Winter break is an interlude. Summer vacation, however, carries a note of finality. For students who are graduating, summer months mark not a respite but a crucial juncture. Fourth years marching toward Cabell Hall, diplomas in hand, often express sadness when obliged to leave the University’s stimulating but insulated environment. But they trade comfort for possibility. June’s heat has nothing on the feverish passion the University’s graduates apply toward what we slyly dub the “real world.” If they lack this passion, they have not imbibed the lessons the University has attempted to instill.
Some goodbyes are temporary. Several professors will be notably absent from Grounds next year — some on sabbatical, others on Guggenheim fellowships. If the University is lucky, they will come back. For one reason or another, Virginia’s flagship has enchanted some faculty members who might well be fielding offers from the Ivy League.
Other farewells are more permanent. A number of intellectual stars are retiring. Politics Prof. William Quandt, a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs, and History Prof. Peter Onuf, an expert on Thomas Jefferson, rank among the faculty members who will give up their offices in the fall.
Each year brings changes in the University’s intellectual landscape. The academic makeup of a school is contingent upon the students and professors it attracts and retains. This community is nothing more than the people who are a part of it and the ideals that shape it. These ideals, from student self-governance to honor, require continual buy-in from students, faculty and staff. The semester’s end reminds us of this contingency. We’ve weathered a year together — and in the fall, we’ll do it all again, somehow.
The Cavalier Daily, like all University institutions, lives semester by semester. The publication thrives off the talent and generosity of students who happen to decide to spend the majority of their time in the basement of Newcomb Hall. The newspaper is entirely volunteer-based, with the exception of our advertising staff. The fragility of our journalistic enterprise arises from the fact that all the work you see in these pages comes from passion and a sense of obligation. The passion stems from a conviction that the work we do is somehow important. The sense of obligation springs from ties to friends, colleagues, fellow students and an ideal the University holds dear: that the pursuit of reason, wherever it may lead, is an end worth following.
The production of our newspaper is, all things considered, a happy accident. So too is the existence of our readers. Some may read The Cavalier Daily out of a sense of citizenship. Being an active part of a community requires being informed. Others may read the paper for entertainment, or merely out of boredom. As long as you are reading — and subscribed to our e-newsletter — your motivation for perusing our pages does not matter to us. We welcome readers of all kinds. The presence of readers, blissfully external to the paper’s day-to-day operations in Newcomb Hall, keeps our efforts from being confined to an insulated world. In light of the fragility of commitment, and the contingency upon which our special community is founded, we wish you, dear reader, a happy summer.
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