University of Virginia Library

Letters- Law Teacher Observes An Overlooked Point

I have just read your editorial of May 1
in which you deplore the "Defeat of the
Surcharge" to the student activities fee,
which would have gone to benefit the
transitional program.

As the member of the Student Activities
Committee who made the motion resulting
in that committee's decision that it lacked
jurisdiction, I write to suggest that perhaps
you have overlooked a point of some
importance.

If SAC had passed on the merits of the
case, favorably or unfavorably, it would
have been asserting that this important
action of Council was subject to its review
and that on this significant matter it had the
right and power to interpose its judgment
between Council and the Board of Visitors.
SAC in fact, for reasons which I believe you
understand, had no such power and, in my
opinion, wisely said so.

What was involved was not a mere
technicality but the question of Council's
subordination to or freedom from review of
its actions by administrative committees. If
there is to be review it should be by the
proper body.

I should have supposed that Council and
your editors would have been pleased that
one such committee refrained from asserting
a control over student affairs which it
recognized it did not have.

Editorial Comments

The front page of The Cavalier Daily is
not the place for editorial comment -
rather it is the place for reporting the news.
The headline story on the gubernatorial
candidates is a gross misrepresentation of
the facts - whatever the reporter may
personally think about the candidates
should not distort his reporting. If he
cannot suppress his personal political preferences,
perhaps he should not be the one to
cover political stories. The Cavalier Daily
has an obligation to the university community
to report the news - and the news
should be reported as objectively as
possible. Veracity is still a constraint on a
free press.

Martha J. Plummer
Grad. Bus. 1

—ed.

'Poppycock'

I write in reply to Mr. Papoun who filled
your columns with pure "poppycock"
concerning the recent appearance of
Congressman Allard Lowenstein. It is
beyond my comprehension that any third
year law student at the University of
Virginia, living in the twentieth century
could take such an aristocratic and
condescending attitude towards Mr.
Lowenstein, his ideas and the "juveniles"
(e.g. the overflow crowd in Wilson Hall)
who came to hear him and left with a
certain awareness and conviction that "the
crisis in democracy" can and might be
overcome.

To give a comprehensive and accurate
reply to Mr. Papoun's antagonistic remarks
would a) be giving it undue credit and b)
would involve myself in a search similar to a
hunt for grains of sand at Virginia Beach.
Rather, I would believe it more worthwhile
turning my comments towards Mr. Lowenstein.

Mr. Lowenstein is an anomaly in
American politics. He is one of those rare
animals who says what he believes and says
it well. No discerning individual who heard
him speak for two hours in the Law School
Lounge (after his formal remarks were over)
could in his right mind label this man a
"radical demagogue." He is, rather, a man
sensitive to the problems of the times, be
they on college campuses or the ghettos of
our cities. Mr. Lowenstein represents a new
breed of politicians who emerged out of the
holocaust of 1968. To equate students at
the University with "infants, cretins, and
others who cannot exercise consistently
mature judgments" is to miss entirely the
meaning of this past year's events.