University of Virginia Library

... And The Strike

Tomorrow is an important day. Its
significance goes far beyond the pastoral life
of the academic village. The call for a general
strike which has been sounded leaves it to
each student what his response will be.
Whether or not to attend classes is obviously
an individual decision, just as the
responsibility for a decision to strike, picket
or otherwise demonstrate rests with the
individual.

President Nixon's decision to escalate the
Indochina War has already prompted strikes at
more than 60 colleges and universities across
the country. At Princeton classes have been
cancelled for the remainder of the year; there
will be no final exams this spring there. The
situation at Kent State in Ohio yesterday had
reached crisis proportions. An atmosphere of
alarm is welling up in what could make May a
stormy month.

Those who called the strike are not doing
so simply to bring the University into a
fashionable conformity with other schools.
They have called the strike out of a sincere
conviction that the University can no longer
continue to function normally while ignoring
a course of events which affects each of us
more than we realize.

It has become clearer and clearer during
the course of the war that such pleas for an
end to the fighting fall on deaf ears in the
White House. Rather, the Administration's
response has seemed to be one heavy handed
ploy after another aimed at polarizing opinion
on both the left and the right. Perhaps the
upcoming demonstrations will have no effect
on the Pentagon generals or the makers of
foreign policy, but there exist things that
must be said, no matter how often. There are
judgments which must be made. As long as
Mr. Nixon wages war in our names, the
consequences are our own.

The overriding purpose of the class
boycott is not to disrupt the function of the
University. It goes much further than so mean
and futile a goal as that. We face questions
which demand straight answers and sounder
thinking than those which have placed this
country in its present predicament.

We do hope that the speeches, rallies and
discussions of tomorrow and Thursday will
give students a chance to unite in effective
action in order to avoid the polarization
which leads us nowhere. The students who
called the strike come from no defined point
on the spectrum, from no revolutionary camp.
Their wish is that we all refrain from normal
daily routines long enough to consider what is
happening now in Southeast Asia and in
Washington. Violence will serve no valid
cause, here or anywhere. This is a time to
think and speak out. And strike.