University of Virginia Library

Keeping The Pace

It seems to me that the most
meaningless issue injected into the
current College Honor Committee
election is the fear of the Honor
Committee's embroilment with
real-live problems. The assumption
is that the Presidency of the College
has not been used in the past to
lend weight to a political position,
and that assumption is simply false.
One only has to go back to the
spring of last year when Pete Gray,
retiring Honor Committee Chairman,
by inference threw the not
inconsiderable prestige of the
Honor System behind his impassioned
plea to the Student Council
not to recognize the S.D.S.

One might also point out the
recent apoplectic orientation
speeches of Dean T. Braxton
Woody, the University's evidence
that rumors of the extinction of the
troglodyte are still premature, in
which the inviolability of the
present Honor System is seen as a
last bulwark against not only
"anarchists" but liberals of the
pinkish Hubert Humphrey hue,
surely as political a use of our
famous tradition as could be
conceived.

The candidacy of Mr. Murdock
and his stated intention to support
liberal programs are surely more
honest than his opponents' claim
that the office is "traditionally" a
non-political one. (If so, why elect
anyone? In the absence of a
popular mandate, perhaps a simple
anointing by Dean Woody would
suffice.)

The candidacy of Mr. Murdock
is yet another indication of healthy,
well-considered change at the University,
as his impressive platform
devoted in toto to the Honor
System reveals. His election will
allow the Honor System to keep
pace with that change; any other
course would ultimately abandon it
to oblivion.