University of Virginia Library

Political Parties

College political parties at the University
are approaching a crossroads in their development.
Both the Virginia Progressive Party and
the Jefferson Party will caucus this week to
choose candidates for the offices of Student
Council and the Judiciary Committee. The
candidates selected to run in the December
election will greatly determine the political
and idealogical course of the parties.

Both parties are relatively new on the
University political scene. The VPP was
formed in the spring of last year "to provide
an alternative to the fraternity-independent
split." During the spring campaign the VPP
candidates argued that the Student Council
had been controlled for too long by the
powerful fraternity monopoly embodied by
the two political societies - Skull and Keys
and Scepter. The VPP successfully placed four
of its five candidates on the Council with only
Steve Hayes of the Sceptre Society averting a
sweep.

In the past three elections the caucuses
only produced four successful Student Council
candidates. The now defunct University
Party, represented on the Student Council by
Ron Cass, Kevin Mannix, and Tony Sherman,
challenged caucus leadership four years ago.
VPP members now include representatives
Paul Bishop, Tom Gardner, Charles Murdock,
and Al Sinesky. These two parties along with
the successful Anarchist Party of two years
ago completely shattered the caucus control
on College politics.

In the early fall of this year a group of
caucus supporters formed a committee to
study the political future of the Skull and
Keys and Sceptre Societies. Their report
called for the dissolution of the two caucuses
and the formation of a new party hopefully
with a broader base of University support.

This year the VPP will have to run much
more on the merits of its candidates than on
the complaint that Student Council is
controlled mainly by conservative, fraternity-oriented
representatives. The college members
of the Council have voted on the most
pressing issues as a pretty cohesive unit this
year. If their programs were thwarted, it was
much more the fault of the representatives of
the other schools of the University than their
fellow college members.

The VPP will now be placed in a perhaps
ironic position of being an incumbent party
defending the actions and trends of the
Student Council in the fall of this year. For
the first time there could be no possible doubt
that the control of University politics is not in
the domain of the old University establishment.

The new Jefferson Party will have to select
its candidates with extreme care to avoid the
conservative stigma attached to the caucuses
and which would surely crush any new party.
Last spring during the campaign the conservative
label placed on the caucuses certainly
crushed the few liberals who ran under the
Societies' banner, even though they claimed
that they were running as individuals rather
than under a particular platform.

Joel Gardner, President of the JP, stated in
response to a question on his party's
philosophy that "the party will, we hope, not
be dedicated to any particular philosophy, but
will reflect the beliefs of its members.
Hopefully, however, the party will not be
seeking to nominate people that we believe to
have extremist views, such as Tom Gardner."
(member of the VPP).

If the JP runs candidates all along "right of
center" platform, they shall have little
success. As evidence from the past few
elections, JP leadership must realize that their
party cannot afford to run only conservative
candidates if they are to win. The VPP on the
other hand must come up with candidates
who will continue to draw upon a wide base
of support from the College electorate.

Since both parties are too young to have
come up with a true political philosophy, the
candidates who are selected to run will greatly
determine the course of the respective parties.
Hopefully, college students will closely
examine the merits of all the candidates and
not be swayed completely by party labels.

College politics needs at least two viable
parties which will make intelligent and
constructive comments on the many issues
facing the University and not spend their time
belittling each other.