University of Virginia Library

Letters To The Editor

Memorial Gymnasium
In Sorry Situation

I write out of concern for the
students and faculty of this university
relating to the use of
Memorial Gymnasium by those
persons not associated with the
University community. I do not
understand why these persons,
some of whom come with the
prime intent to steal, are afforded
the use of the gymnasium when
they have not even paid a nominal
entrance fee.

The Security Department, which
reports almost daily incident at the
gymnasium, has continually put
pressure on the administration to
make private these University facilities.
I wish to express my support
of the Security Department in this
situation. It seems to me a sorry
situation when students and faculty
members must be plagued by
overcrowded and burglary-infested
facilities of which they themselves
are supposed to receive benefits
from.

The Memorial Gymnasium is in
a sorry plight. During the week it is
overcrowded, and on weekends it is
worse. But this is not the worst of
it; since there is no door-check at
any time to see who is coming in,
unsupervised children of about the
age of five or six are wandering
around the gym, playing dangerously
with the weights and pulleys, and
using the track as a slide, just barely
preventing themselves from slipping
some 25 feet down to the basketball
courts below by grabbing on to
the track guardrail. Not as serious
but certainly annoying are the dogs
parading through the locker-rooms,
depositing their excrement in various
corners. The youngsters, moreover,
cannot resist the toilet tissue,
and strew it all over the place,
including the sink drains, into
which they wad it to clog them.

On weekends the gym is open,
but there are apparently not even
maintenance men on hand. At a
minimum, I recommend to the
administration that if it does not
want to be responsible by neglect
for the death or serious injury of
some youngster, that it provide
some supervisory personnel at all
times. I would also strongly recommend
that a door-check be set up
so that only students, faculty, and
their guests, for whom the former
would be responsible, be admitted.
The gymnasium is just barely
adequate to the needs of the
students and faculty of the University,
but when local high school
students start sharing the facilities,
those facilities are inadequate. An
overcrowded weightlifting room,
especially one in which elementary
school children are wandering
about, is a remarkably dangerous
place.

We would like to call to the
attention of the University as a
whole an incredible situation which
has arisen in the Architecture
School. For an institution that
aspires to such high academic
standards, the University of
Virginia has failed in at least one
respect. It would seem that funds
could be allocated such that
libraries, which play a vital role in
providing an education, could keep
decent hours seven days a week. At
this point, the Architecture School
Library is only open until 5 p.m.
five days a week and closed for
lunch hour.

A further point of aggravation
was the following notice posted
outside the library today:

"e librarian is ill. The library
is closed. Feb. 9, 1970." Seems
incredible, doesn't it?

I would like to publicly apologize
to Mr. Cauthen for my letter of
December 10 to The Cavalier Daily.

Having spoken to Mr. Cauthen, I
am now aware that most people
have interpreted my letter in a way
I did not intend. This I regret, for
my attack was not meant to be
personal, but rather was meant to
provoke the guidance system to
improve.

It was also not my intent to
bring Mr. Cauthen's integrity, competence,
or sincerity into question.
My personal opinion and regard for
Mr. Cauthen is quite high and I
regret that people interpreted my
letter in such a way that the
opposite appeared true.