Alumni Fight UVA's Woke Campus Tours
Accentuating The Negative May Be Costing the School Students
Imagine you’re a recent high school grad on an introductory visit to the University of Virginia. Imagine, again, that this is the spiel you and your parents hear from the student guide as the tour begins.
“Welcome to the University of Virginia, everyone, a school occupying stolen Native American land and founded by a ruthless slaveholder and colonizer who did everything he did for the greater glory of Virginia’s landed gentry — a class of white elitists whose wealth was derived from the cruel exploitation of human chattel. And yes, as a footnote, it’s probably worth mentioning that this white colonizer, Thomas Jefferson, authored the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, served as the nation’s third president, negotiated the Louisiana Purchase, and dispatched Lewis and Clark to explore the far reaches of the American West. Did I mention that Jefferson was a slaveholder and a colonizer — and that we’re standing on stolen Indian land?”
This isn’t an exact transcript of the needlessly lopsided, inaccurate, inflammatory and offputting narrative that UVA’s student tour guides have been pushing on visitors until recently, when objections from The Jefferson Council, AFSA’s affiliate at UVA, led to a pause in the tours, as their tone, tenor and veracity are reviewed.
Here’s how The College Fix recounted events in a report appearing this week:
The University of Virginia has paused its independent, student-run tour guide service after on-going criticism about its approach to the institution’s history.
The Jefferson Council, an alumni organization dedicated to preserving Thomas Jefferson’s legacy of freedom and excellence, took credit for the change.
Its members have expressed concerns for years about the University Guide Service not painting the school in a positive light to prospective students and families. Alumni accused the guides of “hat[ing] UVA” and pushing an “inflammatory” “political agenda” and “woke-ism” through their tours.
“This [suspension] was 100% due … to us,” council president Tom Neale told The College Fix in a recent interview. “They [university leaders] were in denial for three years.”
The University Guide Service is an independent tour group at UVA, run by students.
At the start of the fall semester, the public institution informed the group that its admissions and historical tours were suspended, according to a statement.
The group said the suspension follows the university’s belief that its tours are no longer reliable.
“The justification for these suspensions is based on the Administration’s view that UGS is failing to fulfill its delegated functions, particularly in terms of reliability and tour quality,” the guide service stated. “Our own accountability measures – including tour feedback solicited from all admissions tour visitors – suggest that this is an incomplete view of our tours.”
Please read the complete story here.
The Jefferson Council (TJC) has been working to correct the problem for years, Neale told The College Fix, but its whistleblowing fell on deaf ears. “We made [UVA’s] board aware of this three years ago,” Neale said. “And the former chair would say, ‘Oh I don’t believe you.’ So we sent him an audio recording.”
Today’s board is taking the issue seriously, explained Neale, thanks to an influx of new regents appointed by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
This is a textbook case of the clout engaged alumni can have when they’re alert, vigilant, persistent, and organized for action. And we applaud TJC for bringing this to wider public attention, so that UVA’s “woke” campus tours aren’t allowed to distort history, unfairly tarnish Jefferson’s legacy, and turn off potential students or their parents. Because isn’t that the opposite of what such tours are designed to do?
Learn more about TJC and how you can support its important work here: https://www.jeffersoncouncil.org/
