University of Virginia Library

The March 10 Cavalier Daily
editorial treating alleged inequities
suffered by first and second year
students in the college betrays a
lamentable ignorance of what a
university is or should be. Though
many of us slip at times and use the
word "business" in referring to
institutions of higher learning, we
must bear in mind that the word
does not aptly describe a university.
The simplistic rent-a-car analogy
you chose to illustrate your point is
unfortunate and would ordinarily
evoke from me merely disdain and
impatience, but some of the other
statements in your editorial are so
misleading that they assault one's
reason and display a frightening
narrowness of vision.

To state that departments would
tacitly admit the intellectual inferiority
of senior faculty members
by defending the teaching role of
graduate students makes for murky
logic in an already tendentious
article. The comparison of the
graduate student/teacher to a pickup
truck is infelicitous if not simply
insulting.

What you apparently fall to
grasp is that teaching is far more
than the dishing out of facts, and
wisdom is not simply a by-product
of age or, necessarily, of experience.
The graduate student can
offer insights, convey attitudes, and
give perspectives in ways that a man
twice his age might not be able to.
By the same token, the fruits of the
senior faculty member's experience
in life and learning are invaluable
and cannot be duplicated by a
much younger teacher.

Such diversity of age, experience,
and attitude among faculty
and students helps to bear out the
claim made in the University
Record: "The University is not
merely a training institution; it is a
way of life." Let us remember that
this way of life is not the province
only of the hoary-headed and the
callow.

William L. Boletta
Assistant Professor of German

Ed.