Book Review: Rot Riot and Rebellion: Mr. Jefferson’s Struggle to Save the University that Changed America by Rex Bowman & Carlos Santos
Disclaimer: I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway on the premise that I would review it.
If I told you about a school where the students constantly engaged in partying, drunkenness and extramarital sex; where the students scorned to study and disrespected the teachers, a campus rife with violence that boiled over into riots that resulted at least once in murder, what school would you think I was talking about? If you guessed the University of Virginia from 1825 to 1846, you would be correct.
The University of Virginia in Charlottesville was the first secular college in the young United States. All previous schools of higher learning had been sponsored by one denomination or another, and had mandatory religious services. Thomas Jefferson had a vision for a school that people of all religions and none could attend. He also had some innovative ideas about the power structure such an university might have. This got him a lot of opposition, so it was only in his eighties that the school was finally built.
Sadly, the first few classes of students failed to live up to Mr. Jefferson’s expectations; at one point he broke into tears in public, which brought about a short-lived attempt to do better by the pupils. They were a rowdy bunch who gambled and drank and abused slaves; and were so jealous of their honor that any real or imagined slight erupted into violence. One student tried to blow up a professor with an improvised bomb–twice! And quite a few of them were prominent in the Confederate Army; sadly, none are mentioned as joining the Union.
There are many colorful stories of the early days, including the short college career of Edgar Allan Poe. Since this is a University of Virginia publication, it comes with proper end notes, bibliography and index. There are some black and white pictures in the middle, mostly portraits as very few of the important people involved lived to the age of photography.
This is a very enjoyable book that I would recommend to Virginians (especially alumni of the college), fans of Thomas Jefferson, and college students who are tired of being told how much worse their generation is compared to those of bygone days.
