University of Virginia Library

Crying Wolf

I would reply to the Student
Athletic Council's letter of the
February 11th Cavalier Daily by
nominating the SAC as charter
members of The Little Boy Who
Cried Wolf Society. The situation
which they so indignantly decry is
no more than a product of their
perhaps guilty imagination.

The logic of their letter is most
difficult to follow. It may well be
conceded that this University has a
racial problem, and also that it is
both unmannerly and unsportsmanlike
to boo or hurl ice at a member
of the opposing team. To attempt
to relate these so as to create a
spontaneous racial demonstration
from the events of the UNC
basketball game is not only absurd
but seeks to unnecessarily inflame
emotion. Personally, I cannot agree
that it "adds to the depravity of the
situation" that the target of the
boos was a black athlete.

Or does it? Perhaps the depravity
of the situation is in fact that the
SAC itself harbors such guilt
feelings about the black athlete at
Virginia that they would seek to
make it more reprehensible to be
unmannerly towards a black athlete
than a white one. Could the SAC at
this point examine their definition
of racism?

To my perhaps untrained eye it
seemed that the response was one
highly typical in University Hall
and was directed rather to an
incident on the sideline of the court
than to the color of Charles Scott's
skin.