University of Virginia Library

Calhoun Writes In Attempt
To Squelch Spirit Posters

By Charles C. Calhoun

When word was circulated last
month that Mr. Sebo was lobbying
to establish a Homecomings Queen
contest, there was little cause for
alarm. Our athletic director has
been in Charlottesville some six
years now, but he has yet to
understand the ways of the
University, and his suggestion was
quickly assigned to the oblivion it
so richly deserved. Recent moves
by the IFC, however, lead me to
believe that Mr. Sebo's scheme
might be better received next fall or
the year after.

I am referring, of course, to this
weekend's fraternity "decoration"
contest, a misguided endeavor that
has increased in scale each year
until the day may soon come when
some lame-brained beauty from the
School of Education will be driven
down Rugby Road on an
orange-and-blue float, to the cheers
of the pompom-wavers in the
crepe-papered fraternity houses
along the way.

This may seem a small matter,
compared to the cosmic problems
usually resolved upon this page, but
it is the needling sort of thing that
affronts a lot of people with a
different idea of what the
University's style of life should be
and that forebodes ill for the future
of the fraternity system.

There is nothing wrong in itself
with school spirit and
demonstrations of support for the
school's teams. We all need
something to identify with, to
experience vicarious success
through. And as Mr. Gwathmey
astutely observed the other day, if
fraternities really feel that strongly
about supporting the team, they
should demonstrate it
spontaneously - not because of the
incentive of filthy lucre or kegs of
beer.

There is something wrong,
however, with the idea - offered
by one of the perpetrators of this
latest atrocity - that we all owe
our players some tangible gesture of
our adulation. Students should play
football because they enjoy the
game or need to finance their
education, not because they expect
or thrive upon the rapt devotion or
mindless float-building of their
fellow students. If they expect
otherwise, they should have gone
elsewhere to play. I don't really
think many of our players feel this
way (would most of them, living as
they are on Alderman Road, see the
decorations anyway?), and any
arguments to the contrary are both
specious and conflicting with the
University's long tradition of
anti-professionalism in athletics.

I am more concerned with the
fraternities themselves and with the
fact that their self-governing body,
the IFC, has given its blessing to
such a wretched excess. In past
years, the "decorations" have run
from the merely trite and witless to
the vulgar and blatantly obscene
(and at a time when IFC leaders
have been piously promoting "an
improved image of fraternities in
the community"). Each year the
contest has grown until it is now
totally out of proportion. Can you
believe that a total of $385 in
prizes is being offered the two
winners?

Fraternity men have been
bemoaning the decline of their
system since about 1929, but the
fraternities today seem as strong as
ever. How they will fare in the next
decade, when the existence of so
many institutions related to higher
education is being challenged, is
another matter. They will have to
defend themselves against charges
of irrelevance and of detriment to
the learning environment with far
greater skill than they've had to
show to date. I believe they can
play an important part in the larger
academic community - as a system
of residence, for example - but
they will have to adopt a new
academic seriousness and cast aside
such extravagances and vulgarities
as hell nights, policies of blatant
discrimination that betray the
hypocrisy of their talk of
"brotherhood," and rah-rah
exhibitionism. "Decoration"
contests for big money and dubious
motives definitely fall within this
third category.

The University's fraternities are
particularly well suited, given a
change of attitude, to fulfill the
role I described above: they have
maintained an intimacy in size,
they have enriched the life of the
University, and they can continue
to contribute by providing a lively
social environment and a school of
manners - and I use neither
"social" nor "manners" in the
usual, narrow sense of the word.

But if "decorations" contests -
manufactured, saleable school spirit
- are the trend of the future, then
we are descending to the social and
intellectual level of the Boosters
Club of Dubuque, Iowa.

Such behavior may be fine in
Dubuque, and Greek Weeks,
fraternity "sings" and neon lights in
the front yard may be just the thing
at colleges in Iowa and elsewhere in
the nation, but we at the University
have honored a different tradition.
We have made too much, of course,
of our self-styled superiority over
mere "state universities" (while
ignoring how far, in some respects,
we might lag behind Michigan,
California, Texas or our neighbors
in Chapel Hill), but if there's
anything worth saving in our
tradition it's a sense of proportion
and taste and gentlemanly
moderation.

It may be a big jump from
paper mache portrayals of "Whip
the Wildcats" and other clever
slogans to such abstractions, but
there are still a few people around
(fewer every day, I fear) who can
the implication. That's why I
am so concerned when a person like
the president of the IFC, who
should be setting standards, claims
some mandate from "the people"
to sponsor such contests (although
plans seem to have been rather well
advanced before the Governing
Board's "mandate" was ever
sought).

"What's the Incentive?" an IFC
official rhetorically asks in a letter
urging houses to participate in the
contest. Aside from the "wild
prizes (that) make not competing a
big mistake," there's the chance, he
tells us, to impress visiting alumni
and rushees. Most alumni, I suspect,
would be so thoroughly grossed out
by such spectacles as to wonder
what the University had become.
As for rushees, I suggest they look
at those well-established houses
that have contributed the most to
the University through the years to
see if they have any such clutter
out in front.