University of Virginia Library

"What god-given message
from the gold-studded shrine
of Mr. Jefferson comes to our
glorious Gotham!" (Our
apologies to Mr. Sophocles.)
We wish to commend your
editors for an acute insight, but
to take issue with its
implication.

In your October 12 issue,
you end your editorial with the
comment, "This is the
University of Virginia-not
Columbia or Northwestern;
tear gas pens should not have
to be in hand as women cross
the Grounds." It must have
taken several hours of cerebral
gymnastics for your able staff
to discover that Virginia does
not equal New York.
Congratulations.

However, we fear you paint
us a picture by implication of
sweet old ladies with hat pins
and parasols fending off the
depredations of roving bands
of knife-wielding ghetto
hooligans and cherubic
blond-haired,
strawberry-checked innocents
being whisked away to serve
the barbarous lusts of
drug-crazed Northern liberals.
Come now. These stock
charges of the urban jungle
may be satisfying to smug but
progressive bucolics of
Sybaris-on-the-Styx, but do
not stand up well under the
scrutiny of jaded urbanites.

Far be it from us to aver
that there is no crime in New
York; however, even the
particularly cynical Belles of
Barnard would admit that they
do not cross the Morningside
Campus of Columbia in
continual apprehension of
atrocious assault. (Yes,
Virginia, there is a night life on
Columbia's Campus.)

The Columbia Campus,
unlike the Grounds, is more
than adequately illuminated,
both electrically and
intellectually-but we digress.
And surprise, Columbia's
security force patrols day and
night both on foot and on
motor scooters, and does not
exist solely to give out traffic
tickets or advice on
self-defense.

It might shatter your dearly
held notions about the
nocturnal Evil City to know
that people attend concerts,
film festivals, lectures, or just
study in the library at night,
every night. People even play
Frisbee at night on Low Library
Plaza or South Field! By the
graves of Hamilton, Livingston,
and Jay! Frisbee, and in a city
that is two hundred times the
size of the one you write from,
and you would have us think,
two hundred times as
dangerous.

But we fear that we have
become overly zealous in
defense of that amalgam of
concrete and chaos that is
Columbia. So be it. (But never
let it be said that Columbia
University students are less
solicitous of the honor of their
school or the security of the
fairer sex than courtly Virginia
Gentlemen in the finest
traditions of the antebellum
South.)

Yet Columbia has withstood
the assaults of time since 1754,
and we are inclined to look
with tolerance upon the
brashness of a younger
institution.