The University of Virginia's twentieth century has been marked by repeated change inspired by the century's wars. Indeed, nothing before the social movements which resulted in the wide scale admission of women and African Americans has changed the face of the University more than war. Yet in the midst of all the wartime changes there remained in the student consciousness a deference to ideas intimately entwined with the University of the days of old. What were thought to be time immemorial concepts of honor, gentlemanly behavior, academics, and "not sticking one's neck out" continually provided the vocabulary for debate and informed the actions of the student body. However, war forced the University to search continually for a redefinition of its traditions for its new context. The attempts to maintaining continuity kept University students from widespread involvement in the political issues of the day.
This paper follows the changes in the student experience wrought by war and the concept of war from the middle 1930s until the dawn of the social movements of the 1960s. Because the paper is primarily about student culture, those ideas and concepts which have most informed the Virginia students' life are the central theme. Centering the narrative on the student body rather than an institution like, for example, R.O.T.C. at the University, yields an honest and accurate story of the changes in student life. Institutional changes are discussed within the context of how they affected student culture.