While perhaps not common in the US recently, there are times when one state splits into two or more because of internal conflict or other reasons. This happened in India two years ago. I wonder what would happen if Virginia ever split into the two, and what the effect on the university would be. This location was chosen to be a proper place for the university but in light of recent events, it is highly probable that Charlottesville will be one the places that it is the spotlight. I wonder what consequences there would be for the university if that happened .

Here, again, Jefferson displays how he believes that whites are elite. Most of the document people have discussed Jefferson's relationship with slaves and how African-Americans are below being able to attend this University, but here, he mentions another minority group: Native Americans. Earlier in the document, they list the values of education, but here they mention explicitly how education is powerful, especially in the sense of taking over another group of people, whether that be African or Native Americans. Time after time throughout the document, Jefferson and his team mention the value of education for our citizens but they have a long list of people who do not fall in that category, another one of them being Native Americans.

The committee seems very open to different forms of religious worship and different religions, but are they actually? They may only be open to different Protestant religious forms. This is all in consideration of the target of students and faculty being white, upper-class Protestants. Religious freedom is a part of the Constitution and all but was it enforced, considering our first Catholic President was John F. Kennedy, the 35th President, and his approval wasn't that high because of that. YIKES.

Side Comment: Seems like they should've been more concerned with the Rotunda when thinking about this

What exactly was considered white at this point in history of the U.S. of A? Just Anglo- Saxon? If so, this statement is also discriminatory to the European Immigrants that were migrating into the U.S. As I have learned from my COLA: "Whiteness: A Racial Category," Thomas Jefferson believed the Anglo- Saxons were the most pure and "legitimate" white population. So was the creation of UVA meant to be only accessible to Anglo-Saxons?

This passage is interesting because Jefferson compares his view of education to a "business transaction". At face value, this metaphor makes sense--one receives their education and then uses that in whatever manor they choose, in whatever field of study they choose, and apply it in any way they choose. But in another sense, equating education to a transaction seems to go against what Jefferson stood for in education. At UVA, we use the terms "first year", etc to represent how education is eternal. But, in the sense of a transaction it seems very formal and that people should be educated as the first step in wherever their lives take them. Yet, I think that even if one doesn't have "his own business" or know what is next, that education is valuable for all people, as Jefferson said, and that the primary goal of education could stop at, "To give every citizen the information he needs".

This object of primary education sounds a bit like a general mission statement for the University. In particular, I found interesting the line about forming "statesmen, legislators and judges." This phrasing seems to resemble an element of UVA's current mission statement, which states that UVA serves by "developing responsible citizen leaders and professionals." It's cool to see how these two statements that were made almost 200 years apart are actually very similar, and communicate a lasting goal of the University. Statesmen, legislators, and judges I think would definitely translate to being considered prominent citizen leaders and professionals in today's world. I also like the rest of the line ,"on whom public prosperity, & individual happens are so much to depend." This speaks a lot to the purpose of the dedication to creating citizen leaders, in that it is beneficial to the public to have more of these virtuous figures, and that it brings one fulfillment to achieve this position. [](http://www.virginia.edu/statementofpurpose

Link to UVA's mission statement

These sentences seem to form a little bit of a contradiction, in that at first the report says that the arts are important/valuable, but then saying they need not be "incorporated with the institution." Nonetheless, they do show some thoughts about the arts back when UVA was being founded. In my current engagement class, Art: Inside/Out, we always discuss how art comes into play in our daily lives and how people view art on large and small scales. I see these same themes in this part of the report, because it is reflecting on how the commissioners see art and for what purpose they think it serves. In this case, its seems the purposes are either for military use or plain enjoyment. I believe if we asked the University community what the value and purpose of art is today, we would see a stark contrast to this, as well as an extreme variety of answers. Many people would say that art might be to spread a message or support some larger movement. Today we see the presence of art so much at UVA, such as through musical and theater groups, public art installations like the curiosity shop, or the mural on the side of the Graduate Charlottesville Hotel.

One of the most interesting motifs I've noticed in the report is Jefferson's desire to shape society in his image. Jefferson doesn't just want to educate the youth; he wants to define "The American Character". He and his compatriots spend a good deal of the report defining what they believes the ideal character of a person should be, and then proceed to design the curriculum around how they believe such a person can be created. The founders of UVA were obviously intent on using the university for some form of social engineering. I don't necessarily believe that manipulating the thoughts and feelings of the population is a bad thing, provided that the attempt at doing so is done properly with a strong ethical basis*, but it does bother me how all these old white men used their positions to shape the "American character" in their image.

*Let's face it, we need a bit of social engineering sometimes. By and large, the American People have a tendency to behave horrendously when they find themselves in a position from which they can act with impunity.

I find this passage to be refreshing; here, Jefferson and his colleagues are rather forthright in admitting that universities essentially exist to produce skilled workers to be used by private interests. He still relies on the "self betterment" jargon that the university continues to use as a crutch in its advertisements, but it's nice that he takes the time to point out the industrial complex that colleges are typically built to support. Before anybody comments to this effect: I'm fully aware of how incredibly cynical a statement that is.

When the students learned these languages, were they learned for an increase in vocabulary and being the student who knew all these languages or was it to enhance their knowledge on the cultures in which these languages belonged?

I feel like the goal of many ideas (religious, political, historical) is to make sure the youth are involved in some way shape or form. I guess it is because of the cliche that the "youth are our future." Here, it is made sure that the minds of the youth are enlarged along with their morals. This reminds me of my Debating Islams engagement where we have discussed the 3 main radical ideologies, all in which push the participation of the youth and the passing of ideas to the youth.

This also brings to mind the idea to "cultivate their morals." It kind bewilders me that their definition of morals made it okay to enslave a whole population of people because they felt they were inferior to them due to pigmentation of skin, or more of their lack of. You would think to have "morality" is to have compassion, to have some sense of "hmmm maybe this isn't right", "hmmm maybe they are human beings that do deserve rights."

Our definition of white now is very different from what it was back in Jefferson's day. In my COLA, White: A Racial Category, we've been learning about the progression of what "White" actually is and who was considered "white" in America throughout its history. "White", during the time frame of the founding of UVA, was considered to be of Anglo- Saxon descent, according to Thomas Jefferson. Being white was very exclusive. Just being from Europe was not enough, because being an immigrant from Germany, Ireland, Italy, did not make you white. The acceptance of these people to be considered white did not take place until later in American history. One also had to be of a certain economic status so that you can afford the education.

So the placement of this school wasn't quite just based on the "white population" but economic status, and directly who you descended from.

Here's a great example of the class warfare inherent in the text, as well as a hopeful sign of progress that hadn't yet reached fruition. By claiming that you can improve somebody's "morals and faculties" through education, the founders of the university were essentially offering a justification for the class system of the day; in essence, this statement implies that the ruling class (meaning wealthy and white) were better suited for their positions than their underlings because they had received an education, and thus possessed better intellectual "faculties" and a higher ethical podium from which they could act, thereby justifying their social positions and offering a means and justification for their children to take their place once they'd passed. Personally, I reject the notion that the well educated have a higher moral understanding, since I've never heard of anybody with only a G.E.D to their name declaring war on another country, but I think it's interesting how in the 1800s, people began to reject the notion that the ruling class was inherently better and were thus better suited to their positions; education began to socially supersede divine providence. This may not have catalyzed change at first, but it significantly expanded peoples' notions of who should and should not be in power. It's a meager edition to a document that most others might find horrifying with its blithe acceptance of the idea of class structures and slavery, but it provides a small hopeful note.

I've always found it immensely ironic as to how universities always make a big show of acting in the public interest, despite the fact that more often than not they exist to keep education firmly within reach of the rich while far away from the poor. UVA, for instance, has a "watch-list" of people who are given a fast track to admission thanks to connections to wealthy university donors (Summary: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/at-u-va-a-watch-list-flags-vip-applicants-for-special-handling/2017/04/01/9482b256-106e-11e7-9d5a-a83e627dc120_story.html?utm_term=.e0347fa7134b, Backing Documents: http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/local/u-va-watch-list/2396/). That's certainly far away from the ideal of giving education to "every citizen", even by the backwards definition of citizen used in the 1820s (meaning to be both white and landowning). It's especially interesting that while the university and country as a whole has made immense progress socially since then, we still haven't even come close to coming within reach of the ideals the university was founded on.

In my Engagements class, Thinking Like a Scientist, one of the main topics we discuss is how people make judgements of the information they read and how they decide what is valid. As were read over time, we aim to become better at distinguishing valid and invalid information. It seems that this goal of the university, “to improve by reading, his morals and faculties,” falls into alignment with this debate. I think that when we read, we are both absorbing the information presented and also formulating our own judgements and interpretations of it. This in turn helps us develop personal views about the world, thus cultivating some of our morals and faculties. By carefully evaluating a reading’s information and determining its validity, we are making judgements that align with certain morals and ways of thinking that we already have and are improving upon them. I like how even at the time of the university’s founding these ideas are present within the school’s academics, and now they are still present in a class in our new curriculum.

In Thomas Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia", Query 15, "Colleges, buildings, and roads," discusses some of his views and observations of what kinds of these things existed at the time. He starts off by giving an overview of the College of William and Mary, which once was "the only public seminary of learning in this state" (276). T.J. describes the structure of W&M's first schools of learning at the time, which consisted of only six schools or "professorships" (Law, medicine, mathematics, moral philosophy, modern languages, and Indian conversion to Christianity). He comments that it would be proper for the college to soon add more professorships, specifically more of those of science and the ancient languages and literature of the North. I would say that these observations of W&M served as some inspiration to Jefferson's ideas for UVA that he describes in the Rockfish report. The commissioners provide an outline of the desired branches of learning which consist of ten branches, covering significantly more material than the six offered by W&M at the time. Also, Jefferson sticks to his notion of the importance of the Ancient Languages and the Sciences which he suggested for W&M, which can be seen through the prevalence of these languages and a vast variety of scientific topics within the proposed branches. Jefferson used his observations of the only Virginian college of the time and expanded on its structure when designing his own university. http://web.archive.org/web/20110221131407/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefVirg.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=15&division=div1