to hear the man.
The coalition's proposed boycott is also in
keeping with these concepts. No demonstration
or disruption of the ceremonies is
planned. Those who wish to hear the official
version of the University's first 150 years will
be perfectly free to do so. This is as it should
be, for those who would attempt to disrupt
the proceedings will be abrogating the very
right upon which they depend to get their
views across. It is unfortunate indeed that a
significant number of students have come to
feel that the Administration of their University
has proven itself incapable of effecting
change through purely intellectual confrontation,
have come to feel that the Administration
will not respond to them in good faith.
It is alarming that the image of the University
has come to be such that a significant number
of students refuse to take part in any
ceremony that presumes to celebrate that
University's first 150 years.

We are not yet convinced that the
University is so mired in institutional devotion
to the status quo that the free exchange of
ideas cannot lead to a meaningful change. We
are not yet convinced that the Administration
is unwilling to work in partnership with
concerned students towards a constructive
end, though we have seen disturbing signs to
that effect. And until one side proves itself to
be destructively intransigent, it deserves the
respect and the attention of all sides.

Yet we, and anyone who is concerned
about the situation, cannot fail to worry
about the extent of the alienation that this
boycott implies When a significant group of
concerned students feels impelled to resort to
such a tactic to make its voice heard, feels
that polite and politic channels have been
exhausted, it is indeed time to re-evaluate the
effectiveness of the existing channels and to
institute a determined search for more
effective ones. The Administration's and the
Governor's response thus far to the suggestions
of the student coalition has bred a
justifiable frustration which can only lead to
more radical and less constructive measures in
the future.