Amerika

I lived near Richmond, VA as a child. One of the local athletic franchises with a university attached, The University of Richmond, referred to its jock teams as The Spiders. I congratulate this fine and upstanding institution for striving full-steam ahead to properly earn the nickname adorning the jersies of its gladiators.

It seems that the modern student body that benefits from attending a school that is ranked among the best and most selective Liberal Arts Colleges in Amerika has decided to really emphasize the whole liberal thing. The UR Law School was named for a local nineteenth century businessman named T.C. Williams. This person had bankrolled the institution and had perhaps saved it from going bankrupt.

The records at Richmond College in the 1880s mention a “donor” who had made regular and repeated anonymous gifts, this donor was later identified as T.C. Williams, Sr. In addition to these gifts, he established the Ella Williams Student Aid Fund to pay tuitions for needy students. He also fully funded an endowment for a speakership program. We know in 1888, he gave $10,000 to re-establish the Law School and at his death in 1889 his estate contributed $25,000 to the Law School. A conservative estimate of these gifts, just from the end of the War to his death exceeds $65,000. To give one perspective of the magnitude of this benevolence, in 1880 land in nearby Hanover County sold for an average of $9/acre. At his death, he was the largest contributor in the history of the University.

T.C. Williams, Jr. showed similar generosity to the university. Other successful members of this powerful family of optimates showered The University of Richmond with donations and at one juncture they guaranteed all debts owed by the institution to fend off the hobgoblin of bankruptcy. One author examined the lifetime gifts of the Williams family to UR and determined that between the years of 1865 to 1952 they gave the university an estimated Net Present Value of $3.6 Billion in donations.

Then, long after the checks were cashed, it was discovered that T.C. Williams had earned some of the money that he later donated from a tobacco business that profited off of the labor of approximately thirty slaves. The money, The University of Richmond Board of Trustees decided, was thus tainted. In response, they stripped T.C. Williams’ name from The University of Richmond School of Law. The practice even has its own academic neologism: unnaming.

The University Of Richmond Board Of Trustees furthermore realized that utilizing tainted money to pay staff and buy up university infrastructure was itself a sin. Moved by this painful realization, they immediately returned all $3.6 Billion to the family in an act of penance and expiation. Ok, so at least the unnaming part was factually accurate. A relative of the Williams’ has sent UR President Dr. Kevin Hallock a dunning letter for a portion of the lifetime donations from the Williams’ to UR.

At a 6% compounded interest over 132 years, T.C. Williams’ gift to the law school alone is now valued at over $51 million, and this does not include many other substantial gifts from my family to the University. Moreover, is it not a form of fraud to induce money from a benefactor, and then discredit the benefactor after he is long dead?

So will The Spiders of UR return the money? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Of course not. The arrogant jerk wokestrati that work in modern academia consider this their just due. People are just expected to build them fully-functional institutions and hand them over to quasi-literate demonstrators who wave their victimhood in public like a perverted flasher befouling a grade-school playground.

This is just one more example of demotism. None of the ignorant rabble demanding things from the craven and cowardly Dr. Hallock are fit to polish the shoes of a man like T.C. Williams. And what will this contemptible performance win Dr. Hallock in the end? The same thing a frightened alliance with Vladimir Lenin won Alexander Kerensky. A bayonet will be shoved to his throat and he will be asked quite bluntly. “Who selected you?”

Tags: academia, grifting, slavery