When I first toured UVa, my tour guide emphasized how important it was to Jefferson to have students and professor living amongst one another in the academical village. He wanted it to be this way so that learning was uninterrupted, and so discussions wouldn't end when the students left the classrooms. Even today, we have not only continued Jefferson's vision, but we have expanded it with the creations of residential colleges all over grounds, where students and professors reside. Uniting students and professors outside of the classroom created a large sense of community at UVa that is still prominent today. I know I am not the only one who is proud to be part of the wahoo community, and I think that is what really makes UVa a special place to be.

This line was very unsettling for me to read. I must have missed it the first time I read through this document. Here, the report is saying that the only reason why UVa was decided to be placed in Albemarle County, was because of the greater white population there in comparison to Lexington and Staunton counties. It is not right that our school was centered around the concern of pleasing the white race, instead of educating the population. I think it is important for all of us to realize that like the rest of America, UVa has a racist past. We should use items like this document to facilitate productive conversations about racism and once we all accept it as part of our past, we can work together to prevent it from being part of our present and future.

I think the old-fashioned language here, "honorary excitements", is so odd, because it surfaces certain expectations for any supplemental activities to the students' course loads. The creators of this document desired for these activities to be honorable and to be exciting, which infers passions beyond the academic aspect of these students' lives. UVa has always placed large importance on student involvement to help balance passion with academics, especially in their application process where they are known to accept well-rounded, hyper-involved high school students, in hopes of those values continuing in their college lives.

I thought the descriptive language used in this whole passage when talking about the set-up of the lawn truly shows a part of UVa culture that still exists today. The lawn is a very important, almost sacred, part of grounds to all students today, just as it was to Jefferson and the people who wrote this document. The specific symmetry that was laid out in the document shows the neatness and professionalism that Jefferson wanted UVa to be represented by. Even today, the lawn is always kept up well, and highlighted to any prospective students, because it is still a place that we use to represent our school as a whole. Also, the "indefinite extent in one direction" echoes Jefferson's famous belief that education is never-ending. That ideal is still very prominent around grounds in the every day language of students, as we call ourselves first years, not freshmen.