The University Guide Service said that it will continue to give historical tours independent of the University and without administrative approval, according to a guest column written by Guide Service leadership that was published in The Cavalier Daily. This announcement came shortly after the University extended a suspension on Guide Service-led historical tours through the remainder of the 2024-25 academic year, which Guide Service leadership said was a decision that the University made without providing adequate explanation.
“As the leaders of the University Guide Service, we believe that student-led tours are integral to the process of telling the University’s history and that our suspension has only caused harm to both the organization and the University writ large,” the Guide Service leaders wrote. “As such, we are announcing our return to giving historical tours independent of the University administration.”
In the column, the Guide Service leaders described the University’s decision to suspend historical tours as “a disservice to the University community.” They said that the administration’s initial decision to pause tours, as well as their actions since, have made the Guide Service skeptical of the University’s ability to oversee its tours.
“We search for comprehensive historical understandings through in-person, open conversation with guests,” the column read. “Shutting down these tours stifles open discourse in a way that damages the contemporary community and the act of producing, contesting and engaging with history.”
The Guide Service is a student-run organization which used to provide admissions tours of the University to prospective students as well as historical tours of Grounds. As a Special Status Organization on Grounds, members of the Guide Service acted on the University’s behalf by offering University-sanctioned tours.
The University first issued a suspension for both admissions and historical tours led by the Guide Service just before the beginning of the Fall 2024 semester, citing concerns about guide reliability and tour quality.
Jack Giese, co-chair of the Guide Service and fourth-year College student, said that at the time of the original suspension, the University outlined a plan for the reestablishment of admissions tours, which included a semester-long training program for Guides conducted throughout the Fall 2024 semester.
This plan requires Guides to attend 10 training sessions led by the Office of Admission and have their tours observed and approved by staff in the Office of Admission or Student Affairs. In place of admissions tours led by members of the Guide Service, interns employed and paid by the Office of Admission are currently leading tours for prospective students.
Despite the detailed plan for Guides to be able to return to giving admissions tours, no plan or timeframe was established for the reinstatement of historical tours — although the Guide Service co-chairs said they were still in ongoing talks with the University administration.
According to Davis Taliaferro, co-chair of the Guide Service and fourth-year College student, the University has told the Guide Service that discussions about reestablishing historical tours will be postponed to the summer of 2025 at the earliest.
Further, while Taliaferro said the Guide Service has received constructive feedback from the University regarding their admissions tours, he said that they have received very little explanation for the reason for suspending historical tours — both following the original suspension and in the wake of the extension.
According to Taliaferro and Giese, the University told them that the extended suspension was a response to concerns about the comprehensiveness and consistency of historical tours. However, Taliaferro said he finds the University’s explanation unexpected, as feedback from attendees of recent historical tours did not indicate major concerns over their content.
“We didn’t have much reason to believe there were concerns over the historical tours,” Taliaferro said. “Ultimately, they gave us some language that said this approach responds to concerns about the comprehensiveness and consistency of some of the [Guide Service] historic tours in recent years. So that’s what they’ve given us — not very specific, and no particular feedback or anything to tie that to.”
Taliaferro and Giese said that all new members of the Guide Service complete 40 hours of in-class training and 40 hours of individual preparation — which includes research and planning tour outlines — to be eligible to give historical tours. They added that this level of training gives Guides a wide range of adaptability and expertise. However, Taliaferro and Giese said that they have found it difficult to address the University’s concerns about comprehensive tours as they have not been presented clearly.
Furthermore, Taliaferro and Giese emphasized the harm a prolonged suspension of historical tours could cause, highlighting how it disrupts the Guides' ability to fine-tune their training processes and adapt tours to evolving contexts.
“With a year-long suspension, there's a lot of institutional knowledge that's lost,” Taliaferro said. “We lose the opportunity to be giving tours in the ever changing world that exists as national politics, local politics and even history change as people discover more. We see a year-long suspension as really, really harmful to our survival in terms of providing quality historical tours.”
Beyond the interruptions to the Guide Service’s own training process, Giese said preventing students from writing and giving their own historical tours undermines their ability to convey the University's full history.
“The historical tours we give are written by students, which I think offers a really unique perspective,” Giese said. “They reflect individual students grappling with our history and trying to point out what's important for visitors to understand, but they're developed in consultation and with a lot of help from voices across our community.”
According to University Spokesperson Bethanie Glover, the University will create a self-guided tour that will act in the place of Guide Service historical tours. Glover said the tour will be initially released in brochure format for interested visitors before the University develops a more comprehensive, self-guided audio or online historical tour to be released near the beginning of the Fall 2025 semester.
Prior to the guest column by the Guide Service, Glover said the University was expecting to conclude the admissions tours training process within the next few weeks, and that Guides who have finished this process will be allowed to give admissions tours again next semester.
“We appreciate the hard work that many of the Guides and the leadership of the organization have put into attending and participating in the training sessions over the course of the semester,” Glover said. “We are hopeful that we will move forward together in a more positive and collaborative way.”
However, this statement was made before Guides announced independent tours. At the time of publication, University Communications did not respond to a request for comment on the Guide Service’s announcement and its impact on ongoing negotiations. It is unclear if this announcement will affect the timeline for a return to Guides-led admissions tours or their collaborative relationship with the University more broadly.
The Guide Service has an online special tour request form on their website and said they will be using that form to schedule Guide Service-led historical tours in the spring, unsanctioned by the University.
“This University has so much history,” the column by Guide Service leadership read. “Our tours offer the opportunity for this history to educate and inspire celebration, discussion and growth for the entire University community. For this reason, we are committed to continuing our mission.”
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