The Cavalier daily :: Wednesday, November 4, 1970 :: University of Virginia Library

The not-so-subtle allusions to
autocratic administrative techniques
are eminently appropriate.
The administration's apparent
schizophrenia about proper channels,
reason and persuasion makes
an intriguing study — if it were not
so crucial and potentially disruptive.
The very manner the code was
announced as a fait accompli helps
cause the unrest the code seeks to
ameliorate.

May's Daze

The entire code's raisond'etre
stems from last May's daze — the
liberation of buildings and minds so
disruptive of timeless tradition. The
administration was, and is, justifiably
concerned about coercive and
non-rational forms of expression.
Building take-overs do not promote
the free exchange of ideas, they
limit the freedom of ROTC cadets
who want to use the buildings for
more humane purposes, they seek
to coerce rather than persuade, so
argue the administrators.

But the new code of conduct,
now that is something else. It promotes
the free exchange of ideas —
ex post facto, it does not limit the
freedom of anyone wishing to use
the ROTC buildings for humane
purposes during working hours, it
seeks to persuade such people as
the Judiciary Committee, after a
student has been summarily
suspended.

Mr. Shannon beautifully states
the need for student self-government
in his introduction to the
code and then somehow assumes
that because Jay Wilkinson and
some other former U.Va. students
are on the Board they qualify to
self-regulate the student body.

After years of patient persuasion
by students that we definitely need
a sense of participation, the reality
of self-government, if we are not to
make a mockery of Mr. Jefferson's
concept of the community of scholars,
the administration still
announces rather than persuades.
Perhaps they feel students just
don't care anymore. Perhaps they
know the student body would not
come up with such carefully repressive
but civil libertarianly brilliant
legal gems as interim suspension.
Perhaps ....

Paviloneers

But surely the U.Va. student
body will not take it lying down or
freaking out. Despite the priorities
of the Paviloneers, we should
demand nothing less from ourselves
than responsible self-government;
we should demand nothing less
from ourselves than an effort to
understand the diametric polarities
of D. Alan Williams and Tom
Doran, we should realize that
accepting rules from above legitimates
rule from above, that in a
"community of scholars" we rule
ourselves.

It is a shame that the administration
feels it is more efficacious to
help the students by devising a new
code than by considering ways we
can help America re-order its priorities.
The administration's real concern
for a just and more humane
society is camouflaged by its
methods. The message their
emphasis makes is clear — repression
and law'n order, not remedial
action and justice, are paramount
answers to social ills and the
protests they engender. Until we
can get beyond the stage of telling
each other how to act and instead
can create together methods to
build a better society, our education
will be incomplete.

Preppie Perpetuation

By perpetuating prep-school
practices the administration is not
so subtly saying that the educational
process is something that filters
down from above, from visitors and
administrators and faculty — who
have a broader perspective, a longer
view, a bigger corner of the truth
market. It just is not so. And
perhaps by saying, "Thanks just the
same, but we are here to learn, not
to submit, "Thanks just the same,
but we are here to learn, not to
submit," we will learn. Or perhaps
we have already learned that
power's where it's at, that power
concedes nothing without a
demand, that the demand must be
on ourselves, a demand to generate
a power more responsible, more
reasonable, more liberating.