by James A. Bacon
In June 2022 a University of Virginia alumnus took his college-bound daughter to visit Mr. Jefferson’s university. UVa was one of the young woman’s two top choices, and she looked forward to a tour of the Lawn and the Grounds. But disillusion set in quickly. At the orientation, a senior assistant dean welcomed prospective students with a four- to five-minute discourse on how UVa’s land had been stolen from the Monacan Indians and how the University was making amends for this historical wrong. And that was just the warm-up act.
Toward the end of an otherwise engaging tour of the Academical Village, a student guide launched into a “lengthy diatribe” recounting injustices ranging from the building of UVa on the backs of oppressed slaves to the infamous 2017 Unite the Right rally. The young woman was not impressed. If the recitation of left-wing grievances defined the zeitgeist of UVa today, this was not the place for her. She dropped UVa from her list of preferred colleges.
Sadly, the young woman’s experience was not an isolated one. Indeed, denigrating themes are woven through many, if not most, tours. Arguing the need to “tell the whole truth” about Jefferson and UVa, as they put it, student guides frequently cast the University of Virginia in an exceedingly negative light.
Tour guides do give some credit to Jefferson, mainly for the undeniable architectural brilliance arrayed before the visitors, and also for his vision behind the founding of the University of Virginia. But positive statements usually come with caveats, and visitors finishing the tours gain little appreciation of Jefferson as the author of America’s founding principles, champion of individual liberties, and driving force behind ending the import of African slaves and circumscribing the expansion of slave states. He is remembered mainly as a slave holder. And the history of UVa is chronicled as a long struggle against White, male oppression.
This is not an accident.
The University Guide Service (UGS), a student-run organization supported by $3,800 in university funding in 2022 for training and recruiting, provides roughly 2,000 walking tours of the Lawn, Rotunda and Academical Village each year. Students are encouraged to personalize the tours with their own observations. But probationary guides, or “probies,” undergo a lengthy training course — weekly, three-hour classes over eight weeks — about the history of UVa. That training is laden with the rhetoric of the “social justice” movement.
The university administration has no issue with the guide presentations. To the contrary, as evidenced by the lengthy reference to Monacan Indians during the prospective-student orientation, administrators share the guides’ worldview. When Bacon’s Rebellion asked if the administration had any concerns about the heavy emphasis on slavery, racism and segregation in the guide presentations, university spokeswoman Bethanie Glover responded as follows:
The University of Virginia hosts hundreds of thousands of visitors on Grounds annually. We place a premium on hospitality and ensuring that our visitors feel welcome. We strive to provide visitors with a memorable experience that meets or exceeds the purpose of their visit, and to offer a range of opportunities for them to learn more about the remarkable story of the University. Visitor programs highlight the academic rigor, collaborative research, vibrant student life, UVA’s contributions to service, athletic success, history and traditions, and the overall achievements of our broad community. We emphasize the University’s growth and progress over our 200+ years, often highlighting key changes and milestones including emphasizing the University’s founding mission to cultivate an educated and informed citizenry.
The UGuides have a long-standing tradition of providing student volunteer-led tours of the University along with a snapshot of their own personal experiences. The guides have been important ambassadors over the years and represent a point of pride for the University as a student-governed group. …
While the content of the UGuides tours is student organized and prepared, the University works closely with the guides to address any concerns shared by visitors, regardless of the nature of the concern.
Another interesting point to add here is that reviews for the UGuides tours are overwhelmingly positive, with 96% of July tour attendees leaving an “excellent” or “good” rating for the guides and their experience. The University has also had a record-breaking two years in applications, admitting some of the most talented and diverse classes in UVA history. The UGuides play a valuable role in our student recruitment efforts.
Glover’s description is largely at odds with the picture that The Jefferson Council, one of whose goals is to uphold the Jeffersonian tradition at UVa, has gleaned from the USG’s own training documents and from the testimony of numerous individuals who have taken the tours.
You can find a detailed presentation of testimonies and training materials here.
What the guides learn. In the spring of 2022 probationary Guides were provided a training manual, entitled “University Guide Service Probationary Packet.” After introductory of exhortations from current guides, the manual delved into history of the organization and an overview of university programs, finances, and student life. The manual proceeded to give an succinct overview of the career of Thomas Jefferson, with particular attention to the design of the Academical Village (where the tours take place) and a much longer and more detailed history of slavery, racism, the Lost Cause, eugenics, memorialization, segregation, desegregation, and profiles of Black, Latinx, Queer, and female students and their struggles against racism and gender violence at UVa. Toward the end, the manual does take note of the university’s rich traditions, including Greek life and a brief treatment of the Honor Code, but then follows with an essay putting those traditions in the context of racism and sexism.
The problem [with traditional representations] is that it allows community members and visitors to gloss over topics such as slavery and the challenges of integration for both African Americans and women. Any emphasis placed on tradition is often reframed or downplayed so that it safely promotes old Southern values without addressing their possibly racist origins.
This view is reinforced in the eight training sessions, one of which was entitled, “Discussing Slavery and Jefferson Critically.” In that session, probies unpacked “intentionality” and how that impacts the framing of narratives. Examples included making distinctions between slave vs. enslaved, master vs. enslaver, monument vs. memorial, and the centering of slave owners vs. the experienced of the enslaved.
Another training session reviewed “the social construction of race,” drawing a direct line between Thomas Jefferson’s views on race, scientific racism, and eugenics. According to the program overview, “Jefferson is one of the first contributors to scientific racism in the United States.”
Suggested themes for probies to consider as they prepare their tours: resistance and activism, education and resistance, combatting institutions of white supremacy, memory and memorialization, and violence and community action.
Inevitably, this leftist framing of historical issues during the training has insinuated itself into many tours. Aside from Jefferson’s founding of the university, tour guides have little to say about UVa’s institutional growth, the leaders who guided that growth, or the contribution of UVa graduates to law, business, arts, and politics. As one guide explained in a tour, UVa is all about “telling the entire truth and not just the ones that make us look good.” The way ” telling the entire truth” often works out in practice amounts to excluding the good and dwelling mainly on the bad.
Why the Board of Visitors must act. As a student-run organization, the University Guides are granted considerable autonomy. That provides plausible cover for administrators who are perfectly comfortable with the guides’ leftist spin on history but don’t want to openly admit it. Yet the fact remains, the administration provides funding to the Guides, it cooperates with the organization when putting on programs for prospective students, and it integrates the student tours into its student recruitment.
Spokeswoman Glover reports 96% “good” and “excellent” ratings for the student tours. Perhaps that is a fair assessment. Conversely, perhaps the ratings represent a biased sample. I don’t know. The official picture does not jibe with the feedback that The Jefferson Council has received. Numerous alumni who revere UVa’s traditions and visitors who reject the oppression narrative of UVa history have responded viscerally and negatively to the tours. To them, the subliminal message is clear: students with leftist views will find UVa to be an accommodating place, conservative students will not.
This is consistent with the university’s broader policy. The University of Virginia has created ideological filters for hiring, firing and promotion by requiring job applicants and employees undergoing annual reviews to submit written statements expressing their commitment to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Similarly, it mandates diversity training, and high school students seeking admission to the university must fill out diversity statements of their own as part of the application process. The tours function — in fact, if not as part of a conscious strategy — as one more mechanism that weeds out conservative voices and reinforces a conformist, intellectual monoculture.
Addressing the issue will be ticklish. The Ryan administration has no intention of intervening, and it predictably will defend its inaction on the grounds (a) the tours are well received, and (b) that, regardless, self-governance must be respected. But through their interactions with “hundreds of thousands” of visitors every year, the student guides are forging a negative image of UVa. The Board has an obligation to ascertain if irreparable damage to the university’s reputation and recruitment is being done.
Full disclosure: The author is vice president-communications of The Jefferson Council.
Insane. How to not sell the university. My daughter also had uva in her final 2. Thank goodness she didn’t pick it
The content of the tour is intended to “sell” the University to prospective students who already “woke” and want to be sure that the institution they are considered is groveling sufficiently for the dark aspects of its past. The idea of placing the events of the founding and the history of the University in historical perspective, such as the philosophy of the era, is overlooked. The assumption of the “woke” is that the people of any era really had the same perspective as the “woke” but chose to do otherwise. The idea that the “woke” perspective is an ideological novelty and one filled with self-contradictions completely eludes them
Whether to friends or family members, who in their right mind would go out of their way to recommend to those they love and care about that they purposefully subject themselves to an intentional experience of the groupthink, conformist, intellectually incestuous, woke monoculture at present day UVA? As a disgusted alumnus I currently actively counsel them to look elsewhere. Never would have dreamed that such would be the case. This requires and demands change.
Thank you for the information, Jim. The University’s brand is valuable. Giving students discretion to craft myriad unique statements to prospective students as representatives of The University is as careless as authorizing students to fulfill other important representative functions, like contract for services, on behalf of the school.
Concerned students, perhaps YAF, could test the administration’s high regard for student agency in this domain. I picture a tour-guides offering facts that debunk the politically approved DEI narrative(s) about UVA. This could include an honest assessment of the Hemings issue. They could cover comparative SAT scores, admission, GPA and/or graduation rates by race. They could reference current lawsuits aimed at holding universities accountable for racist admissions policies, and the suspension of standardized tests to avoid accountability.
A great way to ‘personalize’ the tour for out-of-state white students would be to describe their infinitesimal chances of being admitted, compared to a black student, if they are not a legacy or a scholarship athlete. Lots of good ways to incorporate unique personal observations.
I think the outrage would be loud and the administrative action swift.
Posted on behalf of “C’ville Curmudgeon”:
In late 2019 I co-hosted a group of domestic & international scholars at UVA. To help the overseas participants un-jet-lag, I took them to Monticello in the morning and then to a student-led tour after lunch. The Monticello tour was still quite good back then and enjoyed by all. However, the rotunda/grounds tour was, shall we say, a bit different.
In fact, except for the ‘we stole their land’ acknowledgement (guess it wasn’t in vogue yet), the entire tenor of the walking tour was as you describe it – all about how Mr. Jefferson’s students earned their degrees on the backs of enslaved peoples. Little to nothing about how significant Mr. Jefferson’s contributions were to education. Instead we learned how the buildings surrounding the lawn were designed to hide enslaved peoples from the sight of the white male students.
Fortunately, some of the guests were good friends and, as I apologized for the quality of the tour, they simply nodded their heads knowingly – impressionable kids who were trying to out-woke their peers would be kids. But I was also embarrassed for UVA. The University has much to legitimately take pride in. But instead, the students took pride in denigrating the very people who made UVA possible.
Needless to say, I never considered booking a student-led rotunda/grounds tour again. So sad.
I read Monticello tours are as bad or worse, but at least they are not state funded.
Monticello tours are equally as bad. Leftists are using money garnered from lovers of Thomas Jefferson over the last century – the massive endowments at UVA and the Monticello Foundation – to destroy Mr. Jefferson’s legacy.
Despicable!👎
If the University is committed to purging its history of connection to racists, eugenicists, an any other non-woke traits, it ought to get rid of any connection with Woodrow Wilson (son of a Confederate soldier) – Wilson Hall, his papers, the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics, and his record at the law school at the University.
But I suppose consistency isn’t to be expected from revisionists.
While going after Jefferson’s legacy, they might as well get rid of Woodrow Wilson, his papers, his letters, his name on Wilson Hall, the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics. Woodrow Wilson – eugenicist, segregationist and racist.
Princeton, Wilson’s undergraduate alma mater, has already done so. The “Woodrow Wilson” School of Government there has been renamed.
Trust me. UVA is not far behind.
I thought this group was interested in free speech and academic freedom? Only when it conforms to a certain narrative? Fascinating y’all.
We do support free speech. We support the right of students to think and say what they please. Please explain how raising the concerns expressed in this article violates anyone’s rights.
As an alum I no longer promote the University nor contribute to its woke mission. Sadly, I thought Ryan might have some principles.
Unfortunately, he succumbed to the herd mentality fairly quickly.
This was my first visit to UVA and the student led tour was a HUGE disappointment. Our guide (pronouns she & her) spent about 10 minutes on the architecture of the campus and the next 30 on slavery – after which we left the “tour” to explore on our own. Having read widely about slavery including Fannie Kemble’s famous book, I know slavery was and is horrible. Our guide kept mentioning that wealthy students only attended in the beginning. Scholarships aside, I’ll bet the majority of all college students today are from rather prosperous families.
Did anything good happen at UVA? Did anyone well known attend UVA? Describe the beautiful rock chapel. Tell about classes and uses of the Rotunda today. What is unique about this University? Or mention that Poe attended here for a period of time. I understand these tour guides are voluntary and unpaid but our guide gave a poor, negative representation of the University.
Yes, I grew up in the South. Is everything about the South evil because slavery existed here? Perhaps these tours should be renamed “Slavery Tours” so visitors will at least be forewarned.
We just toured UVA today. Nothing has changed. This cultish woke ideology permeated every aspect of the tour, beginning with every guide announcing their “pronouns.” The subliminal message of the tour was clear; only liberals need apply. Thankfully my daughter had heard all she needed to hear about forty minutes into it so we made an early exit. It was so refreshing to tour other nearby universities that have not taken political sides and still focus on education and opportunities for all students.
Looks like nothing has changed. My coworker took her son for a tour last weekend and the script was the same as in 2022. She said it appeared that everyone in the multiple groups felt the same. They referred to it as “the tour of shame” or “the guilt tour”. She said that academics and programs were barely mentioned. The only programs they mentioned were multicultural this and LGB that. UVA is turning into the worst of the indoctrination grounds. Sent three kids there. If it was today, I’d be thinking long and hard. As far as the increased applications and enrollment, if you lower the bar far enough, the ones that want to hear what you are preaching will come. The downfall of “The University”. I understand the tours at Monticello have gone the same direction and the interior looks like “a rummage sale”.
Look up the word Choice. Everyone has it. Stop complaining, and choose to spend your money somewhere else. Your daughter’s spot was probably “filled” even before you wrote this article. It’s a good college. People will go. Keep it movin……..Remember, “Choices” .
I have a child interested in UVA, and I’m confused by this article. I also studied history at a southern university, and I’m very familiar with and fond of Thomas Jefferson’s writings. Nothing mentioned in the piece seems untrue or incorrect. Does UVA have a tradition or atmosphere of denying history? Is it treated as fact that Jefferson is a figure beyond reproach, rather than a mixed bag of good and bad human traits just like the rest of us? Is looking at the whole of human experience during slavery “woke”? Is factual history “woke”? Is anything that makes someone a little uncomfortable “woke”? And why on God’s green Earth is referring to people in the condition of slavery as “enslaved people” “woke”?? I’m not sure if the school is worth a visit if this attitude is pervasive among students, alumni, and major donors.
The second year partially black polished young lady conducting our tour on April 19 had nothing good to say about any of the spoilt sons of landowners who continually drank, gambled, had sword and gunfights on the lawn. Multiple times she stressed Jefferson’s hierarchy of design from the library, professors, students and then the thousands of black slaves hidden behind walls while building the school. Her tour continually followed a script of black and female oppression and the difficulties and injustices that named early blacks and females at the school suffered.
The tour started out with 20 or so white visitors but at each stage of the continued negative script the numbers dwindled. Dissections and eugenics were required weekly occurrences that all had to support not to be ostracized from society even after they left UVA.
I pulled the young lady aside and asked her to name anyone great or famous in the history of UVA. She just said leaders and politicians. I asked her to name anyone who was great such as Margaret Thatcher was to Britain and she could not specify a single positive name!
Later my wife and I fortunately ran into a friendly volunteer who walked to where the wealthy founders laid the first stone and bring Jefferson’s plan to reality. He then walked us and a growing number of others to Edgar Allen Poe’s room and finally lead us through the enchanting sequence of murals in the Music building. It was nice to finish our visit on this high note.