Change in Charlottesville

It was like a quarterback throwing a forward pass and catching it himself. As Virginia's wartime governor, urbane Colgate Whitehead Darden Jr. had often told the people what was wrong with their state university and had persuaded the General Assembly to spend $4,500,000 to fix it. Last week ex-Governor Darden took on the presidency of his languishing alma mater.

Only an incurably sentimental alumnus would deny that there was room for improvement at Charlottesville. Few U.S. campuses could match the beauty of the classic, tree-shaded University of Virginia "Grounds," laid out by Founder Thomas Jefferson. But 80-year-old Jefferson, matching the workmen through his spyglass from nearby Monticello, had dreamed of a Charlottesville that would be the "capstone of public education in Virginia"--a university for all the ablest citizens of the state, rich or poor. What it had largely become, said its critics, was an expensive finishing school for young men.

The University had turned out Woodrow Wilson, Edgar Allan Poe, and such living lights as Railroader Robert Young, Senator Alben W. Barkley, Bishop Henry St. George Tucker, Erskine Caldwell, Ed Stettinius (now the University's rector). But in 1940-41, only 122 of the state's 6,856 white high-school graduates went to the University. Complained the Richmond Times-Dispatch's Editor Virginius Dabney, '20, last week: too many University students were "young wastrels [with] large bankrolls and few serious intentions of studying." What's more, he added darkly, most of the wastrels were not even Virginians.

As Governor, Darden had proposed tougher University admission standards; a curb on the "expensive, restricted and ingrown" fraternity houses; new, million-dollar dormitories and a cafeteria, to put a Charlottesville education within reach of many more "rank & file" Virginians. Last week President-Elect Darden held a three-hour peace talk with student leaders, to convince them that he was not proposing a fate worse than death. He assured them that he would not let Virginia's traditions get lost in his bigger & better University.

Colgate Darden's own student days at Virginia were interrupted by World War I. In 1916-17 he was an ambulance driver with the French Army at Verdun and the Argonne. When the U.S. entered the war, Darden switched to the Navy and then the Marines, injured his back in a plane crash. He returned to Charlottesville to finish up, took a law degree at Columbia, went on to Oxford. Now 50, for 22 years he was a faithful member of the Byrd political machine, was elected four times to Congress, once to the governorship. Although Darden doesn't need the money (he married a Du Pont), he will now get a raise. Virginia pays its University presidents $15,000 a year--$5,000 more than the governor gets.

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