I’m not certain what to call this, and solicit your suggestions. Incompetence? Woke virtue signaling? Self-hate? Betrayal? Insanity?

The Jefferson Council, an organization of conservative University of Virginia alumni, has criticized the recent tone of the school’s student-run campus tours that are supposed to convince prospective applicants and their families that U.Va is the place for the graduating high school students to continue their education. The tour organization, the University Guide Service, has been alienating prospective students, the Council says, by immersing the hopeful, bright-eyed young idealists with a “woke version of U.Va history.”

The cheerful tale of the storied university’s origins, the alumni complain, begins by describing how the university’s land was stolen from the Monacan Indian tribe, then goes on to describe how the Rotunda (above) designed by Thomas Jefferson as the center of campus, was constructed by slave labor. They believe that a tour for prospective students should emphasize Jefferson’s positive contributions to the nation, like, oh, authoring the mission statement for this great democratic experiment, his indispensable contribution to securing American independence, his achievements as the third President of the United States, his brilliance and an architect and inventor, those little details. There was nothing unusual about using slave labor when the University of Virginia was established in 1819. Why would an institution emphasize that in a promotional tour?

I don’t even understand why students, even progressive students, would think doing so is responsible or competent. The only explanation I can think of is that woke students, indoctrinated by the faculty with an extreme progressive agenda, want to exploit the opportunity to talk to prospective students and their families to pursue a political agenda that has nothing to do with the University of Virginia at all. It is an offshoot of Critical Race Theory with the purpose of using America’s participation in slavery as a justification for remaking the nation’s government, laws, and values.

Who in their right minds promotes anything by emphasizing its most negative aspects? “We’ve gotten hundreds of emails, calls and texts from prospective parents saying, ‘I’m so turned off that my kid is not going to Virginia,’” Tom Neale, the Jefferson Council’s president, told the New York Times. “We’re not antediluvian right-wing zealots. If we can get balanced tours, which is your first blush for many coming to U.Va., that’s all we want.”

Ah, but if you oppose the Angry Left’s march to remake America, you are an antediluvian right-wing zealot to Woke World. Try to keep up, Tom.

It doesn’t even make sense to want merely “balanced” tours. Their purpose is to use the best features on the university to make students want to come there. This is known as “promotion.” When I took my tour of Harvard, the student guides didn’t say, “Now Harvard was constructed with slave labor, the girls at Radcliffe dress like slobs, most of our famous professors are terrible teachers, the grass in Harvard Yard is always brown, and the student residences in these historic buildings in Harvard Yard make you feel like you’re living in the 19th Century.”

“And Harvard supports the immoral U.S. war machine by allowing ROTC on campus.”

Now U.Va says it is suspending the University Guide Service tours and will temporarily replace them with tours by student interns paid trained by the university while it works with the guide service to improve its approach. It also denies that the complaints from the alumni have anything to do with this decision.

Sure.