University of Virginia Library

And So To February

The weekend's Board of Visitors meeting
should meet with mixed reaction, at best,
from the student body. The long-awaited
verdict of the Woody committee to study the
need for co-education at the University, so
carefully guarded until now, doubtless proved
gratifying to most students (and faculty), but
everyone knows too well that it is meaningless
until acted on at the next Board meeting. The
decision to let the Student Council disperse
Student Activities Fee monies more or less
autonomously is also doubtless more or less
agreeable to students. After that, though,
there is not much the Board did that will be at
all agreeable to students, and, indeed, we
suspect that there is too much it did (or did
not do) which will prove disagreeable to
students.

We are told that a "mix-up" in the dean's
office kept copies of the Student Council's
report on its proposal concerning the
delegation to student organizations of the
power to legislate and enforce rules and
regulations, in particular in the dorms, from
being sent out to the Visitors before the
meeting. The Council had been assured that
the reports would be sent out; but when Rick
Evans went before the Board to present the
proposals the members knew little about them
and requested "more time" to study them
before acting. So one more matter vital to
students was postponed to the next Board
meeting.

On the issue of the open meeting of the
Board of Visitors, one on which students had
made their feelings particularly evident, they
were "put off" again. The Board had the
petition and further visible evidence of those
feelings right outside the windows, and yet it
failed to respond. Its statement indicated
clearly the need for just the sort of
communication the petitioners sought. The
Board "expressed its interest
in ... establishment of machinery for
communication between the Board of Visitors
and the student body as long as such
communication was channeled through the
President."

Considering that the set-up thus described
is the current one, and considering that it is
the necessity of channeling of communication
through the President that has proved so
unsatisfactory to the students (the President
certainly seems to have failed to communicate
to the Board the intensity of students' feelings
on this matter and on the matter of self-rule
for the dorms), our estimation is that the
Board's decision is a complete repudiation of
what the students sought. After all, it failed
even to give the students token gratification
by allowing the president of the Student
Council in, and it kept him waiting three
hours to tell him so. The announcement that,
"on the request of the President, the Board's
Student Affairs and Athletics Committee will
be pleased to hold a special meeting with
elected representatives of the Student Body
invited to attend by the President to discuss
further any requests made by the Student
Council through the President," is little, if any
appeasement.

We can only imagine that the minuses that
figure in the students' mixed reaction to the
results of the Board's meeting must surely
outweigh the occasional plus or two. From
the student point of view, a lot hung on the
success of this meeting, on which so many
issues necessarily focused, and there was not
much success. What the reaction will be we
dare not speculate, but we know lively days
are ahead. We also know that all the liveliness
therein will come to a head at February's
Board meeting, because all the issues which
depend on December's meeting now depend
on that one, and, in so depending, they have
the company of the issue of December's
meeting in itself.