Leftovers from the Sixties A U.VA. EXPERIMENT IN PROGRESSIVE JOURNALISM IS UNEARTHED FROM ALDERMAN. by David Burnett I'm privileged to have the opportunity to expose a fascinating historical artifact I discovered in Alderman last week while researching my thesis on the debate over coeducation at U.Va. in the late sixties. After reading through many years of The Cavalier Daily, the need for alternate sources led me to Rare Books Collection in pursuit of a journal too obscure to be found in Virgo. Little did I know what I was in for when I requested the archives of The Virginia Weekly, a student newspaper published between 1967 and 1972, which I hoped would furnish some juicy commentary on coeducation. I was not let down. The most exciting aspect of this find, however, was the significant fact that a publication of this type once existed at U.Va. The paper is ideologically consistent with the New Left liberal political movement of the sixties. While the actual thematic content of The Virginia Weekly was not surprising, as the issues raised were familiar to the New Left discourse of the time, the very existence of this newspaper in the predominantly conservative environment at U.Va. was of paramount significance. The revelation that New Left ideology and counter-cultural sentiment occupied a place, albeit a relatively small one, at U.Va. challenged my preconception that political and cultural liberalism in the 1960s had been limited to Berkeley and the North. The fact that the New Left penetrated the sanctified walls of tradition at "Mr. Jefferson's University" indicates the profound influence this movement had upon our nation. The first issue of The Virginia Weekly established a deliberately antithetical ideology against the status quo, aimed at The Cavalier Daily in particular: "[The owners, publishers, and editors] will not concern ourselves much with what has always been done.... We hope the paper can be an outlet for opinions and views that other more tradition-oriented media around Grounds may miss or perchance ignore" (Weekly, February 13, 1967). Having also read The Cavalier Daily from this period, I can safely compare the reserved status-quo orientation of the daily newspaper with the self-consciously liberal innovation represented by the Weekly. Its iconoclasm and non-traditionalism are evident in the types of issues addressed which, although firmly ensconced in New Left ideology, represented a heretofore unrepresented liberal voice at U.Va. In its early days The Virginia Weekly dealt primarily with political and social issues in the university community and, to a greater extent, issues of national significance. Besides the debate over coeducation, The Virginia Weekly presented issues immediately relevant to students' lives, including peace marches, sit-ins, and other forms of student political activism, as well as coverage of political speeches by prominent politicians regarding national elections and America's Vietnam policy. The Weekly dealt extensively with issues of national significance such as the continuing struggle for civil rights, racial equality, and the burgeoning issue of the war in Vietnam. Opposition to the Vietnam war occupied the largest and most enduring place in the Weekly's thematic contents, understandable considering the central place of Vietnam in the national consciousness (with draftable collegiate males, in particular). Historians agree that Vietnam, more than any other political issue in the 60s, was the most significant rallying point for galvanizing the youth through the shared moral position of opposition to America's involvement in Vietnam. Amusingly, a reprinted quote by Nixon in 1969 suggests he still thought student opposition to the Vietnam issue was insignificant. "I understand that there has been and continues to be opposition to the war in Vietnam on the campuses and also in the nation ... we expect it. However, under no circumstances will I be affected by it." A particularly effective anti-war article title reads "We Need Napalm... Like Hell." Another example of the volatility of the times is demonstrated by the placement of an article entitled "The Hellish War" adjacent to information concerning an upcoming peace march. The other issue consistently addressed through the Weekly's short history was civil rights, focusing on Black Power. In September of '67, for example, the newspaper ran an article on "The Negro and the American Dream: The Background of the 'Black Power' Movement." Other articles tell of "Black Power and White Injustice" and "Black Revolution." The same issue confronts the still- significant dilemma of social and cultural homogeneity in an article entitled "The Appalling Sameness at U.Va.". Beginning in '69, the tone of the The Virginia Weekly shifted markedly, digressing from its earlier style of reporting on current local and national events and becoming increasingly polemical, with a strong political agenda concerning labor issues and the plight of minorities and the working class. As an illustration, between 1970 and '72 the Weekly published detailed investigations of the motivations and effectiveness of strikes worldwide, at the U.Va. hospital, GE, DuPont, and the coal mining, railroad, and newspaper industries in the area, as well as labor action in Britain, Vietnam, and Argentina. The message underlying this reporting was one of class oppression and the insurgence of a mobilized proletariat. With headlines like "Wages Low -- Prices and Profits High," "The Wage Freeze," and "Hard Hats Hit Back," attention is directed towards the oppression of minorities (blacks, children, and laborers) by industry, big business and the police. In one issue, the Weekly the following anti-"pig" news: "Police on Trial for Murder," "Police Beat Black Woman," and "Racist Justice in Charlottesville." The Weekly interviewed Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton and researched the movements of Malcolm X and Che Guevara. In an article called "Black Revolution," Rod Brown writes of Malcolm X, "... until we actually stop these racist maniacs who are opposed to any world order that challenges their decadence and roust perversion, they will continue to kill our leaders." The Marxist orientation of the Weekly's later years is evident in the editorial "Who We Are," which declares: "[the Weekly staff] believe[s] that there is a single great struggle in the world today -- a struggle between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots, the oppressor and the oppressed." I speculate that the Weekly died out because its increasingly radical socialist agenda alienated the newspaper from a public which, by 1972, was experiencing a reaction against the ideological radicalism of the later New Left. At the same time, the Weekly's discourse became increasingly abstract and unrealistic. It began to shift the focus of articles away from U.Va. and to such far-away topics as "[US] imperialism in the Pacific Rim and in Africa." The post-1969 Marxist Virginia Weekly was outmoded by shifting public opinion. If the muteness of the liberal student voice at the present day University has left you frustrated, seek out Critical Mass, a left political publication now on the Web and in print next semester. If nothing else, take heart in the fact that at a time in the '60s, a segment of the student body was mobilized by an awareness of social injustice to strive for change. While I can readily criticize the New Left politics and practices, I nevertheless strongly defend the virtue of doing something in light of the apathy and reticence I perceive around me today. The world needs more idealists and radicals, even if their principles are misguided, because they believe in something above and beyond themselvesand want to improve their world. Perhaps one day the university will once again merit the hopeful observation reprinted in a '67 Weekly, that "Students seem to be crawling from their shells of apathy and showing people that they really do think and have opinions."

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