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The university was founded in the 1800s by Thomas Jefferson and constructed by enslaved laborers, as the UGS tours acknowledged.
Daxia Rojas/AFP via Getty Images
The University of Virginia sparked controversy in late August when it publicly announced its decision to suspend the work of the University Guide Service, a long-standing, student-led volunteer group tasked with providing traditional undergraduate tours as well as tailored historic tours on behalf of the institution.
Members of the organization said they were given little explanation as to why they had been stripped of their “special status” to give tours for the semester. Meanwhile, the Jefferson Council, a conservative alumni group, had complained repeatedly about UGS, arguing the group was driving away prospective students by painting a negative picture of the institution’s history, particularly regarding slavery and civil rights.
University officials have said the council’s views did not play a role in their decision. But UGS executives announced Thursday that the university has extended the suspension of their historic tours in particular until at least the end of the academic year, suggesting that outside complaints about how the group portrays the institution’s history may have had some bearing.
In response, the students have decided to resume giving historical tours on their own, without the administration’s backing or approval. The tours dive into UVA’s founding by Thomas Jefferson, its dependence in the 1800s on enslaved laborers and its more recent ties to white supremacists during Unite the Right, a violent 2017 rally led by neo-Nazis protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.
“The University of Virginia is a school steeped in history. Its story is a microcosm of our nation’s past,” the organization’s co-chairs, Jack Giese and Davis Taliaferro, wrote in an op-ed for The Cavalier Daily, a student newspaper. “We believe that student-led tours are integral to the process of telling the University’s history and that our suspension has only caused harm to both the organization and the University writ large.”
Giese and Taliaferro told Inside Higher Ed that the group will continue its work with the admissions office to execute a performance improvement plan and that they are—at least for now—scheduled to resume their more traditional undergraduate tours this spring.
Since the suspension began, UGS has lost at least half of its approximately 100 members, Giese and Taliaferro said; as a result of their decreased capacity, the admissions office will continue to handle the scheduling of all tours. The majority of guide slots will be filled with paid admissions interns rather than volunteer UGS members, the UGS co-chairs added.
Although university officials affirmed in a statement Monday that UGS is “wrapping up” its improvement measures and is anticipated to resume tours “after the winter break,” Giese and Taliaferro said they know their recent decision to launch independent historical tours could change that.
“We made this decision understanding that there might be consequences,” Giese said. “But no, there has not been any [backtracking on reinvolvement with undergraduate tours] yet.”
‘No Desire to Hide or Run’
Tension over the suspension began just two months after Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican interested in tightening the state’s grip on higher education, selected a new cohort of board members in June. And friction remains high in the wake of a divisive presidential election that elevated issues of race and belonging, even as many public institutions around the country reconsider their approach to diversity, equity and inclusion.
But ever since news of UGS’s suspension first made national headlines, UVA officials have stood firm in their argument that the decision was unrelated to any complaints or government pressures.
“We have made clear, through word and deed, that the University has no desire to hide or run from our complete history,” university spokesperson Brian Coy said in an email to Inside Higher Ed.
Instead, officials have cited the organization’s inability to schedule enough guides to fill all the tour slots and members’ failure to show up for tours they had committed to provide.
Giese and Taliaferro told Inside Higher Ed this reasoning lacks evidence, though they admit to one major incident last spring, when the group miscalculated the number of tour guides needed. They also said that since the COVID-19 pandemic, they’ve struggled to get enough volunteers involved to ensure there’s a 24-7 guide available in case someone calls in sick.
But in the university’s latest statement to Inside Higher Ed, a spokesperson acknowledged concerns about ensuring that the guides portray UVA’s history fairly.
The decision to pause historical tours “centers on the institution’s desire to work with historians, students and others in our community to develop a holistic, self-guided UVA history tour that honestly, fully and consistently engages with our school’s history— both the difficult and the uplifting stories,” deputy spokesperson Bethanie Glover wrote in an email. “We will continue to work closely with Guide Service leadership to find the best way forward for both tour options.”
Giese and Taliaferro said that after repeated unanswered requests for a more thorough explanation as to why their tours are not deemed comprehensive, they have to believe it is at least partially influenced by groups like the Jefferson Council.
“In the absence of valid justification, we see this as being a result of antihistorical voices,” Taliaferro said. “Obviously, we’re not in the room [with administrators] to have an understanding of exactly what’s going on. But if anything, the existence of these voices may motivate a risk aversion from having inclusion in this history because it can be seen as controversial.”
And as a student organization with frequent leadership turnover, UGS doesn’t have time to wait, the co-chairs said. If they don’t resume historical tours now, they fear the more than 50-year-old organization could fall apart, forcing it to abandon its mission of preserving the history of this UNESCO-recognized campus.
“We are getting to a spot now where no one has given a historical tour in six months, and we are extremely out of practice,” Giese said. “And the loss of institutional knowledge, especially in a student organization, over an entire year, would be immense.”
“We remain committed to trying to give tours of the grounds,” he added. “And right now, unfortunately, that can’t be done on behalf of the administration.”
