This is a very powerful statement regarding the purpose of higher education. The commissioners of the university clearly had a vision for how the education that the university provided should affect its students. However, the statement is somewhat idealistic in that it includes the idea that education will drive out any "innate" or subconscious deviations from morality. We all know that this was certainly not achieved at the time of the university's founding, when the practice of owning slaves was perceived as moral, and also has not been achieved today, although UVA has introduced many new efforts to combat this problem. Through the university's response to the Unite the Right rally this summer, the numerous implicit bias modules and presentations it offers, and the engagements themselves, our "innate obliquities" are being discussed and brought to light so that we as a university can take deliberate steps towards achieving this ideal view of education put forth by the commissioners of UVA. Claire Waterhouse

I find this point in the document to be forward-thinking, particularly considering the time period it was written in. It is well known that Thomas Jefferson wanted to create a university centered around learning rather than religion, which is why the Rotunda (a library) serves as the center of the university rather than a chapel or church, as was common among other colleges at the time. This concept of religious freedom and equality is especially intriguing after taking "Can a text be ethical?" with Professor Spittler this semester. Just as the commissioners of the university proposed not to force a prescribed set of religious beliefs on its students who may not have similar religious backgrounds, many of my discussion groups in the ethical engagement came to the conclusion that the New Testament cannot be used as the sole basis for an ethical argument, because not everyone holds the New Testament to be a sacred and valid text. Claire Waterhouse

This part of the text makes it known that everyone who was to be involved in the University's establishment should have the right of knowing what goes on with his own transactions. While reading this, i was constantly reminded of how my engagement constantly talks about people having the right to control what goes on to their bodies. Some people choose to stay ignorant to the problems going on in their body while others care to know what is going on and what indeed is the best way to proceed forward. It is all a right and in no way, shape, or form should this right be violated and/or questioned. I believe that while, several other aspects of the document were designed for failure, this section provided some sort of hope for equality and self awareness. - Kayla Thomas

This portion of the document is extremely important because it addresses the purpose of the University, but is also somewhat ironic regarding what was stated earlier in the document. In the first paragraph, it is revealed that the University's location was chosen based on its centrality to the white population in Virginia. Although this statement implies a bias against non-white Virginians, the listed purposes of the University and what it hopes to impart to its students paint a different picture, one in which a student would use his education to behave morally in society. In this light, the purpose of the University can be interpreted in different ways, either as a way to serve the white population so that they may "preserve [the] ideas" of the time Oppositely, students could use the knowledge they gain to "improve [their] morals," and work to bring about change in society by educating others about the ethical way to interact with people of all races.

Claire W.

In my Mortality and Morality engagement class, we often times talk about the role of family in the event that someone does become sick and how their presence can make a huge impact on how a situation is carried out. Family is often time seen as an extra layer of protection over any individual, especially for children. We assume that children are not old enough or mature enough to make major decisions for themselves, so it is ideal to keep them within reach in case of emergency. Therefore, if a school can supply resources that could be beneficial in times of need many parents would view that as a plus. - Kayla Thomas

This clause directly following the colon intrigues me in its oxymoronic quality. The paradox of using the same breath to explicitly state that race was the chief determinant for the location of the University of Virginia and to then describe this decision as having been reached by impartial deliberation immediately came to my attention as ironic. Looking at this fragment through the lens of the Ethical Engagements, the words "impartial" and "mature" accomplish two things. The first word reveals the intrinsic acceptance of discrimination based on race and the blindness to the possibility that it could even be accepted as discrimination. The second word, "mature", belies the value and justification the authors of the document and those who took part in the decision hold in regards to the conclusion they reached. In plain terms, they believed their actions to be of the purest standard based on an engrained ideology that fundamentally repudiates the pure standards of impartiality and morality they believed they were upholding.