Atlanta Daily World

Virginia School Vote Next Week; Hampton - Protests

HAMPTON. Va.-(ANP)-- As the people of Virginia prepared to go to the polls on January 9, to voice approval or disapproval of a plan to abolish the public school system the faculty of Hampton Institute voted a protest of the movement.

The 177-members faculty issued a formal, unanimous statement against the proposed referendum calling for a constitutional convention to amend the statues to permit public support of private schools.

Proposed by Dr. Philip S. Campbell. chairman of the department of social sciences, at the regular December meeting of the faculty, the Institute's Resolution censures "the irresponsible action of the Governor of Virginia and of the Virginia General Assembly."

Campbell's motion stipulated that the Resolution be sent to the college's Board of Trustees as a matter of information, and that it be further distributed to the local press local representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates and General Assembly, and to secretaries of all college faculties in Virginia.

The faculty statement, signed by Dr. William H. Martin, dean of the body. is the first to represent opinion of any kind on the controversial referendum by a Virginia college faculty. Also ,no other educational leader in this state has appeared to oppose the amendment which is primarily intended to provide the government of Virginia with means of evading the U. S. Supreme Court's decision outlawing segregated public schools.

The statement also censures Virginia's Governor Thomas B. Stanley and the Assembly for "violation of their oaths to support the Constitution of the United States," and condemns the proposed amendment as an attempt at "willful evasion of a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States."

In presenting the protest, Dr. Campbell explained that it should furnish the necessary reply to State Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr's., challenge to educators. (On December 3. Senator Byrd asserted that "Had any educators felt the Gray Commission's propasals would be destructive of the public school system, I do believe a great deal of these citizens would have been down here to protest.")

Commenting on the proposed referendum to a Sunday college worship audience Hampton Institute Chaplain, Dr. Vernon P Rodein urged students to discuss the effects of the proposal with their parents and to encourage family opposition to the referendum. Dr. Rodein emphasized that his interest in the defeat of such an amendment "is moral - not political."