Tag Archives: Letters

“Where Did This Sudden Hate for the University Come From?”

Posted on October 14, 2020 by | 1 comment

Letter from Hooper Neale, Class of 2017…

I would like to start this letter out by saying that I love the University of Virginia. I attended UVA from August 2013 – May 2017, and those were probably the best four years of my life thus far. Twenty-nineteen was another one of my favorite years, largely because I travelled to Minneapolis in April to see the UVA basketball team win March Madness, and then travelled to Philadelphia the
next month to see the Lacrosse team take home a championship as well.

Everyone who knows me realizes my deep love for UVA and my passion for encouraging others to attend and/or visit the University, in hope that they may experience the same love I have. Unsurprisingly, it has been heartbreaking for me to see what has been allowed at the University during the past month
and a half. Continue reading →

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Oct. 12, 2020 Letter from Aubrey Daniel to Rector James B. Murray, Jr.

Posted on October 12, 2020 by | Leave a comment

Aubrey M. Daniel III, an alumnus of the University of Virginia and the University of Richmond law school, made his name as a young Judge Advocate General captain who successfully prosecuted the court-martial of Lt. William L. Calley Jr. for his role in the infamous My Lai Massacre. Daniel went on, after his military career, to become a top litigator with the Williams & Connolly LLP law firm.

Letter from an alumnus…

“We ought not to die before we have explained ourselves.”
  –Thomas Jefferson

I have read your response and the advice given to you by University Counsel, Timothy J. Heaphy, both dated September 29. Rather than characterizing your response as a “Statement in Support of the Administration,” wouldn’t it be more accurate to say it is your defense of President Ryan’s conduct and not that of the entire administration? However, if you were involved in making the decision to do nothing, that decision should be more carefully scrutinized. It certainly could reveal a bias in your evaluation of President Ryan’s conduct.

I was somewhat surprised that President Ryan did not respond on his own behalf to my letter. Now he has in his statement, “Great and Good Revisited,” on October 02 and in his message to me on October 05.

Continue reading →

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Newspeak for a Racial Spoils System

Posted on October 8, 2020 by | Leave a comment

Photo credit: Washington Post

Letter from Walter L. Smith

How did this alumni disconnect happen?

Over the years I think alumni have become inured to politics coming out of our academical village, in line with a Jeffersonian belief in free speech. But that creeping politicization has now become an obsession which seems to have reached a peak with the Unite the Right rally and stayed at that level since, to the detriment of actual intellectual inquiry and reasoned discourse. Since the Unite the Right rally it seems all the alumni hear from the people in charge of the University is racism and contextualization – ponderously named Committees to study “controversial” topics and make recommendations which seem aimed at wiping out history in the name of “racial equity.”

Published reports about the Unite the Right rally describe the “white supremacists” as ranging from dozens to 250. While I am not sure all of the people were actually “white supremacists,” to gather a group of 250 of them required an assemblage from all over the United States. I would guess that there
are more dangerous drunks in Charlottesville on a football weekend than “white supremacists” in all of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Seriously, 250 (at most) whackos “took over” our Grounds that good people needed to take them back and wear TAKEBACKOURGROUNDS wristbands years later? Continue reading →

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“Enough Is enough. Where does this end?”

Posted on September 21, 2020 by | Leave a comment

Thomas M. Neale
College ’74

Dear President Ryan, Provost Magill, Dean of Students Groves, VP for Advancement Mark Luellen, and the University Board of Visitors:

The signatories below and I are writing you in light of the Friday, September 11, Board of Visitors decision to act on the recommendations of the Racial Equity Task Force, among which is a decision to “contextualize” the Thomas Jefferson Statue in front of the Rotunda.

Many universities across America are renaming endowments, removing statues, and eradicating the names of prominent alumni/ae and benefactors whose names adorn university buildings and academic departments. The men and women whose names are being removed do not meet the ethical criteria or
societal norms of our 21st century culture according to the Faculty,  Administrative leadership, and governing Boards of these universities. In short, these decisions are made, and judgments decreed, based upon revisionist historical analyses rather than the ethical norms and moral tenets that were
prevalent during these men and women’s lifetimes.

I will cite two of the best known incidents since one is germane to a prominent UVA alumnus and the other is from a nearby respected university undergoing similar internal critical Progressive self-analysis: Continue reading →

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