University of Virginia Library

The writer of the editorial
(3/24/71) on the College elections
is surely infatuated with his own
dramatic phraseology. "After
Elections, Some Questions" has all
the answers; just listen: "The
election took place, essentially
unnoticed by even a half of the
College, and was attended by all the
crass ritual and perennial boredom
which befits a drudge of history,
that captive archetype which is
becoming the Honor System. And
no one cares." Good reflective
analysis, that.

Should we care? You're damned
right we should — about candidates
that ran a clean campaign without
party squabbling, about the good
sense shown by those who did vote,
and about the railing editors who
call tradition "moribund" because
it isn't dead to their satisfaction.

You know better and so do
most of your readers. For a
majority not to vote is never good,
but when was there ever an election
— especially a student election, here
— without substantial apathy? Why
is this the year of the significant
"counter-mandate?" Why did you
find the mental sophistication and
political savvy of the candidates so
lacking, when the alternatives you
left them were to make a joke out
of the Honor System or not run at
all? Do you really think that those
who didn't vote in the election
don't care about the Honor System
itself? Do you care?

Another matter, the Law
School: well they might object to
the Honor System, for what
difference it makes in the College.
Grumbling in the Law School is
nothing new; better than 80 per
cent of each entering class came
from schools without a comparable
Honor System and hardly anyone
there can say he came here because
of it. A concept of honor is legally
irrelevant to the real world of
corporations, consumers' rights and
landlord-tenant law. These in turn
are irrelevant to that special
standard of community
acceptability enforced here for over
a century: As long as the
undergraduate schools support it, it
is theirs to keep. A poll, not
petitions in the Law School or your
analysis of the College elections,
will determine the extent of this
support. We will all see who cares.

You close by warning Mr. Bagby
that he must heed your strictures or
make rubbish of his elected office.
Someone should make such
demands of the newly-elected
(speak of "crass ritual!") officers of
The Cavalier Daily, should tell
them with the same self-righteous
certainty that their efforts are
destined to produce only pure
rubbish. And only the janitors care.

Allen Barringer
Law 2

—Ed.