This was the first university to adopt
the elective system, permitting the students, as Jefferson wrote,
"uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall attend," instead of
prescribing one course of reading for all. No less important, the
University of Virginia was the first college to introduce (1842) the
honor system, and still has the most complete honor system to be found
among American colleges. This system is an outgrowth of the Jeffersonian
idea of student self-government; under it each student signs, with
examination papers, a pledge that he has neither given nor received
assistance. That is found sufficient; students are not watched, nor need
they be. With time this system has been extended, so that it now covers
not only examinations, but many departments of college life, eliminating
professionalism in athletics and plagiarism in literary work, and
resulting in a delightful mutual confidence between the student body and
the faculty.
Madison and Monroe were active members of the university's first board
of visitors; the first college Y.M.C.A. was started there; and among
many famous men who have attended the university may be mentioned Edgar
Allan Poe, Thomas Nelson Page, and Thomas Woodrow Wilson, whose name
appears thus upon the "University Magazine" for 1879-80, as one of its
three editors.
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