University of Virginia Library

The Challenge Ahead

Maybe every college generation feels that it
is attending school in a time of unparalleled
change in the institution and the nation, but
there seems to be particular justification for
holding that view about this University at this
stage in its development.

For Virginia now stands at a crossroads in
many ways. The old and established ways of
doing things and not doing things are well
entrenched here. But in recent times they have
come under attack; there is a spirit of ferment
in the air that was not noticeable when the
present fourth-year class stood where you are
today.

Despite the rhetoric that you have been
hearing, all is not peace and libertarian
equality at Mr. Jefferson's University. In
many instances the atmosphere is one of
oppression and bigotry. For many years the
relatively homogeneous student body, insulated
from the trends in student thought
outside Virginia, was quite happy under these
conditions, so long as the Administration
overlooked the "gentlemanly foibles" that
characterized that earlier generation.

Such is not the case any longer. The
University stands at the brink of departure on
new and revolutionary policies of racial
integration, sexual equality, and service to the
state of Virginia.

This will entail responsibilities for the
present student generation and particularly
for the members of your class. Given its head,
the Administration would probably, judging
from its past record, do little or nothing to
effect the important changes that the
University must make if it is to realize its
potential and the dream of its founder.

Of course, you have a responsibility to
yourselves to obtain an education while you
are here. But we hope that you will look
beyond the passive assimilation of course
material. One of the hallmarks of an educated
man is his ability to think critically, to
evaluate that which others accept, and to
suggest possible means of improvement. If
you can learn to do this and apply it to
whatever facets of University life interest you,
you may begin to discover some of the
relevance that seems to be missing in most
students' education today.

It will be you and your contemporaries
who will have to find some way of
communicating more effectively with the
Administration than we have done. It will be
you who must decide, to a large degree, what
the racial atmosphere of the University will
develop or degenerate into. You will determine,
if you wish to, the future direction of
coeducation here, where the women will live,
how many there will be, and what kind of a
social system they will find here. You will
decide what you will study and how it is
taught. If your decisions take the form of
passivity and inaction, then the Administration
will carry the ball as it always has, and
you will really have only yourselves to blame
for the results.

Your Association Dean, when he met with
you, probably told you to take a look at the
people in the seats next to you and then
informed you (counting heavily on the shock
value) that one of those people would not be
there at graduation four years later. He
probably implied, however, that the fault for
their failure would lie with them. You will
find that the truth is that people leave because
they find the University socially childish,
politically repressive, or academically irrelevant
and uninteresting. Their only fault was in
not seeking to make the University a better
place and in seeking that, to find that for
them it had indeed become a more stimulating
and worthwhile experience.

So we welcome you to the University of
Virginia, not with a call to seize the Rotunda
(yet), but with an urgent exhortation that you
will strive to be activists in the finest sense of
the word, actively seeking to better yourselves
and your University.

Good luck to you.