University of Virginia Library

Rod MacDonald

Up Against The
Serpentine Wall

President Shannon said in his
welcoming letter, the University
community "must be constantly
alert to undertake those measures
that will positively lessen the distance
between our present accomplishments
and ideals."

And so University students, like
students everywhere, have examined
their University and found it
lacking in several respects. It is not
very surprising, as a result, that
loyalty to your school sometimes
requires disagreement with the
administration, and the University
President may seem reactionary
despite his rhetorical incitings for
you to participate in shaping the
University's policies.

No Big Issue

Unlike most large universities,
Virginia has no big issue that has
crystallized student support for
warfare on the administration.
Black students are few and disorganized,
and residents of a state
replete with Quantico, Fort Meade,
and Norfolk Naval Base are not
likely prospects for anti-ROTC
campaigns.

But beneath the placid, apathetic
facade a new trend is
emerging from the students who are
no longer content to spend four
years here and leave. They want to
implement their ideals, and the
spoken ideals of the University,
before they leave.

Last year significant progress
was made on behalf of black
students when a part-time black
recruiter was hired to find worthy
black students here in Virginia, and
when a Transition Fund campaign
raised some of the funds necessary
to give them the academic awareness
to compete here in this
environment. But the real crunch
was political.

SDS Research

The Students For a Democratic
Society, whose research has unearthed
some surprising things,
discovered that a member of the
Board of Visitors, Chase Stuart
Wheatley, had been the sponsor of
two 1959 Virginia State Legislature
bills, one reaffirming the state's
opposition to the mixing of the
white and colored races in the
schools, and another setting up
Virginia's tuition grant system under
which white students were sent
to private schools for free, while
the public schools were closed.

A demonstration against Wheatley
turned into a University-wide
campaign, led by an amorphous
group of liberals, radicals, and (at
first) establishment politicians to
open up the University's admissions
and employment practices. After
several skillful dodges by President
Shannon and a less subtle brush-off
by Governor Mills Godwin, the
Coalition failed and very little was
accomplished. But the Coalition did
awaken and radicalize a substantial
portion of the student body.

Demonstrations Foreseen

The struggle for change is not
easily won, and certainly not in
three months. Demonstrations
against ROTC and Dow Chemical
will doubtlessly reoccur this year,
and will probably have more
popular support than in the past.
The Coalition, without many of its
now-graduated leaders, will exist
again in some form. For while the
University mouths racial justice and
provides no real opportunity for it
here, and while America's military
keeps embarking on its senseless
campaigns, students will have good
cause to object.

If you, the entering students,
hope to see change in your time,
the time to begin is now. There are
"legitimate" channels, such as
Student Council, with which the
administration will deal directly;
and there are "illegitimate" channels,
such as the SDS, with which it
will have to deal if it stays unchanging.

But mostly it will take your
hard work, concern, and your commitment
to action, to lessen that
distance between the real world and
the serpentine walls.