This will lead to other universities — who have not already invested or focused on sustainability — to follow suit.
Last week, this Editorial Board was prepared to applaud Interim University President Paul Mahoney’s decision to reject the Trump administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.
We Would Like To Recognize The Volunteers, Pavilion Residents And Residents Of The Lawn And Range For Their Efforts To Ensure A Safe And Fun Trick-Or-Treating On The Lawn Event This Year
While the Jefferson Council is right that this presidential search committee is the most inclusive in recent memory, that claim is blighted by the fact that the decision to form the committee in the first place was illegitimate.
This failure at the University lands in the middle of a larger, national reckoning over student agency and data privacy.
The deeper danger here is not of overt censorship, but subtle drift.
It seems disingenuous for the University to boast about its agreement having “no external monitoring,” since the University’s president is required to report compliance — and certify under penalty of perjury — directly to Harmeet Dhillon.
The University’s decision to axe the DEI and bias modules makes a statement about the vertebral integrity of the administrators, and it is not a positive one.
Removing essays entirely, rather than just reverting to their previous tradition of using expressive, personable prompts, marks a significant departure from the school’s admissions culture.
That is factually inaccurate. In fact, faculty did protest.
Losing the U.S. Attorneys for Virginia in such rapid succession destabilizes consistency in our legal prosecutors for leading legal cases, creating gaps in the knowledge and management of daily operations.
The current presidential search committee includes 28 members — Board members, students, administrators, alumni and faculty — with at least as many faculty as the previous two. Given its composition, concerns about representation are unfounded.
Privacy is not merely a technical shield against data leaks or hacks — it is a baseline human right that shapes how students learn, organize and speak.
With their calls for administrative consequences, the CRs thumb their noses at the Jeffersonian principles of free speech that this University was founded to defend.
This Compact plants the seed for further federal interference in student affairs and free speech, and it threatens to cancel all federal funding should the University sign the Compact and fail to adhere to its demands.
Signing this Compact is a complete submission to federal control over a public university.
As members of the faculty, we remind the Board that, at the end of the day, an academic community is an exercise in shared governance for the good of the whole.
The mire that CCS and other institutions find themselves in as a result of the federal government’s actions will imperil the future operation of these vital programs and bodies if funding is not established on a more predictable basis.
If the space where Littlejohn’s used to be remains vacant until the spring semester, the University and investing partners could elevate student initiatives by providing the business space to a finalist in the Galant Challenge or promising student entrepreneur.
I do love the gardens around the Lawn, which feature small smatterings of herbs, but something more extensive and scientific would be of great benefit to Grounds.
