THE PRINCIPAL goal of a university is to oversee the education of its student body with the hope that each pupil will leave with increased knowledge of multiple subjects while being intellectually stimulated. The foremost goals of a UNESCO World Heritage site are to preserve and celebrate locations of great cultural or natural significance to mankind. These realities meet at a crossroads here at the University where there has been a litany of complaints about the money being spent to refurbish the entirety of the Lawn and Range rooms.
Cuts in the already meager state funding the school receives make spending $245 per pine floorboard in each room seem like another example of misplaced funding priorities by the administration. However, the University has to balance the conflicting responsibilities of preserving the Academical Village and manage an ever-changing academic community. While the cost to make the Lawn more historically accurate seems superfluous, the University has a duty to mankind, as seen by the Lawn’s recognition as part of a World Heritage Site, to make Jefferson’s creation live on in perpetuity.
Poring over the list of World Heritage Sites, all 878 of them, one can see that the Lawn, as a part of the site listed as “Monticello and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville,” is in impressive company. The Taj Mahal and the Pyramids of Giza grace the list’s presence, for example. To truly show how valued the Academical Village is, just take a look at the year it was added: UNESCO began the list of World Heritage sites in 1979 — the Grand Canyon was added that year — and the Lawn was added in 1987. So of all the important sites in this world, added at a rate of about 28 a year, the Grounds of the University was added only the ninth year after the classification started.
Obviously, Grounds and Monticello are considered to be incredibly cherished landmarks because of their inseparable link to Thomas Jefferson and the ideals he espoused. In fact, the University is one of three universities included on the list and the only one in the United States. For once, Harvard doesn’t get any love.
Jefferson designed the school around a library, the first in the United States to not have a church at its center, indicative of his belief in the preeminence of knowledge. The University is world-renowned because of this symbolic nature of its design and its fabulous architecture. World Heritage Sites are not supposed to change; rather, they are supposed to be maintained in their original form, as best can be managed. Thus it is imperative that the Academical Village be presented in its traditional style so that students and visitors alike can view the Lawn in its most historically accurate form.
Money, of course, is the main objection people have to the restoration project. It seems like it could be better spent on other pursuits at the University, particularly academics, especially in a sour economy such as this one. This argument is reasonable if one just looks at the money: the state is going to slice the University’s budget by as much as $22 million and the powerful private fund-raising capabilities of the school will be put to the test over the next few years to deal with these budgetary matters.
Yet if one looks at the funding sources for the restoration of the Lawn rooms, much of it is coming from former Lawnies and people who lived on the Range, along with various alumni sources. The monies for this project were specifically raised from private sources to restore the Lawn to its most historically accurate form, from structural issues to the type of floorboard used. Those who see this as a case of overzealous preservation of tradition seem to be willing to violate the historical integrity of such a priceless locale. The entire purpose of historical preservation is to present to people now what places looked like then, an idea apparently lost on many around Grounds. With callous attitudes about the history of this place, we allow ourselves to fall prey to apathy for places of historical or natural importance. It is that kind of attitude that permits developers to build on Civil War battlefields or allows the façade of Penn Station in New York City, a fabulous neoclassical work, to be torn down in the name of expansion in the 1960s.
Naturally, people are concerned about expenditures in this economic climate. As current students we care principally about the academics of this school. But if we take a step back and consider the long-term importance of restoration projects like that of the Lawn’s, we should realize that creating a more historically authentic version of a culturally valuable site is vital in the long run because of the people who will enjoy it down the road. Just because time moves forward and we’ll move on doesn’t mean we should not invest in preserving the most treasured part of the University.
Geoff Skelley’s column appears Thursday in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at g.skelley@cavalierdaily.com.
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