As I read about this summer of upheaval at the University, I could almost hear the echoes of a cry that frequently wafted over Rugby Road and Madison Lane decades ago, in my student days — “Let’s Make the U. Like It Used to Be!” That seems to be the goal of both the Trump administration and the conservative alumni who are supporting it — to roll back decades of affirmative action and progressive policies and restore the norms of the mid-1960s.
As one of the dwindling band of alumni who can actually remember that era, perhaps I can offer some perspective on the way things used to be.
The University that I entered in 1966 was technically integrated. But in practice, it was an institution for white people. In my 1970 yearbook — if you do not know what a yearbook is, kids, you can ask ChatGPT to explain it — there are two Black faces in the gallery of graduates from the College of Arts and Sciences; none from the School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, the School of Architecture, the School of Nursing or the School of Commerce; and two from what was then called the School of Education. I never had a Black teacher. The year before I matriculated, The Cavalier Daily published an editorial welcoming the creation of a new student organization — “The Society for the Prevention of Negroes Getting Everything.”
Virginia was also a very male place. Women were not allowed to enroll in the College, and there were precious few of them in schools like Engineering. I never had a female teacher. Upperclassmen might be fortunate enough to find a woman to date from the Nursing or Education schools. The rest took road trips to women’s colleges like Sweet Briar College or Mary Baldwin University in their quest for female companionship, which was particularly prized during the bacchanalia of Big Weekends. As to the prevailing sexual ethics, suffice it to say that there was an unwritten but widely acknowledged loophole in the Honor system, which exempted lies told in the pursuit of seduction.
There were gay students, of course, but they were so deeply closeted that even some of them perhaps didn’t know they were gay. It was only at class reunions many years later that we would hear the stories of classmates who dated women in their student years, sometimes married and had children, and only in middle age realized and declared their true sexuality.
Outside the classroom, fraternities dominated student life. They hosted the parties. They controlled student elections. Hazing was widely accepted. I used to know the distance in condom lengths between Rugby Road and the stores on the Corner, because my fraternity liked to make pledges measure it on hands and knees. Fraternities controlled many extracurricular organizations. Full disclosure — my fraternity had significant influence on The Cavalier Daily staff elections, and my nascent journalism career owed its start to that influence.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, much of this began to change. Fraternities lost control of student elections. A Black graduate student, James Roebuck, became chairman of the Student Council. The administration of President Edgar Shannon, under student pressure, agreed to consider doing more to recruit Black students. That was the beginning of affirmative action. In 1970, women were admitted to the College, and at about the same time, the athletic program was integrated.
By no means did everyone welcome these changes. Conservative students and alumni have seethed over them for nearly six decades. In 2024, their moment for vengeance finally arrived. A Republican governor, eager to curry favor with the MAGA faithful so that he can run for president in 2028, replaced the last of the Board of Visitors members appointed by Democrats. Donald Trump was elected president and immediately weaponized the Department of Justice, putting two disgruntled University alumni in power in the department’s Office of Civil Rights. President James Ryan’s forced resignation was only the first of the steps this MAGA coalition envisions.
In the very near future, the University can expect to hear from the MAGA forces a call for a return to “meritocratic” admissions. Superficially, this might make sense. Why not admit students based entirely on their test scores and high school grades?
But the reality is that test scores and grades are greatly affected by the wealth of an applicant’s family. The children of the rich have access to private schools, enrichment programs, travel abroad and SAT prep courses that greatly influence the supposedly objective, “meritocratic” measurements. And maybe the disgruntled conservatives indeed want a system that benefits children of wealth, though they will of course protest that all they want is fairness.
Fortunately, there is a remedy for this that can produce a diverse student body without resorting to affirmative action based on race or gender. It is affirmative action based on socioeconomic status. It gives a boost to applicants from poor families, poor neighborhoods and poor public schools, calculating that any kid who compiles decent SAT scores in those circumstances is at least as capable as the child of wealth who emerges from the SAT prep course at St. Bartleby’s School with a combined 1380. Given the nature of our society, it is predictable that a large number of the beneficiaries of socioeconomic affirmative action would be minorities, helping to preserve diversity. But there would doubtless also be a number of white students from poor backgrounds.
The University has already begun to use this tool in the wake of the 2023 Supreme Court decision gutting traditional affirmative action and the 2024 Virginia legislation prohibiting legacy preferences. It can double down on that beginning. Affirmative action to compensate for economic disadvantages would be popular, according to public opinion polls. It would even have the imprimatur of the man the conservatives like to cite as their patron saint, Mr. Jefferson. Our founder, while he never contemplated admitting Blacks or women to his University, did advocate for setting aside spots in the student body for the bright sons of poor families, and paying their tuition. Even so, I would not count on a deluge of checks from conservative alumni to fund the scholarships that a commitment to socioeconomic affirmative action would require. Alumni and friends who believe in diversity will have to chip in.
Simultaneously, it is predictable that the MAGA forces will try to implement affirmative action for conservatives in faculty hiring. Not being completely insensitive to irony, they will not call it that. They will say they want the faculty to have a “balance” of viewpoints, and they will talk about achieving that balance by relying on normal attrition and the eagerness of stellar conservative scholars to teach at the University, once its new, corrected policies become widely known.
But recent history suggests there will be a purge of faculty members considered too woke by the forces of the right. In institutions like the Center For Disease Control, the conservatives have already demonstrated their lust for seeing liberal skulls on pikes and installing loyal MAGA hacks in their places. I see no reason to hope that these forces will be satiated only by the ouster of Ryan.
There may be a silver lining in this for students, however. Back in the 1960s, there were a lot of right-wingers on the University faculty, many of them in the Department of Economics. They liked to hear their doctrinal shibboleths parroted back to them. I took a course in Economic Development. I did not attend many classes and I did not crack the textbook. But, on the final exam essays, I did my best Adam Smith imitation, repeating several times that efforts by the government to stimulate development, especially in foreign countries, were a waste of money. I got my A.
It wasn’t my finest academic moment. But, back when the U. was like it used to be, we took our As where we could find them.
Robert B. Cullen was the editor of The Cavalier Daily from 1969-70. He can be reached at opinion@cavalierdaily.com.
The opinions expressed in this guest letter are not necessarily those of The Cavalier Daily. The guest letter represents the views of the columnist alone.
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