General reflection on the democratic writing project: I believe that there are both advantages and disadvantages to democratic writing, as well as the way our class has decided to go about democratic writing. It certainly is very interesting when we put so many thoughts together at once, yet it does make creating thoughts of our own difficult when we are presented with such a multitude of other people's thoughts beforehand. Democratic writing allows us to expand on our own ideas and understanding of a text by engaging with other's ideas about the own text. With the method we have chosen to facilitate our democratic writing, I believe it would be easier if we were able to first make our own annotations on a clean document, without anyone else's comments. And then we would be able to put them all together and make further comments on what other people have written.

I find it interesting that the founders of the University make significantly clear that every thought going into planning for the school is with the idea in mind that the school is for white students and will continue to remain that way. Even the location of the University was decided upon the factor of "degree of centrality to the white population", so whichever one would be where many white people lived and would desire to come study. We must ask ourselves if this reputation still holds up today for the University and why. I find that a lot of other students my age or in high school tend to call UVA a very "white" school.

This is an interesting sentence, as the claim being made is that like science and improvement, the condition of man can be ameliorated through education, and that it is "despondent," or despairing to think that man's condition cannot be improved. However, they chose to accept the fact that the condition of African Americans cannot be improved, and therefore they should not be allowed access to the education provided.

The founders wanted the location of the University to have meaning and be selected wisely, not distastefully thrown to the highest bidder in an auction. However, what does this say about African Americans who were enslaved at the University? Many of the slaves who worked on grounds were on loan from local owners, and were part of a system in which they were historically "pledged" to the highest bidder. The founders did not want the University to be part of an auction, but they were supportive of the system that auctions off humans as labor and using this labor to build the University.