We are a community in our own right. We have our police and bus service, hospital and clinics, restaurants and snack bars, research parks, and housing for seven thousand. Each day, forty thousand people pass through the Grounds, and our contacts with people in institutions and countries around the globe extend the size of our academical village many times over. Through careful management and the generous support of friends and benefactors, our pooled endowment fund grew at the average annual rate of almost 14 percent over the last ten years. Yet, despite this progress, there are still challenges before us and much still to do.
Financial aid is an area of critical concern as federal support erodes.
Faculty salaries are once again falling behind those of our peer institutions. These are serious issues, touching the core of our academic mission, that must and will be addressed. But they also remind us that restructuring is an ongoing process and that recreation, as Thomas Jefferson predicted, would be necessary to the continued wellbeing of the University. At the University of Virginia, we can trace the process of restructuring back through the last century, and it is clear that we owe many of our distinctive and invaluable institutions, like the Honor System, to this process of rethinking and reevaluating. It is our responsibility and, indeed, our privilege to further this process as we prepare the University for the twenty-first century.