It is evident that the utility of academic topics was greatly taken into consideration during the formulation of this document. While French was mentioned to be a very important language during the time, the projected importance of the Spanish language strikes me as being more compelling. While not immediately important, the Spanish language was projected to be significant, and this inspired the founders to at least mention it in this document as a potential critical aspect of a UVa student's education. This reminds me of the New College Curriculum in certain ways because the developers of the curriculum had to decide which aspects of a liberal arts education need to be altered to fit a contemporary and even future society/workforce. In order to make this change, the developers of New College would have had to adopt a similar line of thinking as used by the founders when considering which languages were most important at the time and which languages would be more important as time progressed.

I don't necessarily think that this is the best way to go about understanding democratic writing because it seems a little too one dimensional. After having read Danielle Allen's piece, it is easy to use her line of analysis to uncover the democratic writing elements in the Rockfish Gap Report, but that's pretty much where the experience stops. I think that the best way to understand democratic writing is to try to participate in democratic writing. This could be as simple as getting a discussion section to collectively and cohesively construct a document using this writing style. After completing the task, we could then reflect on our preconceived ideas about how democratic writing manifests itself/what it's supposed to look like.

A major point of contention in UVa's development as a school comes when we consider the involvement of Jefferson's slaves in its foundation. Danielle Allen's piece really helped give insight into Jefferson's stance on slavery as a practice. He openly condemned the practice, yet still participated. This gives the impression of hypocrisy and his status as a slave owner still shrouds UVa in some ways. However, it can be argued that within the context of Jefferson's time, it was most economically advantageous and almost unavoidable to not have slaves. His treatment of these slaves is another ethical issue, but his practicing of slavery is an aspect of Jefferson's legacy and UVa's legacy that definitely deserves more attention and more analysis.

While it is important to contemplate the implications that come with having students enrolled in college at age 15, I think that it's also important to use this sentence as a reminder to think in context of society during this point in time. Beyond the allowance of 15 years olds at the university, seeing the document through the lens of the time period would also help when interpreting the choice of courses, government/lack thereof, and other aspects of the university. Obviously times were very different 200 years ago, and it's necessary to view the document in the correct context.