University of Virginia Library

Time To Change

At the Mountain Lake Conference it was
generally agreed that a great deal of the
trouble with student-administration relations
started at the level of the administrative
committees. Students felt that unfair
representation and incredible lack of
responsiveness at the committee level were
responsible for many of their grievances, and a
number of faculty and administrators at the
conference were able readily to agree that
their complaints were reasonable and perhaps
legitimate. The overall effect was
establishment of hope that the committee
system at the University would be
re-evaluated and that certain committees
particularly relevant to student lives should
certainly be restructured. Since then we have
seen the first step toward restructuring of the
Committee on Fraternities from a 3-3-3 basis
to a 4-3-2 basis, but that is all.

One committee which is a glaring example
of the deterioration and distortion of the
whole concept of student-faculty committees
where student matters are involved is as yet
untouched by the "spirit" of Mountain Lake.
We refer, of course, to the Housing
Committee. The Housing Committee is a
committee which has control of all student
housing, whether it be on-Grounds,
off-Grounds, or apparently even at a student's
home.

The committee presumes to dictate to
every student the conditions in which he must
live in every phase of housing. It dictates what
housing is suitable for University students,
and only permits them to live in housing it has
approved. It sets standards in dorms, in
fraternity houses, in apartment houses, and in
private homes; housing which fails to meet its
standards, in whatever aspect it so fails, is not
approved for occupancy by students. No
matter what a student's taste is, what his
orientation is, what his desires are, what his
financial capabilities are, he must live in
housing which complies with the standards set
by this committee.

Needless to say, the power of the Housing
Committee is tremendous. Obviously enough,
its responsibility to the students, to potential
landlords, and to the University is also
tremendous. With that sort of power, and that
sort of responsibility, it is crucial that such a
committee consist of persons highly-qualified,
capable, competent, and, above all,
experienced in and for making the decisions it
must make. And it is crucial that students
have a significant, if not powerful voice on a
committee which deals so directly with their
private lives.

Who is on the current Housing Committee?
Faculty and administrative members are two
association deans, the Dean of Women, the
Director of Housing, an assistant professor of
nursing, the Director of Student Health, the
Director of Intramurals, the Director of
Buildings and Grounds, and the Dean of
Student Affairs; the four students who are
supposed to represent student interests to
those nine non-students are two chairmen of
counselors, a married student, and a regular
undergraduate.

In view of the demands on the Housing
Committee it seems to us that some of its
members are totally unqualified to participate
in many of its decisions, especially with regard
to off-Grounds housing, for the simple reason
that they are completely out of touch with
the situation. In other words, the committee's
decisions are necessarily idealistic rather than
realistic ones, as the members are able to voice
only what would be ultimately desirable
rather than what is practically reasonable. For
example, no one denies that it would be a
tremendously desirable situation to have
sprinkler systems in fraternity houses; the fact
is, however, that it is financially and
physically impossible for 20 or 30 fraternities
to install such elaborate systems in the same
nine-month period. Yet the Housing
Committee insists on standing by its
regulation and refuses to even consider any
reasonable alternatives. The irony here is that
the first-year dorms, although they are
classified as non-combustible, have had serious
fires and do not even have an alarm system
should fires develop in the future. Thus the
Housing Committee does not require alarms
or any other warning - minimum precaution
- in the facilities most obviously under its
control, and yet it will not consider anything
less than the maximum for facilities which the
University does not have to finance. Another
Housing Committee decision which no one
will soon forget is the $100 dorm deposit
requirement. Student members of the
committee suggested the obvious alternative
to such financial coercion - to make the
dorms more livable and attractive - and yet
the committee did not even forward the
suggestion that the problem in filling the
dorms might be solved by making them
reasonably attractive. The committee knew it
had to fill the dorms, guessed that few
students would be able to throw away the
$100, and acted accordingly.

How many members of the committee, we
wonder, are close enough to fraternities to
realize the impossibility of their fulfilling its
requirement concerning sprinklers; how many
care, we wonder, whether or not its
requirement might be disastrous for some
houses. Similarly, how many members of the
committee, we wonder, knew enough about
conditions of life in the dorms even to guess
that the undesirability and unreasonableness
thereof might be responsible for their unfilled
state. It is obvious that a majority of the
committee's members did not realize, or care,
or know enough to guess, or else they would
not have ruled as they did.

What a lamentable situation it is when a
committee which is so important to so many
lives is so out of touch with the lives to which
it is so important. What an absurd situation it
is when a committee which regulates so many
lives seems hardly aware of or concerned
about the implications of its regulations for
those lives.

The Housing Committee should be
restructured immediately so that student
representation on it is sufficient to convey to
its other members the full implications of its
rulings from a side of questions to which they
are not exposed. Specifically, it should be
reconstructed on a 50-50 basis like the new
Committee on Fraternities, and then it should
be filled with people who are reasonably in
touch with the matters which concern it, or
with people who are willing to consider
reasonable alternatives to regulations which
they find are 100 per cent objectionable to
many people, or with people who are at least
conscientious enough to try to get in touch
with the reality of questions or to admit that
because they are out of touch their opinions
might not be the most realistic on, idealistic
though they may be.

Or perhaps the University should
re-evaluate carefully its position of regulation
of off-Grounds housing. The main
justification for being involved in it is to
protect students from undesirable or unsafe
housing and unfair landlords. They whole
theory of a free-enterprise society, however, is
that one man may accept another's service or
not as he desires, which naturally encourages
those whose services are not accepted to
improve them. The average student prefers
not to live in a hole, which forces landlords
who offer holes to improve them; and if a
student does want to live in a hole, for
financial or other reasons, that should
certainly be his business. Surely University
students in their second year and older are
discriminating enough to choose suitable
housing for themselves and smart enough not
to be duped by unscrupulous landlords. If
they are not, they need to learn such lessons
as only experience can teach them.

Making decisions as to how and where one
wants to live is part of the educational
process. It is a part of the educational process.
It is a part of the educational process of which
this university deprives its students by
"protecting" them. It is a part of the
educational process which is not the business
of any university.

The University should, indeed, re-evaluate
and reconsider carefully its obtrusive role in
off-Grounds housing; whether or not it
decides to withdraw from this area, it should
certainly see to it that those in charge of any
housing are imminently qualified for their
work. If it will do so, by restriction such as
that suggested above, it will have done its
students (and, in doing so, itself) a real
service, and it is much less likely to make
embarrassing mistakes in the future as it did in
the dorm deposit affair.