The University has no higher calling than welcoming talented students from all walks of life and helping them feel at home on Grounds. When prospective students and their loved ones do us the honor of visiting, we owe them a warm welcome that puts their needs above our own.
We respect the proud role that the University Guide Service has traditionally played in helping the University fulfill this mission. We also respect and appreciate how hard the leaders of the Guide Service have worked to help their organization do and be its best, as well as the good work of individual Guides who have taken their responsibilities seriously and fulfilled them well.
Over the last several years, however, the Guide Service as an organization has struggled. Despite the best efforts of a series of dedicated leaders of the Guide Service, the organization has not been able to schedule enough members to fill the tour slots that have been allocated to the organization. Members have also failed to show up for tours they had committed to provide. And although many of the Guides have received positive feedback from guests, the quality of the tours across the organization has been inconsistent, with guests complaining, in particular, about what they have described as excessive and off-putting negativity about the University.
It is these organizational challenges that led us to offer the Guide Service the opportunity to focus on improving itself this fall while maintaining its standing as a special-status student organization. We did so in the hope that the Guide Service would work closely and cooperatively with us — as it is required to do under its special-status agreement — to restore its reliability and effectiveness in performing the delegated University function that it has agreed to perform.
Unfortunately, recent news stories have implied that these steps to improve the Guide Service were prompted by a desire to shield visitors from truths about the University’s history. This is not the case. No administrator at the University has stated or suggested to the Guides that they should falsify the University’s history or avoid the history of enslavement at the University. In fact, in a message to leaders of the Guide Service in August 2023, administrators stated our hope and expectation that the Guide Service would work with University colleagues “to tell the truth … in ways that will leave our guests feeling affirmed and inspired,” and to “share, with sensitivity and humility, the stories of those who built the University, including those who labored in enslavement.”
We are grateful to the leaders of the Guide Service for being open to working with us to improve the reliability and consistency of their tours and to maintain their close relationship with the University through its special-status agreement. Our conversations have been cordial and constructive, and we look forward to the best possible outcome for everyone involved and especially for prospective students and their loved ones.
Stephen Farmer is the Vice Provost for Enrollment at the University. He can be reached at opinion@cavalierdaily.com.
The opinions expressed in this letter are not necessarily those of The Cavalier Daily. Columns and letters represent the views of the authors alone.
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