HARRISONBURG, Va. — Sophomore midfielder Sarah Huffman’s one-timer to the far post broke a scoreless tie in the 82nd minute to give No. 4 Virginia a narrow 1-0 victory over James Madison on a brisk night at the JMU Soccer Complex.

The Dukes (3-7-1, 1-2 CAA) were able to contain the Cavaliers (10-1-1, 2-0 ACC) for most of the contest, thanks to a tough physical defense and a strong performance from goalkeeper Jessica Hussey, but Virginia finally managed to put one on the board when Huffman gathered a loose ball on the right side and scored her first goal of the season.

“The ball bounced out at her and she got a good look at it,” Virginia coach Steve Swanson said. “She put it probably the only place she could put it to beat the goalie — far side up the 90. It was well-taken by her.”

The Cavaliers controlled the ball for most of the second half and had a few good scoring chances but were continually stymied by the Dukes’ defense. JMU goalkeeper Jessica Hussey made several impressive saves, including a diving block of freshman midfielder Shannon Foley’s bullet to the top right corner with 18:55 remaining.

“We had gotten a few good chances,” Huffman said. “But their keeper kept coming up big.”

After an evenly matched first period, Virginia made several adjustments to counter the Madison defense. The Cavaliers changed their usual 4-4-2 formation and played only three defenders in the back. Virginia also positioned its midfielders further out wide in the second half. The changes seemed to be working, as the Cavaliers recorded twice as many shots (12) in the second half than they tallied in the first, but they still couldn’t get on the board.

“We were down on their side a whole lot more than they were in our half,” senior goalkeeper Anne Abernethy said. “We just had to keep patient and wait for our chances, because it was bound to happen.”

Locked in a scoreless tie with a sub-.500 team as the game went down to the wire was not a position the Cavaliers wanted to find themselves in.

“We were surprised — it certainly wasn’t a situation we would have liked to be in,” Huffman said. “I think we did a much better job in the second half and made the right adjustments.”

Virginia’s best chance to score in the first half came in the 34th minute. Freshman forward Ariel Thompson received the ball at the top of the box from sophomore midfielder Noelle Keselica. Her shot was partially deflected by the charging Duke keeper, but a header from JMU midfielder Kim Argy kept the shot out of the goal.

The win was Virginia’s third straight one-goal victory and sixth of the season. Abernethy’s shutout was her sixth of the year. The Cavaliers have outscored opponents 24-4 over the eight-game winning streak.

The Cavaliers return home this weekend to face No. 16 Wake Forest, where they will put both their perfect ACC mark and unblemished home record (5-0) on the line.

The Virginia volleyball team (17-4, 1-4 ACC) demonstrated a great deal of heart and effort in game three, but their slow start proved to be too much to overcome, as they fell to ACC rival North Carolina (13-5, 4-1) 3-0last night.

“We just came out unprepared in games one and two,” senior libero Whitney Ashcraft said. “We came out too late — the third game is just too late to pull it out.”

Senior outside hitter Paige Davis led the Cavaliers with 13 kills, and junior middle Alexis Geocaris led the team with a .368 hitting percentage. Ashcraft posted 16 digs in the match to lead all players.

But Virginia could not find a way to take control of any of last night’s three games, as the Tar Heels, led by junior outside hitter Molly Pyles’ 20 kills, were too much to handle.

“North Carolina is just an amazing opponent,” Ashcraft said. “They are always fighting hard and are 100 percent every ball. That’s what makes them a great team.”

Virginia lost the first two games by respective scores of 30-22 and 30-23 but came out after the break looking more determined and ready to play their best. With the loud home crowd cheering them on, the Cavaliers took the first three points of game three and led the game at one point by a score of 10-5. The Tar Heels, however, composed themselves and won many hard-fought points, eventually tying the game at 14. The game was tied 10 times after that, but in the end, North Carolina was able to secure game three with a 32-30 victory and consequently take the match.

“North Carolina took it to us,” coach Melissa Aldrich Shelton said. “They wanted the win, and they were able to execute better than us.”

Virginia’s aggressive play in the third game represented how Shelton would like the team to play consistently.

“The third game was do or die,” Shelton said. “We needed to step it up. We came out on fire, but it still wasn’t enough. If we could have come out like that in game one and battled like that for five games, we had a chance. But we are not comfortable starting out hard.”

Davis also expressed the need for her team to play their hardest from the start.

“From the beginning, we didn’t come out with the kind of effort we needed,” Davis said. “We have the skills, but everything else wasn’t there. For the third game we picked it up, but that was something we had to do from the beginning.”

All of the Cavaliers’ defeats this season have come against ACC teams. The Cavaliers went into last night’s contest coming off a pair of conference road losses this past weekend to Clemson and Georgia Tech. However, Virginia still has several chances to prove themselves in the ACC, as the match against North Carolina was the first of a four-match conference homestand at Memorial Gym.

“We’re really excited to play this weekend, especially at home, and both of the teams we play later this week we can beat,” Ashcraft said of the upcoming matches against Florida State and NC State. “If we play our game, we can beat any team in this conference.”

The Cavaliers will host FSU Friday at 7:00 p.m.

After a dramatic finish Monday night, the Red Sox dropped the A’s by a 4-3 score in Game 5 and advanced to the ALCS to face bitter rival NY Yankees. Derek Lowe recorded a save, catching the last batter looking with bases loaded on a 3-2 count.

The Yankees eliminated the Twins with three straight wins after Minnesota won Game 1 of the Division Series. Game 1 of the ALCS will take place in New York tonight. The first pitch is scheduled for 8:18 p.m.

The Sox and the Yankees last faced each other in the postseason in the 1999 ALCS.

Pitcher Tim Wakefield, who is 0-1 this postseason with a 3.52 ERA, will start for Boston, and pitcher Mike Mussina, also 0-1 this postseason but with a 3.86 ERA, will start for the Yankees. The Red Sox have not won a World Series since 1918.

The Florida Marlins and the Chicago Cubs, who were both underdogs in their division series, began their series in Chicago last night. The lead the series 1-0 after avictory in Chicago last night.

The Marlins were 2-4 in the regular season against the Cubs. They knocked off the highly touted Giants in Game 4 with a 7-6 win in Miami, giving them their first trip to the NLCS since 1997, when they won their first World Series trophy. Chicago beat Atlanta, 5-1, in Game 5 to send the Cubs to the NLCS for the first time since 1908, when they last won the World Series. The second game of the series will be tonight at 8:00 p.m.

Pitcher Brad Penny, who has a postseason ERA of 6.35 this season will start for the Marlins, and pitcher Mark Prior, who is 1-0 with a 1.00 ERA this postseason, will start for the Cubs in Game 2.

Sophomore tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson earned ACC Offensive Lineman of the Week honors for his performance in Saturday’s game against UNC. The sophomore led an offensive line that sprung the Cavalier backs for 229 yards rushing, making it the third time the Cavaliers have rushed for over 200 yards this season. The line also allowed Virginia to gain 515 yards of total offense, the most ever under Al Groh.

Ferguson and his offensive line did not allow a sack of Matt Schaub, helping Virginia quarterbacks to complete 20-of-23 passes for 286 yards. This is Ferguson’s second weekly honor this season. The first one came after the win at Western Michigan.

Sophomore linebacker Darryl Blackstock received the Defensive Back of the Week honor for his performance in the game as he recorded the second multi-sack game of his career. He had six tackles, including four solos, two sacks for a combined loss of 16 yards and a fumble recovery in the Cavaliers’ 38-13 win at UNC.

Blackstock led a Virginia defense that held a high-powered Tar Heel offense to only 13 points and 265 yards — 150 yards and 14 points less than their season averages. This is Blackstock’s second career ACC Weekly Honor. His first came last season after his performance against Clemson.

From one Cavalier to another, let me offer you some advice: If you want to be in on the most happening gathering of Virginia sports fans around, you’ll need three things: A computer, a sense of humor and a grain of salt. Forget bars, the bookstore and tailgates — the best place for no-holds-barred conversation on all things Cavalier is at TheSabre.com.

I promise they didn’t pay me to say that. In fact, many of my cohorts at The Cavalier Daily have gone on to writing gigs at The Sabre, but I’ve never looked into taking the plunge. After reading the message boards for three years, I’m just too scared. A few angry e-mails about an injured quarterback I can handle, but the unadulterated, up-to-the-minute wrath and reactions of hundreds of thousands of Virginia fans is a little more than I want to go up against.

“Up-the-minute” and “unadulterated” is precisely what The Sabre is, especially on the site’s message boards. There is a lot more to The Sabre — articles, interviews and analysis available to those who pay for a subscription — but the boards are arguably the heart of the site, and the banter on them reflects the pulse of the Cavalier faithful.

As I wrote this column, the top items on the football message board were a link to a story about Virginia linebacker Kai Parham in the Fredericksburg Free Lance Star and name suggestions for a Virginia-Maryland winner’s trophy. This is typical Sabre fare: Part news, part gossip, all connected to Virginia.

Credit goes to the Web site’s creator and message board operator, Mike Ingalls. C-VILLE Weekly recently ran a story on Ingalls and his site, calling him “a self-taught Web designer with an orange-and-blue heart.” The Sabre, originally Ingalls’ hobby, has grown into a full-fledged business, but Ingalls still supervises the message boards, yanking anything irrelevant, insulting or obscene.

Still, the conversation is often heated: Last basketball season, post after post went up criticizing Virginia coach Pete Gillen, asking how much it would take to buy out his contract and why his team had fallen from such lofty expectations. With the number of users on the Sabre boards and the frequency of their posts, we can only hope that Gillen’s mother wasn’t reading.

Watching a Virginia Tech fan risk virtual life and limb on the site by criticizing the Cavaliers is a similarly amusing experience. If you decide to get into the fray, however, be careful. It takes only a small spelling error to become the butt of board jokes.

The board is tough, but it’s tough love. Sabre members and posters often tailgate together before games — both home and away. The tailgate, which hundreds of fans attend, is called “Wilk Hall” in honor of a post that asked for the location of “Wilk Hall.” Apparently, the postee had misunderstood the U.Va. ticket office’s directions to “Will Call.” The ribbing for that mistake was hilarious, but the name stuck. It’s refreshing to think that people who interact every day electronically might actually get some face-to-face time, out from behind their electronic handles.

I am a different kind of Sabre user. I am one who has no handle, who never posts, instead choosing to lurk around the boards looking for that Sabre staple: The scoop.

Gossip about Virginia sports goes up on the Sabre boards faster than any other site I’ve found. A certain basketball player have a wild night on the Corner? Expect it to be on the basketball board before dawn. Boston College joining the ACC? Expect to see it on The Sabre well before you hear see it anywhere near Virginiasports.com. In the area of recruiting especially, The Sabre is the best place for information (and misinformation) on an otherwise secretive process. Potential Virginia recruits get no slack from Sabre users: They are complimented and criticized as readily as the coaches that recruit them.

Maybe the time will come that a post compels me to finally sign up and really join this electronic Cavalier nation. I’ve been tossing around ideas for a handle, more difficult than you would think on a site that hosts every fathomable variation of the word “Hoo.”

Every Saturday, I realize I am one more football game closer to the end of my final season as a U.Va. student, closer to a time where I may live in a place where no one wants to argue about Wali Lundy’s pro potential or Schaub’s chances at the Heisman. Check the Sabre boards for “HooLovestheCubs” — You may well find me getting my Virginia fix there.

Since February 2002, Virginia fans have waited to see linebackers Ahmad Brooks and Kai Parham line up side-by-side in the Cavalier defensive backfield. They finally got their wish last Saturday, as Parham made his first collegiate start, filling in for injured veteran Rich Bedesem. The start provided a sizeable challenge for the monster linebacker from Virginia Beach and marked the culmination of an extraordinary spiritual journey.

Parham joined the Cavaliers during the fall of 2002 as one of the crown jewels of Virginia’s heralded recruiting class. But like Brooks, Parham had to wait an extra year to make an impact as a Cavalier. Academics did not sideline Parham, as they did his counterpart from Woodbridge. Instead, he suffered from a lingering back injury. A devout Christian, Parham turned to his spiritual side to work through his struggles.

“There was nothing I could really do,” Parham said. “It was tough because I was really just waiting on God to do what he wanted to do.”

Parham got the response he had been waiting for when a friend’s mother told him God was going to heal his back.

“When you lay down, don’t move before he heals you before you go to sleep,” she instructed. “And when you wake up the next morning your back will be fine.”

And it worked.

“My back has been better ever since,” Parham said.

Parham began to practice with the team late last season and dressed for the last three games. He also hit the weight room for the first time since his back injury. For Parham, an avid lifter since high school, the return to the weight room helped him feel like himself again.

Parham began the 2003 season as a backup to Bedesem in the field and to Brooks and Blackstock in the limelight. He improved in each of his first four games and posted one of the few strong performances by a Cavalier against South Carolina, recording eight tackles, five of them unassisted.

“He had a very acceptable game,” Virginia coach Al Groh said after his Cavaliers fell 31-7 to the Gamecocks. “He was a player who really moved along … he got a lot of turns in there, and I thought he did a good job.”

Despite his improvement, Parham could not wrestle the starting spot away from Rich Bedesem until Bedesem got hurt before the UNC game. He posted meager numbers as a starter (three tackles) but successfully organized the Cavalier front-seven, which held Carolina to 13 points and 57 rushing yards.

“It was fun,” Parham said. “As a unit, we played a good offense and we cut down their yardage almost in half. I think that’s huge.”

Parham has often found other ways to make his mark without flashy numbers, including impressing his teammates with his strength.

“Regardless of what the numbers are, you ask the players who they think is really strong,” Groh said. “There are some strong guys on this team, but when you say Kai Parham they just” shake their heads in disbelief.

The soft-spoken linebacker did not shy away from Groh’s compliments

“Yeah, I’m strong,” Parham said. I’m real strong.”

Predictably, he credited God with giving him his strength.

“I was born like this,” he joked. “I had abs and stuff when I was a little kid.”

When the University of Virginia field hockey team hosts Radford (3-7) Wednesday, the Cavaliers’ season may be on the line. The Cavaliers (5-6, 0-1 ACC) will take the field with a sense of urgency as they hope to turn their season around and make a late surge in the standings.

“I think we just really need to try and get back on track because our season is more than half over, and we have some big games ahead of us,” sophomore midfielder Katie Phillips said.

The Cavaliers are in the midst of a five-game losing streak and are coming off close losses to William & Mary and No. 3 Maryland. The loss against William & Mary came in overtime, and Maryland won on a goal in the closing minutes of regulation.

“In both games we put up a dog fight,” junior Katie Jo Gerfen said. “Unfortunately for us, that is not enough.”

In the two most recent games, the Cavaliers have managed to fight their way back into the game after giving up early leads. Against William & Mary, Virginia was able to erase a three-goal deficit before losing in overtime. Maryland also scored first against Virginia, forcing the Cavaliers to play catch up. Despite displaying the ability to make comebacks, the Cavaliers do not want to play all of their games coming from behind.

“We can no longer count on being able to comeback late in the game,” Gerfen said. “We need to score early and often.”

Another point Virginia has been emphasizing is the need to play the full 70 minutes of the game with intensity. During the losing streak, Virginia has had moments where the team seemed to lose concentration. The Cavaliers gave up a flurry of early goals to William & Mary, and allowed Old Dominion to score three goals in a span of 93 seconds in a 4-1 loss Sept. 28.

“We have talked about becoming a 70-minute field hockey team, but it is time to stop the chatter and get it done through our actions,” Gerfen said. “In both the William & Mary and Maryland games, we had a mental breakdown defensively which allowed both teams to generate scoring opportunities. Missing from the last two games was the ability to play 70 minutes. We need to change that weakness by” today.

The Cavaliers also are searching for ways to turn around their recent losing streak. Virginia has not won since defeating JMU at home Sept. 17.

One key to a possible turnaround could be the play of junior goalkeeper Logan Carr. Carr registered 11 saves against William & Mary and a season-high 14 saves against Maryland.

Virginia also will look for Allie Flynn and Mia Link to continue racking up goals. Flynn, a sophomore, and Link, a freshman, are tied for the team lead in goals with five apiece.

Virginia needs to be prepared to play against Radford, a team looking to snap a losing streak of their own, and the Cavaliers will look to start the game with a strong effort.

“Radford will be a tough game, but I think we will come out hard just because we really need a win right now,” Phillips said.

Virginia will play the first game in a stretch of five consecutive home games tonight against Radford at 7:00 p.m.

I started the Great American Novel once. Really. It was the summer after my first year, that tumultuous series of epiphanies, when the world somehow conspires to confront you with everything you thought was wrong — and then shows you everything that is right. Exactly.

So I was fresh from self-revelation, and I gave a wearied heavy sigh, like I was taking the philosophical cares of the world into my poor artistic hands, and I sat down to my computer (I know the Great American Novel should be written on a typewriter, a much more romantic mechanism, but what to do without spell check, and the High Tower Text font?) and tentatively sprawled my hands over my keyboard.

I stared into the pure, mocking abyss of the white screen, and let me tell you, I almost crumpled myself up like a useless piece of paper and tossed myself into the wastebasket. I almost gave up. But then, a life-saving flash-bulb moment.

Hemingway wrote standing up, didn’t he? And he was great, right? I tried that for about a minute, but it got old pretty fast. Oh well, he did also commit suicide — maybe I should try a different, safer, approach.

I skimmed my fingers over the keys, creating a nice, productive sound, like the patter of rain on a tin roof, so maybe my sisters in the next room would think I was getting along quite well in my Great American Novel.

How to get across the jadedness, the cynicism of witnessing the dehumanization of our society caused by commercialization?To share my wisdom (that had been obtained at a great cost, that is, in exchange for my naiveté, optimism, faith in humanity, etc.) in a way that was new, and resonant, that would strike an emotional chord with readers.That would explain, in the words of a favorite teacher, why our country was going down the crapper. I increasingly realized that my Great American Novel was going to be somewhat anti-American. Well, hmmm, I would deal with that later. Actually, that would be so perfect, so ironic, so paradoxical, so bleak, so post-modern. I loved where this was going.

I obviously was experiencing a horrific bout of writer’s block, so I put up an away message on AIM, and Googled a query for help with writer’s block. Thank goodness for Google. One helpful page suggested typing something, anything, a word or phrase, just to put some black letters on the page. In a presumptuous attempt at humility, I typed “draft” at the top of the page.

Okay, stage two, according to the Web site: Inspiration. I brainstormed a list of possible Great American Novels, if I had to assume it was already written (a nearly disastrous thought, I confess). I come up with a list of a few: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby. I go to my bookshelf and pull out the aforementioned books and read the first sentences. I love Harper Lee, but really, I don’t feel to be in the grips of a masterpiece after: “When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.” Salinger, however, was inspiring, acerbic and blunt: “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

It was like giving the finger to the world, but somehow giving it a hug of sympathy at the same time, meaning, isn’t it so damn hard to be alive.

I still didn’t have a sentence, so I progressed to stage three. I went to my sister for aid. The first thing she did was notify me there already was a Great American Novel. Crap. How was I not informed of this? I checked trusty Amazon.com, and there was in fact a novel of this name by Philip Roth. Clever guy. But I could just write the Greater, or the Greatest American Novel. I win. Ha.

Oh, and as I continued to investigate, I discovered this novel was about baseball. Well he clearly did not write the same kind of novel as I was going to, about the struggle of the self to find the truth of existence in a melting pot culture. I asked my sister what she thought the Great American Novel should be about. She said, “Football. Because Americans are obsessed with it although it’s dumb. Because Americans are dumb.”

Right.

So I return to my computer feeling frustrated and quite nervous that some other college student was going to write what I was going to write, before I could write it. There could only be so many truths in the world.

And so finally, I write a sentence.

“It was the summer after my first year in college.”

It was also the last sentence, fortunate for my literary reputation, preserved in a wonderfully sparse document file on a black floppy disk along with the papers from my first-year classes.

Oh, but don’t be mistaken, the novel is coming. Although it probably will be more like, the sub-par, self-depreciating, American as in from Northern Virginia, but obsessed with the British, and maybe not so novel, maybe regurgitating old themes, old characters, more personal than universal, pretending not to be autobiographical. Ah, you get the idea.

The Newcomb Hall Theater will be filled with a wide array of concerned citizens tonight.

From 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., the ABCs of Higher Education Forum will be taking place. Students and state legislatures will convene because of their mutual interests in issues of higher education and their implications on the University.

The forum was introduced by the Student Council’s Legislative Affairs Committee last year, stemming from a desire to give University students a chance to voice their concerns to decision-makers of the state. This brainstorm developed into the forum tonight, which features nine state legislators who will be asked questions prepared by nine different students of the University.

Second-year College student Alex Stolar, chair of the committee, said he is very excited about the forum.

“This is a unique and incredible opportunity,” Stolar said. “No other school has gotten this many legislators at their school at one time.” The uniqueness of the forum lies in what it promises for both students and legislators, according to Stolar, who cited two main goals of the event:

“To have students learn more about Virginia’s politics and how it relates to them. And to have the legislators learn more about us and how their votes affect Virginia’s students,” Stolar said.

“What’s special about this is that they’ll get to learn about us as we learn about them,” he added.

Stolar said the committee went to great lengths to ensure an accurate match-up between students and legislators. Each legislator was paired with a student questioner from their district.

“We really branched out in the University,” Stolar said, adding that they presented the opportunity at approximately 25 different organizations. “They’re a broad spectrum of the University.”

In order to maximize the hour and a half dedicated to the event, Stolar said legislators were prepped ahead of time on the questions they might be asked.

“They have to know about so many things that are going on in Virginia that they have a summary view of what’s happening here,” Stolar said. “Unless they get the questions ahead of time.”

While Stolar said he was pleasantly surprised by the well-rounded turnout of legislators, he said he now is hoping for an equally impressive turnout from students.

“We want to bring students into the process,” Stolar said. “It’s really an unprecedented opportunity for students. We need them to come out.”

IS COLLEGE cheaper than we think? As poor, struggling college students in a recessionary economy, it’s safe to say that college costs far surpass any of our wildest dreams. I have a news flash for you: college is expensive. Herein rests the problem of reporting only tuition costs. At the University of Virginia, the price of tuition is a significant part of the estimated cost of attendance, but other expenses account for over 50 percent of an in-state student’s spending. The college system needs to create a clear picture of how much college will actually cost, including personal expenses.

A recent survey by the National Center for Education Statistics claims families overestimate the cost of tuition at 4-year public institutions. In the 1998-99 school year, the average tuition for a public university was $3,200. Respondents in the survey answered in the average range of $5,400 to $5,800. Lawmakers and education advocates worry about the survey’s claim of higher perceived tuition costs, since students may be discouraged from attending college. The problem, however, is not a family overestimating tuition, but instead, institutions of higher education attempting to make college seem more affordable than it really is. When looking at tuition costs, families are left in the dark about the true, dark picture of the cost of a higher education. The tuition in a sense is meaningless without looking at all the costs of attending college.

The University presents an accurate depiction of the cost of attendance to its students. At the University, in-state tuition is $5,965, far from the $14,490 estimated cost of attendance. Including for books, supplies, room, board, personal expenses and travel, the University bases the cost of attendance on calculations and averages of past students. This number is more meaningful than tuition, wherein tuition accounts for only about 40 percent of the in-state cost of attendance.

Instead of asking families about tuition, the world of higher education should focus on and educate families on the true cost of a college education. Studies like the NCES publicize a false perception of how much college really costs. When a tuition increase is announced, no one talks about the cost of attendance nearing $30,000 for an out-of-state student; instead, all attention goes to tuition, the supposed magic number. If rent in the Charlottesville area inflates or the dining meal plans increase in price, students and families need to place just as much emphasis as on a tuition upsurge. The media seems to report tuition increases in dramatic manner, whereas other price rises do not even make the front page.

We need to make colleges accountable for reporting the truth about college costs. Lawmakers are apprehensive to put such a big number out there for high school students, but this is far more responsible than deceiving families. If a family knows the true costs of a college education, they can plan ahead and consider the benefits and costs of attending a 4-year university. Without this truth in reporting, families often accumulate huge debts and take out loans due to their unawareness of the expensive nature of college. Although some students may be discouraged from attending college, clarity and honesty in higher education is more desirable.

Some government agencies have moved to educate families on the cost of a education and financial aid options. The Department of Education recently created a website to help students and parents understand college funding and financial aid. This step is an improvement, since high school students can now know the actual cost and ways to pay for it. The idea here is to educate with as much precision as possible.

The University does publicize the costs of attendance, yet this figure can sometimes be problematic. For instance, personal expenses vary greatly from student to student. Although these are luxuries of wealthier students, for example, cars, off-Grounds housing and meal plans, trips, and partying, families should consider extra costs as well. A family should know what to expect when their child attends the University for the next 4 years.

A solution to this problem is creating profiles of student spending habits. Perhaps the University can ask a few representative students to estimate their specific costs over the past four years and then publish this data anonymously. A student reports how much he spent on all his yearly personal expenses, for example, beer, food and polo shirts. This way a family can go down the list and add an estimated amount for their child to have a car or study abroad. In this sense, families can evaluate these students’ habits and better estimate their child’s expenses.

We do not want to prevent attendance from low-income students who are qualified for college, but a greater clarity and honesty may actually help these families plan and understand the true costs of a college education.

(Michael Behr is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.)