Letter from the Editor: Considering Sewanee’s as a university of the South

 

The nature of news, while in some sense progressive, is also inherently cyclical. Analogous to the workings of our own minds, issues that have not been fully resolved inevitably manage, one way or another, to find their way back to the front of the news cycle.

 

Recently, discussions over representations of the Confederacy—namely with regards to Confederate monuments—around the United States have re-sparked a debate that has scarred the American subconscious for decades: How are we to understand the current legacy of contentious, hateful ideologies within America today?

 

I align my opinion on this subject with Vice-Chancellor McCardell, who reaffirmed his faith in the University’s Studying Slavery Project during his Launching the New Year speech. Our position at the university of the south affords us both a unique perspective and an important obligation in considering what the South means to us. We must fastidiously study our legacy as an institution born once as a Southern university in the southern United States, and a second time as a Southern university in the Reconstruction South.

 

We carry this legacy with us today and ever forward into the future. And, as The University of the South, this means the South’s lasting legacy will rest upon our vision of it. Considering our history, then, is decidedly a forward-thinking act—and one which we have a duty to perform.