University of Virginia Library

Wallowing Whiteness

The University of Virginia, wallowing in its
whiteness like a hippopotamus in the mud, took the
first noticeable step toward lumbering out of that
whiteness when it hired a black admissions officer
last month. The discussions prior to that step, and
those since, centered on the problems of finding a
sufficient number of "qualified" black applicants to
penetrate the whiteness with any degree of
significance. The opinion which has emerged from it
all is that it is unfair to judge black applicants by
white standards, or, more generally, that it is unfair
and unrealistic to judge applicants from
underprivileged backgrounds by standards geared to
privilege. The black admissions officer, it is hoped,
will have the insight to know what standards can
realistically be applied to various applicants, so that
those with the potential to master the academic
rigors of the University can gain admission even, for
example, if their college board scores are low.

As usual, what the University of Virginia is
talking about is already in practice elsewhere. The
following article, from The Wall Street Journal,
describes projects and efforts of the sort we are only
considering which are being tried at other colleges.
We present the article here because it illuminates
starkly many of the problems and implications of
some projects which are being tried, including their
mistakes as well as their successes. There is a lot to
be learned from each.

Our main reason for reprinting the article,
though, aside from its lessons and messages, is to
demonstrate the fact that other schools are at least
trying while we stand still. The attitude expressed
again and again by those quoted in the article is one
which is too long overdue here. It is best summarized
in the last paragraph by the chancellor of the
University of Illinois: "It's relatively easy to select
10 kids and graduate them, but that doesn't solve a
social problem, which is what we are trying to do."

Every center of learning has a moral obligation to
assume Illinois' attitude. Every center of
enlightenment has an ethical obligation to look at
society around it, evaluate it, and take whatever
steps are called for to "lead the way" or set the
proper standards for ameliorating the problems of
that society by conscientious efforts, and, above all,
by its own example. This university, so far, is
content to sit back and make proper
pronouncements which are vox et praeteria nihil.

At the outset of a new semester, at the beginning
of a new year, we ask those who make the policy for
the University to assume a new attitude, one which
is commensurate with its role as the beacon of
intelligence in the state of Virginia and appropriate
to its position as a major national university. We ask
them to dismiss the attitude of accommodating
tokenism which must be so embarrassing to the
community of the University's sister institutions by
adopting an attitude such as those demonstrated
below. Only when it does so can we be certain that it
is a credit to the world and to the memory of its
founder.

Reprinted with permission from The Wall Street
Journal.

URBANA, Ill. - Nancy R., an 18-year-old Negro
freshman at the University of Illinois here, was
"delighted" last fall when she was admitted to the
university under a special program for youths from
"disadvantaged backgrounds." Now, after five
months on campus, she's far less enthusiastic.
"People here make you feel different," she says.
"We're treated like the dumb group."

Nancy's resentment partially explains the rough
sledding that universities are encountering with their
new programs to extend educational opportunities
to young people - mostly Negroes - who can't pay
the bill or don't meet normal admission requirements.

Many of the youths recruited for such programs
haven't been the grateful, diligent students some
college administrators expected. Rather, they have
been in the vanguard of the protest movements that
recently have wracked dozens of campuses across the
country, stretching from San Francisco State College
to Queens College in New York.

In addition, schools are having to make difficult
readjustments in their curriculums and methods to
accommodate the new arrivals, whose backgrounds
differ markedly from those of their predominantly
middle-class student bodies. And some colleges that
have eased admissions policies for the poor now find
themselves the target of heated and possibly damaging
criticism from alumni, townspeople and legislators.

Intensified Problems

These problems could intensify. A recent report
by the prestigious Carnegie Commission on Higher
Education, sponsored by Carnegie Corp. of New
York, called for a massive, Federally financed effort
to assure a college education for all qualified young
people, regardless of their financial resources.
Educators agree that most colleges' experiences to
date with "education-for-all" projects make it clear
they aren't yet equipped to handle large numbers of
the poor.

At San Francisco State, students brought in
through a program that recruits and gives scholarship
help to talented but impoverished youths have taken
part in the sometimes violent strikes that have
crippled that campus for the past three months: The
youths' demands include greater student autonomy
and more special programs for minority group
members. About one-third of San Francisco State's
750 black students were admitted under the project.

At Brandeis University, a private school in
Waltham, Mass., black students enrolled in pre-freshman
courses aimed at preparing them for college
helped seize a campus building to underscore
demands for a special "black studies" curriculum.
Twenty-two of the 120 Negro students at Brandeis
are in the pre-college course.

SEEK Program

At Queens College, part of the City University of
New York system, students in a program called
SEEK (Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge)
forced the school to close two days this
month. The students had been demonstrating for the
ouster of a white SEEK administrator. The program,
begun in 1965, covers some 3,000 CUNY students,
700 of them at Queens College. It recruits poverty-area
youths who have shown they may be able to do
college-level work even though they lack the usual
academic background.

College officials attribute the outspokenness of
the special-project students largely to the rising tide
of militancy on college campuses generally these
days. They add that for many youths enrolled in
such projects, the campus provides their first
exposure to student and black activism.

Nevertheless, observers say they discern an
additional edge of bitterness in the protests of
students recruited for the special programs.

"Some administrators feel they are entitled to
gratitude from these kids - they take a 'look what
we've done for you' attitude - but that's not the
tune for 1969," says Leslie Berger, who administers
SEEK for the entire CUNY system. He adds: "We've
taken a relatively suppressed group, dropped them
on a campus and told them they are free. In light of
today's atmosphere, we shouldn't be surprised when
they don't quietly accept things they don't like."

At least some Negro leaders, however, suggest
that the black students would be well-advised to
devote less time to protest. Roy Wilkins, executive
director of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, recently said he thought
the students "ought to be in the libraries studying
and getting degrees so they can do some good."

Illinois' program to extend scholarship aid to
poor students who normally wouldn't qualify for it
hasn't been without incident. Last September,
shortly after the 565 students recruited for the
program were assembled here, many of them staged
an angry demonstration at the Student Union center.
The uproar resulted in $3,400 worth of damaged
furniture in the building and the arrest of more than
200 project students.

Misunderstandings

Students and faculty members here attribute the
outburst at least partly to misunderstandings that
developed while the university hastily organized its
Special Educational Opportunities Program (called
"Project 500" for short) after Martin Luther King's
assassination last spring. They say that some of the
students in the program apparently had been led to
believe that their aid would come solely in the form
of outright grants. When they arrived on campus,
they were surprised to learn that some of it would
consist of loans that had to be repaid. More anger
was sparked when many of the students found
themselves transferred to older residential facilities
from the new dormitory rooms they were assigned
during the orientation period.

The University sought to sooth Project 500
enrollees by limiting its own disciplinary action
against those arrested to reprimands. At the same
time, the school has adopted a "hands off" policy
toward criminal charges of "mob action" still
pending against many of the demonstrators.

But the university's actions haven't been tough
enough to satisfy some critics of the program,
including some Illinois state legislators. Rep. Charles
W. Clabaugh, the influential former chairman of the
state assembly's education committee, says the
reprimands "weren't even a slap on the wrist" for
the demonstrators. He asserts that the project "is
bound to lower standards" at the university and
wants it cut back. The university hasn't agreed to
this action, but it has promised to limit future
admissions under the program to in-state residents;
about 17% of present enrollees come from outside
Illinois.

Illinois' main problems with Project 500, however,
don't stem from protest demonstrators. Project
enrollees haven't been involved in any major
incidents on the campus since the September
trouble; indeed, faculty members interviewed here
unanimously assert that, if anything, the new
students seem to be more serious about their studies
than the rest of the student body.

But the university has had to alter some of its
instructional methods to meet the needs of the
recruits, as well as set up remedial classes in such
subjects as English and mathematics. "The kids have
the aptitude for college, but in the beginning, at
least, some of them need special attention to help
them become accustomed to college-level work,"
says Lillian Katz, a professor of education. "They
can't get along with just mediocre teaching."

The university has moved to reduce the size of
classes involving project students. Some classes in
freshmen English composition, for instance, have
been cut to 15 students from the usual 20 to 22. An
introductory psychology course that used to be
taught with taped television lecture now has a "live"
professor.

One professor who found his Project 500
students submitting poor written work asked them
to write a few compositions for each other instead of
for him. "Their criticisms of one another turned out
to be far more effective than mine," he says. "The
quality of their writing improved phenomenally."

The presence of the project students has prompted
some Illinois professors to change their grading
methods. David Tyack, a professor of education,
now lets all his students repeat exams and papers on
which they've done poorly. "Those kids made me
see that education shouldn't be a punitive enterprise
involving punishment for failure in terms of bad
grades," he says. "Where did we ever get the idea
that everyone has to be right the first time?"

Financial help available to students in Project 500
ranges from a few hundred dollars to full tuition and
room and board, valued at $1,800 for state residents
and $2,400 for out-of-staters. But generous as this
aid is, it doesn't solve all the problems of a few very
poor students.

For instance, one female freshman recruited for
the project says her wardrobe consists of "a couple
skirts and blouses," so she doesn't go on many dates.
This Christmas vacation she faced the prospect of
remaining on campus alone because she didn't have
bus fare home; a sympathetic professor paid her fare
from his own pocket.

The university has moved to aid these students by
giving them unclaimed items of clothing from its
lost-and-found departments and by distributing
funds from private donations it receives. It also has
set up a program to provide jobs for project students
who need them.

Strange Feelings

More difficult to deal with are the feelings of
strangeness some black students feel in their new
environment. This problem is especially severe at
Illinois, which has a smaller proportion of Negroes
enrolled on its quiet main campus in this central
Illinois town than do most urban institutions. The
550 blacks among the 565 students recruited for the
special program make up a majority of the Negro
students on campus; this year there are 900 Negroes
in Illinois' student body of some 30,000.

Project 500 students thus are highly visible here,
and some of them are uncomfortable in the
spotlight. "Anytime you go somewhere, people ask
you 'Are you in the project?' " says Paula Harper, a
freshman from Chicago. "It's kind of a stigma. The
other students see all the help and special classes we
get, so they automatically figure we're not intelligent."

Despite university efforts to integrate Project 500
students with the rest of the student body (many
enrollees share dormitory rooms with non-project
students), most students recruited for the program
tended to stick together in their early months on
campus. That's still mostly the case, although some
students have begun seeking new friendships.

"We segregated ourselves at the beginning because
we felt more comfortable that way, but now I'm
trying to improve my relationships with whites,"
says Raymond Hicks, a freshman from Chicago. He
maintains that the demonstration "helped us gain
acceptance on the campus generally." He says:
"Lately white kids have been telling us that if we
need help, we should let them know."

Students and professors here don't feel that
Project 500 will proceed indefinitely without further
incidents. One likely target for some future protests
by black students is Illinois' fraternity system; only
one Negro student at the university currently belong
to a fraternity that isn't all black.

Yet university officials say that their commitment
to the program has been strengthened by the
first year's experience. Chancellor Jack W. Peltason
admits that Project 500 has sometimes seemed too
large and that the university still faces difficulties in
handling so many students with special problems.
But he stresses the university's opposition to a
cutback.

"It's relatively easy to select 10 kids and graduate
them, but that doesn't solve a social problem, which
is what we are trying to do," he says.