University of Virginia Library

Issue-Mongering

Sometimes students have a disturbing
tendency to create issues. They look for a
request that has the color of moral righteousness
but which they know the administration
cannot grant; they make the request a demand
and the confront the administration with it.
It's their thing, but it is primarily destructive,
for no good can come of it. Only bitterness,
recrimination and violence.

Last year it was C. Stuart Wheatley, that
patron of Massive Resistance who now sits on
the Board of Visitors; nobody really expected
that C. Stuart Wheatley would resign or that
any repudiation he might make would make
any practical difference. Yet, they pressed
their cause. They were right and they did
symbolically raise the question of racism but
in the end they accomplished little.

This year's front-runner for the Futile
Protest Award appears to be an issue brought
up at Student Council Tuesday night. It seems
that the Virginia Bankers' Association donated
a sum of money to establish two chairs,
one in Economics and one in Government and
Foreign Affairs. The trouble is that they are
to be named after two Virginia politicians,
Carter Glass (whose contribution to the
Federal Reserve Law makes him a logical
candidate for an economics chair) and A.
Willis Robertson. Both men's attitude toward
black people could only be described as racist,
and naming chairs after them does not really
jive with the University's avowed intention to
change its image in the black community. So
Council requested that a committee be
appointed to suggest changes in the names.
Undoubtedly, Council's efforts will lead to
some sort of suggestion for new names. Just as
assuredly the VBA will refuse to go along with
the change, feeling that the donor should have
the right to name the chairs. Council will ask,
and radical students will demand, that the
money be returned, knowing full well that the
University's commitment to a better image
can be bought and that the money will not be
returned. Council will be morally right, but so
what? The end result will still be a mess.

Perhaps a compromise can be arranged.
Chairs often go unfilled until a certain type of
scholar can be found to sit in them. Supposing
an agreement were reached that the Robertson
Chair in Government and Foreign Affairs
not be filled until an eminent black scholar in
African affairs or black politics can be found,
and the Carter Glass Chair be reserved for a
professor specializing in poverty and ghetto
economics. Both sides would be appeased.
The University would still have its 30 pieces
of silver and the students would have made
their protest far more constructive.