by James A. Bacon

The University of Virginia administration has suspended the student-run University Guide Service from giving admission tours to prospective students and historic tours to the general public. The news was announced in an UVA Guides Instagram post Wednesday.

The story generated national attention. The New York Times was the first to pick it up, followed by NBC News. The story was then repackaged and disseminated widely in other media. The prevailing narrative played up the ideological-conflict angle, noting that The Jefferson Council, an organization of “conservative alumni,” criticized the student tours for painting UVA’s history in a uniformly negative light. The Charlottesville Daily Progress went so far as to proclaim the decision a “victory” for those who disliked the Guides’ “woke version of history.”

But, as I shall explain, it’s not clear at all why the administration acted as it did or whether the Guides’ suspension represents a vindication of The Jefferson Council — as much as I, as an active member of the Council, would like to think UVA leadership was cowed when we flexed our rhetorical muscles.

The University administration made no mention of The Jefferson Council’s criticisms. University spokeswoman Bethanie Glover told the Times that the decision was related to “issues and concerns” with the guides’ attendance and the content and consistency of the tours. 

Stephen Farmer, vice president for enrollment, followed the next day with a letter published in the student-run Cavalier Daily. The Student Guides, he explained, had not been able to schedule enough members to fill the tour slots allotted to the group; moreover, guides sometimes failed to show up for tours they did commit to provide.

Farmer conceded, as The Jefferson Council has pointed out for years now, that “the quality of the tours has been inconsistent.” Although many Guides have received positive feedback from guests, he wrote, many guests complained about “excessive and off-putting negativity about the University.”

Here’s what Farmer was too polite to say: students and parents visited the Grounds to see what the dorms and other amenities were like and what they got were lectures about UVA’s history of racial oppression.

Farmer noted that “recent news stories” have implied that the University’s actions were prompted by “a desire to shield visitors from truths about the University’s history,” but that was “not the case.”

“No administrator at the University has stated or suggested to the Guides that they should falsify the University’s history or avoid the history of enslavement at the University,” he wrote.

As chief admissions officer, Farmer oversees UVA’s recruitment apparatus, which organizes programs, including tours, for prospective students and families. His comments appear to refer to the orientation tours only, not to the so-called “historic tours,” which are advertised on signage at the Rotunda and are open to tourists, visitors and the public. UVA differed from most other colleges and universities by entrusting a student-run club with responsibility for staffing both student and historic tours for decades.

In conversations with The Jefferson Council, Farmer has stressed UVA’s history of student self-governance and the delicacy of dictating terms to an autonomous student organization. He has been negotiating with the group’s leaders for some two years now over the terms of their collaboration with the admissions office.

The University has given no explanation of why the Student Guides have been suspended from the historic tours, which are distinct and unrelated to the student tours.

The Council has documented extensive negative feedback about both types of tours based on personal communications from unhappy tour guests, parents speaking out independently from us on Facebook, and survey comments obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. While some visitors were pleased by the “frank” and “honest” portrayal of the dark side of UVA’s history, many were dismayed with the unrelievedly negative depiction of one of America’s great universities. Some described the UVA experience as the worst college tour they had ever been on; some said the tours dissuaded their child from ever applying to UVA.

The feedback is consistent with the observations of Jefferson Council members, including myself, who have gone on the tours.

I tagged along for a historical tour, where most of the “guests” appeared to be older visitors or tourists, not prospective students and their families. The guide, an outgoing young woman, commenced the tour on the Lawn and gave a brief salutation to Thomas Jefferson for designing the architectural masterpiece, which (she could have mentioned but didn’t) is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But instead of exploring Jefferson’s thinking about how the architecture gave life to his theories about higher education, she segued into a discussion of how the placement of slave quarters in the basements of the pavilions reflected the hierarchical nature of Virginia society with slaves at the bottom. (I was tempted to ask if she he ever seen the English series Upstairs, Downstairs, or even Downton Abbey, but held my tongue.)

The next stop took us to a garden where we were told how slaves built the university and where we were treated  to anecdotes of their mistreatment. A third stop prompted a lecture about Jim Crow-era segregation and UVA’s role in the eugenics movement. Never once did the guide mention Jefferson’s leadership in ending the transatlantic slave trade, his authorship of the statute of religious freedom, or his vision of UVA as a secular university dedicated to the pursuit of reason… not to mention the Declaration of Independence thing. Never did she mention a positive accomplishment of anyone associated with the University or seek to outline UVA’s evolution as a higher-ed institution in response to America’s social and economic changes. It was all oppression, all the time. Only in the final stop, which highlighted how women were denied admission until 1970, did she offer the brief, concluding thought that she actually liked being a UVA student.

To be clear, The Jefferson Council has never advocated whitewashing the University’s history, much less falsifying it.

But we do assert that the Student Guides have lost sight of the mission that once animated the Student Guides to portray the University and its founder in a positive light. Any tour should acknowledge the facts of slavery and eugenics as part of the institution’s past, and guides should be prepared to answer forthrightly any questions about them — but not to the exclusion of anything positive.

One of UVA’s great challenges after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling restricting the use of race in admissions is maintaining the number of Blacks and Hispanics. According to yesterday’s New York Times, Black students admitted to UVA this fall declined to 7.0 percent of the entering class compared to 7.9 percent last year. One would think that when pitching Black students to come to UVA, it is not helpful to tar the University as a racist institution. Who knows, maybe that’s what woke up the administration to the fact that they have a problem.

James A. Bacon is contributing editor to The Jefferson Council.