University of Virginia Library

Movement To Hypocrisy

It should be clear to anyone by now that
The University of Virginia does not cancel
classes for just any old thing like a war. There
are certain rights that have to be safeguarded
— people have the right to attend their classes
and that right cannot be abrogated if they
disagree with the reasons for cancelling the
classes. Or so says the Administration.

That's why we found it a little bit
astonishing that the University will cancel
classes for four hours on October 21, six days
after the moratorium — for the sesquicentennial
convocation and Symposium. Dean Runk
will lead the gilded procession down the Lawn
which will culminate in a nice speech that says
very little about anything of particular
relevance.

Surely the Administration must have
known from the events of last Founder's Day
that there are a great many students here who
do not agree that the University has anything
to crow about after 150 years, who think that
spending money on the sesquicentennial
celebration is a gross distortion of proper
priorities, and who, by thinking as they do,
have made the celebration of the sesquicentennial
a political issue.

The sesquicentennial schedule does not
even allow, as the moratorium does, for any
dissent to be formally expressed. The
moratorium plans open discussion and debate
by both sides of the war issue; the
sesquicentennial Symposium will not even deal
directly with the University, and the only
opportunities for dissent during the procession
and the convocation will be picketing and
walkouts such as were held last year.

So we wonder where the University's
avowed concern for the individual rights of
students to attend their classes has vanished
to? Were their rights not considered when the
plans were made to cancel classes? It's more
likely that the University's hypocrisy is
showing. The good guys can call off classes no
matter what anybody thinks, but those
dangerous student activists have to abide by
the rules.

The Sesquicentennial convocation will not
be anything to celebrate. It will be a
monument to hypocrisy.