Education

POLL: Majority Of UVA Students Support Removing Lee Statue, Renaming Confederate Parks

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Rob Shimshock Education Reporter
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The majority of University of Virginia students surveyed support removing the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville and renaming of the city’s Lee and Jackson parks, according to a Wednesday survey.

Students shared their opinions on these issues, a list demands made by the Black Student Association and others in a survey conducted by The Cavalier Daily.

Sixty-two percent of surveyed students support removing the Lee statue from Emancipation Park, which was formerly Lee Park. The Charlottesville city council unanimously voted to remove the statue, but a lawsuit has kept the statue in place. (RELATED: Charlottesville City Council Votes To Cover Confederate Statues In Black Cloth)

Sixty-seven percent of responding students agreed with Charlottesville’s renaming of Lee Park as Emancipation Park and Jackson Park as Justice Park.

Students were more divided on instituting mandatory training on “on white supremacy, colonization and slavery, as they directly relate to Thomas Jefferson, the University and the City of Charlottesville.” Around 40 percent of students agreed and 41 percent disagreed with the proposal.

Fifty-nine percent of students surveyed supported the 10 demands posited by the school’s Black Students Association and endorsed by the Student Council. Alongside the call for education on white supremacy, the demands call for black student quota of 12 percent and massive increase on the number of black faculty members. They also term a Thomas Jefferson statue on the campus “an emblem of white supremacy” and bid the university to add a plaque on the statue to describe “that history.”

The Cavalier Daily surveyed 1,621 students for the poll.

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