THE WAR ON GROUNDS
“I was feeling pretty alone, and fortunately Don Santarelli raised his hand,” Boyd said. “What he said was, ‘I think actually he’s right on the law and what he did.’”
THE FRUITS OF THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON DISRUPTIVE PERSONS. For his concurrence with Boyd, Santarelli’s “punishment” was to head a new committee, The Special Committee on Disruptive Persons, charged with adding substantive detail to the Standards of Conduct. He and Boyd, who also worked that summer in D.C., made repeated return trips to Charlottesville to hammer out the code with then-UVA legal adviser Leigh Middleditch Jr. ’57. Santarelli wanted to make sure the proposed language would fly, so he bounced much of it off his colleagues at the Justice Department, who were game to help out. Their involvement gave the effort additional credibility. “Everyone on the board, including Shannon, felt relieved to have someone take the lead and give the work a gloss of authority,” Santarelli said. Others who were involved initially or at the end of the process were the student body president and the head of the Honor Committee. But for the majority of the process, “it was mostly just Don and me,” Boyd said. Their work resulted in the delineation of 11 potential violations, including damage to property, intentional disruption of teaching, and unauthorized entry or occupation of University property, along with potential sanctions, up to expulsion. The language was approved in an Aug. 25, 1970, resolution, with the committee ironing out some additional language changes by October. “It is clear that in a community of learning, willful disruption of the educational process, destruction of property, and interference with the orderly
process of the University or with the rights of other members of the University cannot be tolerated,” the Standards of Conduct, as reflected in Oct. 2, 1970, Board of Visitors minutes, read. “A student enrolling in the University assumes an obligation to conduct himself in a manner compatible with the University’s function as an educational institution. To fulfill its functions of imparting and gaining knowledge, the University retains the power to maintain order within the University and to exclude those who are disruptive of the educational process.” The language the two men helped craft remained unchanged for more than 30 years. In the process of doing their work, Boyd and Santarelli became good friends. They continued to keep in touch as Santarelli resigned from the Nixon administration in protest of the Watergate scandal, and Boyd went on active duty as a captain in the U.S. Air Force and then clerked for a federal judge in Los Angeles. They remain close friends today.
play. But as a result of Boyd’s stand—and Santarelli’s support—UVA did not have to fend off lawsuits (as Virginia Tech did), no young men were expelled and subsequently drafted, and, Santarelli believes, the University evolved much faster than it might have otherwise. For Boyd, the only thing that was relevant was a fair path to a just outcome. “I did not condone the conduct, but I thought it was entirely inappropriate to
“I consider Don the older brother I never had,” said Boyd, now a partner at DLA Piper in Washington, D.C. “I consider Tom my younger brother,” said Santarelli, now a partner at Dinsmore, also in Washington. Had another student been head of the judiciary, the outcome might have been different. Personal or political motivations of the time might have come into
prosecute a whole room of students with the same broad standard,” he said. “I don’t recall that I had any feelings about anyone getting off. I would have been happy to convict if there had been proof. It wasn’t anything that I did for any reason other than I thought it was the right thing to do.” ▼▲ SPRING 2016 UVA LAWYER 63