
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 14, 1990                   TAG: 9006140469
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: HARRIET HODGES
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NO CARS FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS

LEXINGTON'S plan to tax student automobiles at Washington and Lee University hardly goes far enough. Why on earth does any college allow students to bring cars? No undergraduate needs a car.

Why not a Virginia-college ruling rigidly enforced against any undergraduate's bringing a car upon pain of expulsion? Certainly that was the prevailing rule when I went to college from 1957 to 1961. We bitterly complained, of course, but no one paid the least attention.

Indeed, it is a college's moral responsibility to its town to control automobiles as harshly as possible in the name of economy, conservation, beauty. And academic pursuit: The student should be in the library, not on the road.

I realize that any hint of corporate moral responsibility smells evil to us, so accustomed are we to utter freedom to destroy everything for greed. (Academic institutions are more determinedly amoral than most.) But is there no one in charge at W&L who can say "We know best"? Wouldn't it be lovely if the concept of the college acting for the absent - and quite firm - parent were to return?

Maybe, beginning there, we might call into being a central government strong and caring enough to save us from the ravages of our automobile addiction. We are a nation truly car-sick.

In that regard, why has the newspaper not done a study or an editorial on the efforts to restore trains to our part of Virginia? Is it because the absurdities of a "smart road" bear the cachet of newness, the imprint of bustling VPI's officious accredited stupidity hurrying to justify its hugely subsidized existence? Of course, the destruction of our public transportation is connected to the crush of student cars.

The housing problems are easily solved: Require almost all students to live in the dormitories. That would mean making them livable, of course, which would mean (gasp) adult supervision and rules. It would also require the college's shouldering its moral responsibilities, not a likely prospect.

by CNB