After sharing that the University suspended its admissions and historical tours, leaders of the University Guide Service said they are working closely with administrators to establish a proposal that would allow the organization to begin leading admissions tours as soon as the spring semester. The Guide Service first announced its suspension in a statement Aug. 28, where they said that the administration had concerns about the reliability and quality of their tours.
Though no agreement has been finalized, the current proposal from University administration requires Guides to attend 10 trainings hosted by the Office of Admissions, submit an outline of their tour plans for administrative approval and conduct a tour observed by a University administrator, according to Jack Giese, co-chair of the Guide Service and fourth-year College student.
According to Giese and Davis Taliaferro, co-chair of the Guide Service and fourth-year College student, the University first expressed the potential of a suspension on the Guide Service during a July 3 meeting that included representatives from both the Office of Admissions and Student Affairs.
Giese and Taliaferro said that they had been aware of concerns from administrators surrounding the Guide Service’s tour reliability and quality, and that they came to that meeting prepared with remedies to some of those concerns, including ways to ensure sufficient Guides were scheduled for admissions tours.
“We were going into the beginning of summer with a lot of ideas and were really open to collaborating with [the administration],” Taliaferro said. “And so it was a little bit surprising that [suspension] was ultimately what turned out to be the proposed solution.”
According to Taliaferro, the remedies they developed included collecting availability data from Guides to improve the tour scheduling process and implementing “office hours,” a system that the organization had used prior to the pandemic in which Guides would be on call as substitutes in case other Guides did not show up for their tours.
While the University cited reliability, consistency and tour quality as the major concerns that led to their decision to suspend the Guide Service, certain alumni — including Bert Ellis, a member of the Board of Visitors — have also scrutinized the organization for being overly critical of the University and its history.
However, in a guest essay to The Cavalier Daily, Vice Provost for Enrollment Stephen Farmer said that the University does not intend to make the Guide Service avoid or falsify the school’s history of enslavement.
Giese and Taliaferro said that they felt encouraged by Farmer’s statement, and that they are working with University administrators to finalize a proposal that outlines steps the organization must take to return to leading admissions tours.
According to Giese, the current version of the administration’s proposal requires Guides interested in leading admissions tours to attend 10 training sessions run by the Office of Admission over the course of this semester. Giese said that some of these sessions will address the administration’s reliability and consistency concerns, while other sessions will connect Guides to resources designed to enhance the quality of their tours.
In addition to these training sessions, Giese said Guides will be required to submit outlines of their individual tour plans to the Office of Admission or Student Affairs. It is unclear what the approval process for the outlines will look like, though Giese said administration is working to provide a more developed plan to the Guide Service.
“All of the nitty gritty details of this [proposal] are still being negotiated, so it could definitely change,” Giese said. “And I think there's been a lot of progress in that direction [of getting it] finalized.”
After attending the required training sessions and having an outline of their tour approved by administration, Guides will also have to conduct an admissions tour observed by staff in the Office of Admission or Student Affairs, according to Giese.
The conditions placed on the Guide Sevice’s reinstatement mean that Guides will no longer be automatically eligible to lead admissions tours for the University. Giese said that the Guide Service is moving toward a future where some Guides will only be able to lead historical tours.
“I think that what it means to be a Guide will probably shift, just because not everyone is going to do the [proposed requirements] … not everyone has that time, and that's okay,” Giese said.
While the Guide Service and University administration are working on a specific plan to reinstate the organization’s admissions tours, Giese and Taliaferro said that they currently have no concrete plan on when or how the organization will return to giving its historical tours.
“In terms of historical tours … our hope is that those can return in some sense before the end of the semester,” Taliaferro said. “But we just do not have any plan right now for when or how that could look.”
Despite this sense of uncertainty, Giese said that leadership in the Guide Service has also had a few productive meetings with University administrators about reinstating its historical tours, which he said makes him optimistic about their return.
While Giese and Taliaferro shared their disappointment at the suspension, the two emphasized that their main goal is to get back to giving tours and wants to work with the University to do so.
“The Guide Service in general is very committed to giving tours and so obviously, many members are disappointed that we can't do that,” Giese said. “But I think there is a very large focus on how we can get back to doing that as soon as possible, in as many ways as possible.”
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