To: Bert Ellis
My thanks to you for your valuable time and effort to save what we know and love about UVa. Here’s another example of Wahoo Wokeism gone wild. Please help Trula and me if and when you can.
Twenty years ago Trula and I paid for the creation of a self-guided tour brochure for the very historic UVa Cemetery which has been re-printed three times over the years. This self-guided tour brochure has been available to visitors from all-weather dispensers at each cemetery entrance. Today those dispensers are EMPTY. Why is that? Because the UVa Cemetery Committee ruled we could NO LONGER give them away because they do not tell the story of slaves buried OUTSIDE THE WALLS OF THE CEMETERY.
Because of our not telling the story of the burial of slaves outside of cemetery walls all over the world, we must stop educating students about the past accomplishments of those buried within the walls! This is flagrant wokeism and cancel culture which must be CRUSHED.
By copy of this letter I am asking President Jim Ryan to please instruct the UVa Cemetery Committee to return to Trula and me the brochures we paid for but they will not hand out. President Ryan, I would like for you to know I served six years as Trustee of UVa’s IDEA Fund and personally paid for the first brochure used by UVa Guides to explain the contribution of enslaved workers. In addition we paid for a stone in the walk in front of the Chapel to recognize 55 years of service to UVa by former slave Henry Martin. As a Lawn Society member I have no plan from this point forward to make any charitable gifts to UVa. Please return our brochures so we can put them to use elsewhere!
Sincerely
Trula and John Wright
BA’61; MBA ’63.
Our friends Trula and John Wright have every reason to be upset. The UVa Cemetary Committee was very much out of line in removing the brochures and injecting their acts of “cancel culture” into the situation. Change is at hand with the appointment of new trustees to the BofT but it can not come soon enough.
I agree that this is absolutely ridiculous and another example of wokism run amuck at UVA. Hopefully Bert can help. If Jim Ryan were doing his job, Bert would not have to get involved.
Hey John and trula
I am disgusted with what is happening to our university. If there is anything I can do, please let me know I am discontinuing my contributions to both the engineering school and Darden
I despair of there being a critical mass of interested alumni sufficient to stop and reverse the ideological shift that has taken place. Withholding contributions to the Association or to specific departments may be a starting point, but may not be adequate.
But the barbarians have breached the gates: dislodging them is a daunting task.
This is true, but we have to fight!
Totally ridiculous. Instead of throwing out these brochures if they felt other stories needed to be told why not create something that could also be made avaiable?
The ” woke people” and tha MAGA lot are two sides of the same coin.Everything is black or white ; there are no ambiguities or nuances.
“Warts and all” is a valid way to approach a subjrct. The problem comes when only the warts are presented. Reminded of a saying of Theodore Roosevelt, that the muckraket is important to society but only if he knows when to stop raking the muck. Sounds like a serious imbalance in the Guides program.