University of Virginia Library

Victory

Like Kremlin watchers, observers of the
University's Board of Visitors have to rely on
the flimsiest bits of evidence and the handouts
that the Board makes public in their attempt
to discern exactly what it is that motivates the
Board and for what reasons they come to the
conclusions they reach. And despite the
reported presence of an electronic eavesdropper
at Friday's meeting, speculation is still all
we have in trying to figure out why the Board
chose to reject the plan for a ten-year
transition period for co-educating the College
and changed instead to a two-year period with
female enrollment figures higher than those
recommended by Mr. Hereford's committee.

What are know in the journalistic profession
as "well-informed sources," (not electronically
informed), say that the Board acted
as it did with great reluctance; there are
undoubtedly Board members who would still
like to see the College remain a male
sanctuary. Its change of heart came about
because of a basic fact of university life
known to militant students for some time.
The Board was in a position where it stood to
lose more by exercising its preferences than
by changing its mind and doing something
progressive.

The way in which the change was
accomplished is extremely interesting, and
ought to be a valuable lesson to those who
might wish to effect similar changes in the
future.

The most important factor weighing in the
Board members' minds was undoubtedly the
threat of court action, a threat that seemed
quite likely to materialize in view of what the
Court said on September 29. For this, the
proponents of coeducation owe a debt of
gratitude to the American Civil Liberties
Union, an oft-maligned and misunderstood
group. Such court action, with or without the
ACLU, is an option that students have for too
long disregarded as too difficult or too time
consuming. It is an option, however, that can
work, as the coeducation case proves: It might
be interesting, for example, to sue the state of
Virginia for maintaining a de facto segregated
college system as in the case of the University
and Virginia State.

But there are often cases where a
University policy is repugnant and yet wholly
within the bounds of the law. The coeducation
issue presented an example of how
student action within administrative channels
might still bring significant pressure to bear on
the decision makers. We refer to Kevin
Mannix's minority report which was presented
to the Board along with the majority report of
Mr. Hereford. Though there was little
evidence that the Board wanted to listen to
Mr. Mannix, it agreed to do so after some
pressure was exerted by Student Council. The
existence of a minority report was probably in
itself an added impetus towards the decision
the Board finally took.

Finally there was the opinion of student
groups, expressed through practically all of
what the Administration fondly refers to as
the "proper channels" - Student Council,
publications, etc. Like the Chinese water-drop
torture, all of these little pressures eventually
added up to something that the Board could
hardly ignore, though they probably would
not have been decisive if it were not for the
court action.

The plan that the Board came up with is at
least a more palatable one. It rejects the old
notion that female admissions cannot be at
the expense of male admissions; it rejects the
idea of a ten-year period during which female
admission would be on a quota basis, for a
two-year transition, during which some
reasonable projections of the impact of
women on the College can be made and plans
formulated to accommodate those changes.
That the court will accept the plan seems
highly likely.

That the Board's plan came only after
court pressure and time-delaying reports, blue
ribbon and otherwise, is unfortunate; that it
chose to reverse itself and completely open
the College to women by 1972 surprised
many. Perhaps the decision, whatever the
reasons behind it, marks an era where the
Board will not be so intransigent as it has
appeared in the past.