The Jefferson Council alumni group had opposed University of Virginia’s Guide Service volunteers for mentioning that the school’s founder was a slaveowner.
The University of Virginia suspended a campus tour program that had been criticized for citing school founder Thomas Jefferson’s ties to slavery, officials said Friday.
The tours led by University Guide Service have been plagued by spotty attendance by student volunteers and issues with “consistency” in content, university officials said in a statement to NBC News.
The school has been “in close contact with the student-led University Guide Service” for two years “to address a trend of issues and concerns surrounding guide attendance and tour consistency, and to discuss plans for improvement,” UVA said in statement.
The Jefferson Council, a conservative alumni group, had been calling for an end or change to the tour program, insisting that volunteers had been wrongly besmirching the legacy of UVA’s founder.
The university’s statement did not cite the Jefferson Council’s ongoing campaign against University Guide Services.
And UVA spokesperson Bethanie Glover went a step further adding that: “This isn’t in direct response to any criticism from the Jefferson Council. This is more to do with the guides not showing up for their scheduled tours.”
Nonetheless, the alumni group’s president claimed victory on Friday.
Council president Thomas Neale, a 1974 UVA grad, said his group helped push Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, to place 13 appointees on the university’s 17-member governing board of trustees, which led to this action.
“So yeah, we raised the issue and now that they have 13 (appointees) — and not all of the Youngkin appointees are homogenous, some are fairly moderate — but all of them looked at this and said this has to change,” Neale said.
Neale insisted his group doesn’t want a whitewashing of Jefferson’s status as a slaveowner, but a greater contextualization of America’s third president and Declaration of Independence author.
He insisted that it should be taught that Jefferson signed into law, in 1807, the prohibition against the importation of slaves. The prohibition was poorly enforced, doing little to end the institution of slavery until the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
“He’s (Jefferson) quoted by every country in the modern era having started a democracy,” Neale said. “There are many commendable things about him. Of course, mention he was a slave owner. That’s not hidden.”
In statement posted to social media on Wednesday, University Guide Services said it hopes to work with UVA administrators to re-start tours by spring 2025.
These tours, though, must “share an honest and completely account of UVA and its history.”
“To our stakeholders, collaborators, community members, and fellow students, we are deeply sorry that we cannot fulfill our mission to the fullest extent this semester,” University Guide Services said.
“While these months will undoubtedly look different, we hope to continue collaborating with all of you to share those stories of this school throughout the fall.”
