University of Virginia Library

By Rod MacDonald

Busting The Trust

President Shannon repeatedly
urged student leaders at Mountain
Lake to trust him, but the Student
Council isn't buying it. In the wake
of this year's University Committee
appointments the Council has sent
a letter urging Shannon to grant it
the power to appoint its own
representatives to University committees,
indicating little confidence
in his appointive judgement.

The Council's contention is that
the committees are "University"
committees rather than "administrative"
ones, and should therefore
represent all portions of the University.
By merely recommending
appointees for the President's
selection, the Council now lacks
any real power over the several
areas of University policy concerned.

All this is fine theory, but the
real crux of the issue is that
Student Council President Bud Oglo
believes President Shannon made
committee appointments this year
to nix the chance for a strong voice.
Each year the Council President
recommends students for the open
spaces, from whom the President
will choose. Most of the Council
heads, however, failed to compile a
complete list, and last spring Ron
Hickman outgoing President, according
to Ogle, did not submit his
until long after the May deadline.

By June Ogle had been elected
the new president, and he immediately
set out to nominate able
students for the open spots, submitting
a list by the beginning of
summer. Then on June 25 Hickman
sent in his list of appointments for
the committee positions.

President Shannon, selecting
"according to ability" who would
sit on each of the major University
committees, favored the Hickman
list to a large extent, Ogle said. The
differences between the conservative,
fraternity-oriented Hickman
and the radical, graduate school
intellect of Ogle produced lists with
entirely different groups of students.

Ogle's main points of contention
are the admission, calendar, future
of the University, housing, and
Master Plan committees, each of
which exercises a significant review
power over their respective functions.
Ogle, for instance, selected
George Taylor, Elaine Jones, and
Lunzy Britt, three Black students,
along with Charles Murdock for the
open admissions spots. President
Shannon, however, selected Greg
Hodges and Gene Webb, two
relatively conservative students
(who had worked in the department),
along with like Moore, a
Black student whom Ogle approved.

Another case was the Master
Committee, to which Ogle nominated
Chuck Hite, Publisher of The
Cavalier Daily; Ron Cass and Paul
Hurdle, two liberal Council members;
and Tom Gardner, a Councilman
and member of the Radical
Student Union. The President, on
the other hand, chose IFC President
Bob Fisher and Hurdle, possibly the
least radical member of Ogle's
group.

The third case was the housing
committee, which became deeply
involved in several major issues (the
$100 dorm deposit and fraternity
sprinkler requirements) last year.
Ogle nominated Judy Wellman,
editor of the Virginia Weekly; Greg
Hurray, of the Human Relations
Council; and Dick Boote, a student
Ogle said was concerned about the
housing situation. President Shannon
once again, however, disregarded
all those choices in favor of
a more conservative group including
Fisher, Hickman and chairman of
counselors Bruce Wine(generally
considered left of center).

In several cases it might be
argued that Ogle's list was too
radically oriented, and that President
Shannon sought broader diversity
in his selections. For example,
Ogle nominated Thurman Wenezl
and Mike Russell, two noted
opponents of the military (Russell
is a draft counselor here) to the
ROTC committee, whose main
duty is liaison between the ROTC
branches and the University. To
appoint two advocates of abolishing
ROTC to a committee designed to
case ROTC conflict with the University
is perhaps further than President
Shannon wished to go.

But Ogle, who has the Council's
backing in the dispute, feels President
Shannon, with his administrative
assistants, stacked the committees
with conservatives. He is
the president of the Council and
was at the time of recommendation,
so it seems as if Mr. Shannon
went out of his way to accept
Hickman's appointments when they
came from the past president rather
than the current one. In addition,
the philosophies of Ogle and the
other liberal-radicals received a
strong endorsement last spring from
the students when the VPP won the
Council elections handily.

Ogle said Tuesday "I am trying
to learn to trust President Shannon,"
but added he feels the
President acted unwisely in stacking
the committees against the men the
Council recommended. The resulting
friction between the Council
and Pavilion VIII is the direct cause
of the Council's asking for final say
over appointments.

Aftermath

Since the Council's Elections
Committee was able to uncover the
disputed ballots (somewhere in the
Corks and Curis office) of last
spring's Class of 1970 elections,
some of the original charges levelled
by Jon Miller at Bob Green's
conduct were seen as unfounded,
although others were preventive.
The committee said "The election
was surely botched, but not in such
a way as to prejudice any one
particular candidate." That Green
did a poor job was generally
conceded, but Kevin Mannix said,
"We have no constitutional grounds
to overturn the results."

Several good and bad things
came about because of the dispute:
the Council will hereafter run the
class elections, preventing such
episodes from reoccurring, and will
make the ballots available when
they are counted. Hopefully, poll-watchers
will be used.

Unfortunately, Bob Green in his
letter of reply chose to attack this
column for printing the dispute,
going so far as to say I "invented"
the charges. Miller's charges had
already been relayed to the Council's
elections committee by the
time the column was run, and at no
time was anything invented for
publication. Rather, his letter reflects
an unfortunate tendency to
condemn the reporting of the
dispute, rather than the charges
themselves.