This semester's democratic writing project was meaningful, but I believe that it could have been designed better. The website that was used to do the annotations does not seem to be very reliable. It was also difficult to have 500 people trying to annotate on the same document. In Danielle Allen's book, she talks about the importance of democratic writing with much fewer people so there can be a conversation with new ideas without being overwhelming. With so many people annotating our document, it was hard to come up with new, interesting ideas, and it is hard to have a conversation or comment on other peoples' ideas because there were so many to pick from. I also would like if the engagements courses themselves had touched on the democratic writing project in class at least to some extent. My engagement course and my engagement discussion felt like two completely unrelated courses this semester, and I believe that it would have been more beneficial if they had shared at least a few common topics. Overall, I do believe that the project was worthwhile but needs some revision.

I think it is very interesting that the writers of this document recognize that peoples' opinions on education differ. I think it is also very noble that they refer to these individuals as "good men, and even of respectable information." It shows that the authors do not believe that their own opinions and values are absolute truths, which is a mark of a truly educated individual. Arguments like this one still continue today. For example, many people do not believe that college is necessary, only that people need the information sufficient to succeed in their own lives. Arguments like this will probably continue for many years because there is no clear answer to this question. I believe it is important for us as a university community to realize that this is a complicated topic, and we should respect the opinions of others in regard to it, just as our founding document did.

It is fascinating to consider how much the culture of our society has changed since 1818. In today's society, fifteen year olds are basically fully dependent on their parents and required by law to attend high school. They cannot even drive vehicles on their own, so there is no way that they would ever be able to make it without their parents today. In 1818, fifteen year olds were considered mature enough to go to college away from their parents when I still find myself looking for advice from my parents almost daily at eighteen. This statement is even more surprising when put in the context of the time period when there were only two universities in Virginia, and transportation was significantly slower. There were also no forms of communication apart from letters at this point in history, so the transition from living at home to college was immensely different than it is today. When these boys went to college, they were really alone. It is very interesting to consider the young age at which boys were completely split from their parents to go to college 200 years ago.

This statement regarding education encompassing morals in addition to academics is insightful and worthy of praise. However, it is very hard to take a quotation and claim of morality seriously when there are several other remarks in this text regarding racism and disrespect for other ways of life and culture. How morally upright can someone be when they put certain lives above others? Also, what kind of morals was the university focused on during this time period? For most of the United States in 1818, morals were founded upon religion, and in another section of this text, it is stated that "we have proposed no professor of Divinity." This causes me to wonder where these morals taught at the university originate from and what exactly they are. Maybe the reasoning behind the founding of the honor code later during this particular century was the fact that there is no one text that provided a moral compass for the university, but the university wanted to teach morals in some way. Despite this statement being hypocritical because of the racism of this document, it is also innovative because it regards morals and religion as being separate.