University of Virginia Library

Welcome To The Hive

Starting today and continuing, through
Saturday, the members of the Board of
Visitors will make their bi-monthly visit to
Mr. Jefferson's University. As in past years,
the Visitors who sit on the Student Activities
and Athletics Committee will devote one or
maybe two hours listening to student
complaints and opinions as voiced by the
officers of Student Council. Due to this lack
of adequate time, Student Council President
Tom Collier has decided, and wisely so, to
limit his comments to the one or two
problems at this school which rapidly are
reaching crisis proportions.

We welcome the Board to the grumbling
hive. You will spend your next few days
talking but probably deciding little; feasting
and imbibing at dinners and receptions;
listening to Gov. Holton; and watching the
Wahoos try to cross the goal line for the first
time this season. You will be treated as a
visiting dignitary, and when you leave
Saturday evening you will not have seen what
the University of Virginia is like today. You
will not sense the problems developing here
because the arrangements made for your visit
make sure that you avoid them.

Much of your time this weekend will be
spent discussing growth and the Master Plan
of the University. You will hear, and probably
not for the first or last time, President
Shannon's convincing arguments for
numerical expansion. You will see Paul
Saunier's intricate charts and maps, with the
pretty blue ovals and green squares, plotting
the physical growth of the school. The entire
presentation is quite impressive. But only on
paper.

Rather than spend your three days on the
Grounds being herded from meeting to
cloistered meeting, we invite you to break
loose, walk around the University, and
examine the school as it is in reality, not as it
is on paper. Don't park in the places reserved
for you; try to find a space on your own and
see how late you'll be for those meetings. Try
standing in front of Cabell Hall during a break
between classes or walking in the sardine cans
called hallways. Try to find a seat in Norman
Graebner's history class or Douglas Day's
English class, both of which meet this
morning at 11.

After class, stand in line at the Newcomb
Hall Grill waiting to grab a not-so-quick
lunch. In the afternoon, try to use the tennis
courts or the basketball floor at Memorial
Gym. Stand on line at Contract Cafeteria for
40 minutes waiting for dinner. Tonight, try to
find a book you need and a place to study in
Alderman Library. Finally, when you give up,
go to one of the closets called a dorm room in
the basement on one of the McCormick Road
houses and try to sleep with the water
fountain outside your door discharging all
night.

President Shannon's land-use experts will
tell you that 18,000 students can be
accommodated on the central Grounds and that
all the school needs is money from the State
funds. It will be three to eight years before
students set foot in those buildings. But
remember, in the meantime the University
will continue to grow by an estimated 25 per
cent or to 16,000 students by 1975-76. Ask
almost any student or any professor with the
nerve to voice his opinion. They will tell you
that this school is uncomfortably
overcrowded today. We can only speculate
how bad conditions will be in three years.

Before deciding to back the
administration's growth plans, consider
carefully the facts presented to you by the
non-administrators you meet in the next few
days. Answer the question "Would I like to be
a student here in 1976?" Our answer,
unfortunately, has to be NO!