University of Virginia Library

Athletic Dorms

In presenting another plan for housing
his football players in the University's
Alderman Road dormitories, Mr. Blackburn
appears to have learned several lessons
from the furor that was raised last spring
when a more rigid "athletic dorm" plan
was proposed. This year's plan, already
approved by the players and reportedly by
the University administration, requires only
scholarship players to live together.
It spreads them among ten dormitories,
rather than concentrating them in one. It
makes exceptions for those players who
are dorm counselors, who wish to live on
the Lawn, or who have residence requirements
to fill in fraternity houses.

The new plan nevertheless is unsatisfactory.
Despite its flexible approach,
we fear it is the first step toward a much
more regimented system of life for the University's
athletes. Just because so many
exceptions are to be granted now, who is
to guarantee that they will exist next
next year or the year after when the idea
of having such athletic dorms will already
be established in students' and administrators'
minds? If next fall's season is a great
success, the plan would be hailed as an
important factor in building team spirit.
If the season is disastrous, perhaps the plan
would be abandoned. If, and this is much
more of a possibility, the season is a mixed
one, then it is quite likely that we would
hear that a more rigid system of athletic
housing is just the thing the University
needs.

One of the strongest arguments that
proponents of Mr. Blackburn's plan put
forth is that the team members approved
it by a majority of 75 to 80 per cent
(after Mr. Blackburn, to his consternation,
had been asked to leave the room). This
laudable absence of coercion is somewhat
deceptive, however. There was no secret
ballot, and it is likely as a result that
many of the younger players who will
be most affected by the plan were succumbing
to the influence of team captains
and other senior players who will not be
here next year. There is also the question
of whether the scholarship players, who
were a majority by far at the meeting,
felt they could vote against anything suggested
by a coach who represents the system
that brought them to the University and is
paying for their education.

Since any system of athletic dorms will
have far-reaching implications for the University,
we feel this is a matter that should
be referred for discussion not only to the
relatively few students directly involved but
to the University community as a whole.

It is not too late to stop the plan from
going into effect. The Housing Office, perhaps
remembering the empty dorms it has
on its hands, has given its approval to the
plan but might have second thoughts when
contemplating the destruction a group of
250-pounders might inflict on its Alderman
Road property. Opposition is very likely to
come from a number of traditional-minded
alumni; we remember quite well, for example,
the threat last spring by one member
of the Student Aid Foundation's board
not to give another cent if athletic dorms
were created.

It is very easy, of course, to fall back
on the old shibboleths of gentlemanly
amateurism and student athletes. Just because
these phrases have been worn thin
through use, however, doesn't mean that
they are no longer valid. Certainly any
institution that is aiming for academic excellence
and an exciting intellectual atmosphere
would do well to keep professionalism
out of its athletics. Exactly what is
"professional" and what is "amateur"
in sports is not always easy to decide-certainly
success and failure on the field
are not the sole property of one or the
other. But the segregating of a group of
players away from the rest of the student
body is certainly a symptom of "professionalism."

It is perhaps true that the "student
athlete" is a myth, that it is no longer
possible for any football player wherever he
lives to be a real part of the greater student
body. We regret this situation, but we can
hardly see it as an excuse to divorce the
football player even further from his University.
It should be a challenge, on the
other hand, to try to bring the students
and the athletes closer together.

We wish to repeat our suspicion that
this new proposal is just the first step,
whether intended or not, toward an undesirable
setting apart of the school's
athletes, who one day might be considered
not so much students as pieces of property
to be bought with scholarship money and
treated as the athletic establishment pleases.
It will doubtless be no time before Mr.
Gibson, a coach much less attuned to the
University's way of doing things than Mr.
Blackburn, will have his own plan for putting
the basketball players together.

There may be some connection, we must
admit, between team unity and team "togetherness."
That is one reason why the
football team will be eating another meal
together during the season. But if this
cohesion must be built on a residential basis,
too, surely it could be done on a voluntary
basis-five or ten players living together
because they wanted to, not because the
coach asked them.