University of Virginia Library

Letters To The Editor

Football Rules Should Open Eyes

The publication of the rules of
conduct for members of the
football team should open a few
more eyes to the real nature of the
Blackburn barony and of the Sebo
satrap. Who is watching the
watchmen? Quite justifiably, you
concluded that nobody was.

As a member of the Student
Council Committees on Athletics
and the Comprehensive Fee I
Interviewed the Budget Officer of
the University, Mr. Darryl W.
Bierly, Mr. Bierly, in the course of a
long and amicable discussion, noted
that he was streamlining accounting
procedures in the Comptroller's
Office. Under the new streamlined
procedure, the Athletic Department
has merely to submit a general
request for funds. If the request is
not above a half-million dollars, no
particular questions are asked about
how the money is disbursed. This
deliberate ignorance gives the
Athletic Department a free hand
with University - and our - funds.
But other interesting facts came
out.

Mr. Bierly, an admitted football
enthusiast, was unwilling to
dispense with the athletic fee as
part of the comprehensive fee and
to substitute cut-rate tickets for
students in its place. His reasons
were several: 1) the students now
have the equivalent, want it or not,
of a general cut-rate ticket; 2) the students, even if they never attend
an interscholastic athletic event,
receive more than their money's
worth from use of such facilities as
the tennis courts and the gym; 3)
although the football team supports
itself and the other sports through
the gate receipts that it takes in, the
athletic fee is essential for the
survival of the football team. (Sic!)

Now not only did Mr. Bierly
admit under further questioning to
not being able to prove that
football was more than, or even
just, self-supporting, he admitted
that he had no way of knowing
whether football did not really cost
more than it took in. He was not
even interested in pressing such an
investigation. He also had no figures
available to support his contention
that the athletic fee went for the
upkeep of the tennis courts or the
gym, etc. Indeed, the upkeep of
these facilities is more often than
not carried by Buildings and
Grounds and not by the Athletic
Department which pays little more
than bargain rates for use of
University Hall. Whether, indeed,
the intramural program costs even a
little more than a pittance is a
question whose answer lies buried
in the Athletic Department. What is
clear, however, is that the real
financial cost of interscholastic
athletics at UVa is larger than the
published figures. It is quite
probable, moreover, that the cost
of intramural athletics is even less
than it is generally made out to be.

It is also clear that, de facto, the
Athletic Department is financially
accountable, at present, to no one
at UVa, not even to the Budget
Officer of the University - it pays
to have a fan in the right place. The
smokescreen that the satrap and his
barons have thrown up around their
operations and the runaround
accorded by them to those seeking
straight answers to questions of
public interest lead one to wonder
whether these men especially are fit
to govern the public, let along the
private, lives of UVa's gladiators -
if indeed there should be such
control, and if indeed there should
be gladiators at all.

I write to correct part of the
information I gave your reporter
for the story on co-educational
housing next year. As it turned out
members of the Advisory
Committee on Co-Education who
also serve on the Housing
Committee did present the
Advisory Committee's proposals -
but the proposals were turned
down in favor of a weakened
version. My major objection is the
fact that Advisory Committee
members who had originated the
co-ed housing proposal were not
invited to make a presentation to
the Housing Committee.

At the risk of further boring the
university community with the
Government and Foreign Affairs
department's dirty linen, I would
like to comment on the recent
exchange of letters in this section
of The Cavalier Daily. Whatever
position one takes it should be clear
to all and sundry by now that there
are serious and real difficulties in
our department. I can understand
that Mr. Williams and his first year
colleagues would resent being considered
evidence of a decline in the
quality of incoming graduates in
the department. In his place I
would resent it and on this question
he perhaps knows more than some
of us who have been here three or
four years. But he errs seriously in
further supposing that all is rosy on
the second floor of Cabell Hall.

In this regard Mr. Hutchinson's
reply is rightly indignant. Should
anyone suppose that the views Mr.
Hutchinson expresses in his letter
are his personal aberration or are
excessively violent they would be
mistaken because they are neither
his alone nor are they excessive in
my view. He only expresses what all
third and fourth year graduate
students of my acquaintance have
been privately saying for some
time. We did not arrive at the
University with these alienated
opinions - they grew slowly as the
causes of these problems remained
unchanged and unchangeable year
after year. We simply feel that this
department is ours too, or should
be. We only wish to be a participating
part of the department, not
merely onlookers. We do not seek
to run the department, to establish
curriculum, or to hire and fire
faculty, and if this is the image that
some have of the aims of the recent
protest in the department then it
only shows the credible breakdown
of communication and the resulting
misconceptions we are faced with.
Dissatisfaction would vanish overnight,
indeed it would never have
arisen in the first place, if only we
felt the faculty had enough regard
and concern for us to converse with
us in a more meaningful way than
to occasionally post a decree on the
bulletin board.

There is no purpose in re-rehashing
specific grievances. Perhaps
some of these grievances are those
difficulties that all graduate
students are heir to and will be
always with us. Perhaps even some
of these grievances are petty. Or
maybe the Government and
Foreign Affairs department desperately
needs reformation if it is
not to face a long slide downhill to
the destruction of a once promising
graduate program. So Mr.
Hutchinson is violent in his concern
- things always look more violent
in print than they do over a table in
the grill - but I for one applaud his
bringing these problems forcefully
to the attention of all. I have no
magic remedy but to hope that if
only some goodwill still exists on
both sides and a discussion begins
now we can heal our wounds rather
than continuing to saber each other
in public.

It is with heaviness of heart that
I take pen in hand to denounce the
scoundrels who have been swiping
our posters. Lay off, kleptos! I
can't deny that you've got great
taste in billboards, but how about
leaving ours up until next Saturday
morning? Posters cost money -
which neither WUVA nor the
Student Council has very much of
- and you're effectively de-publicizing
an important event with each
one you tear down. It wouldn't be
so bad if a lot of people still didn't
know that John Mayall, THE
greatest English bluesman, the
musician whose bands have been
the school where such brilliant
guitarists as Eric Clapton, Jack
Bruce, and Mick Taylor were
educated, will be appearing at
University Hall next Friday along
with Lighthouse, an 18-piece Canadian
jazz-rock ensemble that
brought down the house at William
and Mary three weeks ago, and that
all profits from the concert are
going to the Churchill Jordan
Scholarship Fund and the Minority
Recruitment Effort. But there are
still a few students who remain
unaware of what a great concert
they're going to miss if they don't
make it out to U. Hall next Friday
night, so leave our posters up, huh?

Despite the Virginia Cavalier's
fantastic showing in the Atlantic
Coast Conference tournament, one
can not help being appalled at the
injustice of the tournament's design.
The ACC's aim in this three
day Classic is to find the best
basketball team at the end of the
season to represent the conference
in the regional playoff.

The tournament allows a young
team such as Virginia to develop
and mature during the season and
then show its true ability as the
conference champion is chosen. Yet
these back-to-back games offer very
little to a team such as South
Carolina which has demonstrated
its superiority in the ACC during all
its previous games. The rightful
victor on the basis of a 14 league
game season was given merely the
best seating in the three day
spectacle and "a pat on the back"
for its three months of toll.

This arrangement cries of injustice
and folly. Should a team
which is unquestionably the best in
the conference be denied its crown
because of one bad night or a
temporarily injured starter? Should
a season of over three months be
decided in three days? Certainly
not. Basketball is a team sport - a
team champion in basketball should
not be determined in the same
manner as individual-oriented
sports such as wrestling, cross
country, and track. Besides this
basic flaw in conception, the ACC
tournament is harmful to the
eventual winner because of the
tremendous emotional and physical
drain in three days of intensive
play. Although obviously uplifted
by its two days of hard work and
good luck, N.C. State has only four
days to rest and prepare for its next
opponent.

The ACC tournament suffers
from major injustices and faults. As
a University student who enjoyed
seeing my team play so well, I
would not favor a total dissolution
of the tournament. But there is a
glaring need to change both the
scheduling and the importance of
this event in determining the
rightful team representative of the
ACC.