University of Virginia Library

Colloquium

Camelot

By Bradley Brooks

I resent the recent characterization of
the University and its Honor System as but
a scene from "Gone With The Wind" (letter
of John Finley, 18 April, "On Honor").
Such condemnation, though, is quite in tune
with the profuse general criticism of the
University that this year, particularly, seems
to be in vogue. Witness attack in all areas -
the Honor System, racial matters, the Board
of Visitors, among others; in short, demands
for airing of student views in order to reach
goals which have suddenly achieved a degree
of momentous necessity. The Establishment,
needless to say, is anathema. "All that
is" must be weighed in a scale to determine
if it has social utility. Mr. Wheatley,
unfortunately, flunked this test administered
by the present generation of student
exam-graders who saw fit to delve deeply
into the bluebook of answers to conclude as
positively relevant to the proper discharge
of his present responsibility his dutiful past
responsiveness to his constituency. I am not
too convinced of such an inevitable
correlation. Beloved hindsight. How do we
devise a true test for discovering who is right
and who is wrong? Certainly not by
capsule-like summaries using mutually-exclusive
conclusions ("racist"). Cattle-branding
people is a naughty endeavor. The
issue was pushed ad nauseam for what
glorious results?

I wholeheartedly support the realization
of needed and legitimate goals here at the
University, but not token war games. Every
institution should be amenable to change
for its betterment. The Honor System itself
must accept this process, but not due to any
one caprice of those students presently
studying under it. Compelling legal logic
particularly in the Fourteenth Amendment
thought it to be: the all-pervasive sense of
considerate responsibility toward oneself
and toward others emanating from a
congregation of self-respecting peers whose
very day-to-day association in the same
arena obviates the necessity of a written
law, a law which, for example, typically
would violations of the Honor System
to thefts occurring within the magical
environs of Albemarle County.

"Gone With The Wind?" Perhaps. I
prefer to aim for "Camelot." I do not shrink
from the possibility of the latter comparison.
I refuse to accept the thesis that the
University must necessarily undergo change
to survive. I reject Joel Gardner's prognostication
that should President Shannon not
accede to certain student demands then this
University is doomed to emulate the fiasco
at Harvard. I place my money on the fact
that the University of Virginia as I have
come to know it is decidedly different.
Those who undertake the task of tearing
down all that went before had best think at
area makes some change inevitable. I, for
one, will be disappointed if mechanical
rigidity takes over. My understanding and
appreciation of the Honor System through
my six years as a student is that codification
is the antithesis of all the system stands for.
The "Spirit of Honor" should not be a list
of commands for the soldier to memorize
and execute lest he be convicted by a
tribunal armed with a numerical list of "do's
and don'ts" and a lack of judicial expertise.
Instead it must be what I have always
least twice. Strive indeed for laudable
objectives, but do not at the same time
obliterate the great qualities that make this
the unique place it is.