Police are investigating the vandalism of a statue of Thomas Jefferson located on the campus of the University of Virginia — a university that he started.
On Monday, after the vandalism was discovered and cleaned up, a coalition of progressive student groups issued a list of demands which included a reference to Jefferson’s statue.
“The statue of Jefferson serves as an emblem of white supremacy, and should be re-contextualized with a plaque to include that history,” the documents states.
If Jefferson is an “emblem of white supremacy” why not take the monument down? I suspect the answer is that even progressive students know that wouldn’t fly on the campus Jefferson founded. Also, there are several statues of Jefferson on the UVA campus so removing one wouldn’t be enough.