It reads like a scene from Orwell: administrative censors approving every word that goes to print, unpopular or provocative opinions stripped from the pages, the freedom of the press choked in the grip of funding threats. Fiction? Probably. But college newspapers moved one step closer to losing their independence last week when the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that universities may influence the content of their subsidized publications. The decision was a striking blow to free press and reinforces the need for college papers to gain financial independence. Yet even if administrators have gained new censorship authority, they should not, and must not, exercise it.

The ruling centered on an interpretation of a 1988 Supreme Court case which established that high school newspapers could have their content censored, but seemed to protect their collegiate counterparts. Last Monday, the appeals court upheld a situation where a university administration approved every article before the paper could be printed. In lay terms, the argument for extending censorship to higher education says that universities which choose to subsidize a private forum at public expense retain some editorial control over that forum.

This misses the point entirely.

Newspapers serve the public good. Yes, it’s undeniable that student newspapers occasionally display bad judgment or offend people. Every year a few outrageous opinion columns run, and every year a few papers get a bit too lewd. This is not justification for prior restraint. Rather, it is a chance for honest conversations. A learning environment is richest when saturated with challenging perspectives. College is all about being exposed to those new points of view and debating them openly and frankly. But the minute administrations begin to flex their censorship muscle, the integrity of the newspaper’s reporting implodes. The marketplace of ideas cannot function when administrations enforce a monopoly. Readers cannot respect articles which have been whittled of everything critical.

Simply put, what the university is creating in a newspaper is an educational opportunity. For many institutions, U.Va. included, the student newspaper is the journalism school. This is the embodiment of higher education’s ideal: students independently taking the initiative to tackle reporting, editing, advertising, internal organization andpublic relations –- all without so much as a faculty mentor. Take away the independence and you neuter the experience.

It’s doubtful that the Orwellian vision will ever truly come to fruition, but leaving editorial control to administrators who serve very different interests than students and likely have no journalistic background is a frightening prospect. Ultimately, the only way for college papers to secure inalienable sovereignty is to become fully financially independent. This is not as easy as it sounds; it took an extremely public crisis for The Cavalier Daily to escape from the oversight of former President Frank Hereford’s Media Board. Nonetheless, this must be the goal, and it has greater urgency than ever. Through building better alumni networks, gathering support from the surrounding community and associating with other collegiate and local papers, every publication should press hard for the safe harbor of self-sufficiency.

It may well be legally true that a university which underwrites a college paper has the right to influence its content. Indeed, it is perfectly understandable why administrators would want that authority. But however the legal wrangling turns out, no matter how great the urge to interfere, the principles of higher education demand that papers be allowed their successes and failures — independently.

AS THE summer has gotten underway, the American political landscape is, as has become normal of late, red hot. The talk of reaching across the aisle spoken by both sides following the 2004 elections has given way to partisan wrangling and battle after battle showing that bipartisanship, for all intents and purposes, seems dead in American political life. As the rhetoric seems to only get worse and worse, the hope that proper discourse and true compromise will return to American politics seems to be fading fast.

Unfortunately, some of the people that should be calming things down, party leaders, have been some of the worst offenders. The Democrats have Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean, who seems to be in the news about every week for the newest ridiculous allegation he’s made against Republicans. Whether it is claiming that Republicans have “never earned an honest living in their lives” or attacking the party for being made up of white Christians (an interesting charge coming from the DNC chair who is, after all, a white Christian), Dean has received much-deserved heat for his comments, and has made it clear that he has no intention of leading the DNC on a constructive path of working with Republicans to attain the goals that both sides believe in.

Dean’s statements, however, pale in comparison to the statement made by Senate Assistant Minority Leader Dick Durbin, D-Ill., when he attacked the administration for its handling of Guantanamo Bay by comparing it to Nazi prison camps and Soviet gulags. This was a dangerous statement to make, when it is known claims about American treatment of detainees has sparked violence in the past. Fortunately there were no major incidents as a result of Durbin’s speech, but the sheer partisanship Durbin was tapping showed yet again the deterioration of proper discourse in modern politics. In the end, Durbin did at least have the decency to apologize for the statement.

Naturally, the blame does not lie solely with Democrats. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., has been on the offensive against Democrats all summer. When Frist first became Senate majority leader, many in the Senate spoke of him as a pleasant man known as a consensus builder. Frist’s tenure has proven him anything but. Time and time again, Frist has attacked the Democratic Party as being anti-faith (despite the overwhelming majority of party members who are, themselves, very religious), and Frist used the filibuster flap to make the absurd claim that Democrats were just interested in keeping Christians off the bench.

Then just recently there was Karl Rove, the mastermind of President Bush’s election victories. Rove gave a speech to a major conservative group arguing that liberals wanted to respond to Sept. 11 by giving the terrorists “therapy.” This flat-out ignored poll data collected after Sept. 11 showing that an overwhelming majority of liberals supported a military response. Yet again, Karl Rove proved that even an event that once unified America can now be used to further deepen the divide.

All of these events we have seen this summer have shown more and more that bipartisanship is dying or dead in America. In a country that’s practically fifty-fifty, both parties have the power to practically shut down the operations of the government. As bipartisanship continues to falter, the filibuster will become an ever more consistent tool in the Senate, and subsequently no significant government action will be taken on critical issues like Social Security, the environment, or even the inevitable Supreme Court vacancy.

While there is still some glimmer of hope (such as 14 moderate Senators who came together to save the Senate from a meltdown by stopping Frist’s absurd “nuclear option” to eliminate the filibuster while also ending the Democrats’ overuse of the judicial filibuster), bipartisanship is dying in America. The leaders of both parties are continuing on a path to make sure it can’t come back to life. The United States is a fifty-fifty country, and until reason and compromise returns to politics, the state of politics in America will only continue to deteriorate, creating disasters in every field of government work. We can only hope the politicians get the picture in time, and that sometime soon, the bickering will end.

Sam Leven is a Cavalier Daily columnist. He can be reached at sleven@cavalierdaily.com.

IMAGINE that your whole life you’ve aspired to live on the waterfront. You work hard, save money, and after many years you can finally afford to move into a small house you’ve always wanted. You live the American dream — or so you think, until one day a sheriff’s deputy appears at your door telling you that your house has been condemned and you will be forced to leave because someone with more money wants to live there. This sounds like a twisted fairy tale in which Robin Hood steals from the poor. It also sounds illegal, but not now thanks to the recent Supreme Court decision of Kelo v. New London.

The Court recently concluded that local governments can use their power of eminent domain, once reserved only for public projects like roads, to seize private property and turn it over to commercial developers. In the New London case, the victims are residents of a waterfront neighborhood whose homes are being razed to make room for offices, a hotel and luxury condominiums.

But the residents of New London are not alone. Eminent domain abuse happens all over the country. In Bristol, Tennessee, residents defeated a proposal by the government to confiscate their land and give it to the local NASCAR track. The threatened businesses put up roadside signs reminding passersby of the Tenth Commandment: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s property.” Local officials accused the land owners of being “greedy.”

Funny how someone is being greedy for wanting to keep a home or business that’s been in their family for generations, but someone is not being greedy for wanting to use the power of the government to bulldoze that home and make himself wealthy.

One lawyer for New London Development Corporation, the semi-private organization to which the city of New London outsourced its power of eminent domain, commented on the residents who refuse to give up their homes because of sentimental value, “No matter what you offer, they won’t consider that sufficient or appropriate. They’re just not motivated by the logic of the marketplace.”

This makes it sound as if people whose homes have sentimental value are somehow too deranged to accept logic. However, the logic of the marketplace is that of voluntary transaction. If someone refuses to give up their property voluntarily, that does not make it just to motivate him with a bulldozer. That may be the logic of totalitarian central planning, but in most eminent domain cases, the logic of the marketplace is all but thrown out the window.

The government’s power of eminent domain, called “the despotic power” by the Supreme Court in 1795, is restricted by the Fifth Amendment to be used only for “public use” and with “just compensation.” So how do the Supreme Court’s liberal justices think luxury condominiums and a hotel constitute public use? Because the government uses the tax dollars generated by the new upscale property. This is a ludicrous interpretation of the Fifth Amendment that can be used to justify any forced transfer of property in which the new owners would generate more tax revenue. As the dissenting Supreme Court justices warned, “The government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more.”

The decision essentially erases the qualifying protections of the Fifth Amendment, since “public use” is no longer a requirement, and the compensation offered is usually only seen as “just” from the driver’s seat of the bulldozer.

The deletion of these Fifth Amendment protections comes just before what is expected be a vacancy on the court and a debate about its future direction. President Bush has said he prefers a strict constructionist (someone who thinks the constitution means what it says), while his detractors will justify their strained interpretation with the claim that our constitution is a “living document”. Maybe it is. But it’s clear after the mortal wound dealt by Kelo v. New London, if judicial activists have their way, the Constitution won’t be living much longer.

Herb Ladley is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached athladley@cavalierdaily.com.

FROM White House advisor Karl Rove’s attack on liberals last week to Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean’s slur against Republicans earlier this month, the punditocracy has been busy bemoaning the purported incivility of politics. Far from being a sign of social decay, the recent resurrection of strong rhetoric should be embraced as the hallmark of a mature democracy. In a pluralistic society such as ours, it is only proper that political debate should be free-flowing, honest, open and uninhibited.

In this age of sensitivity training and moral relativism, Americans have all but lost the courage of their convictions and their voices. Under the tyranny of political correctness and corporate and academic speech codes, we are terrified to speak our minds and tell things as we see them. Thus, it was so refreshing to hear Karl Rove ridicule liberals in a speech last week for wanting to “offer therapy and understanding for our attackers” in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001.

While Democrats, feigning indignance, immediately called on Rove to apologize, his remarks were undeniably true. Let’s flash back four years: Right after the 2001 terrorist attacks, thousands of protesters came out of the woodwork and started demonizing America. Before the administration had even announced how it would respond, peaceniks started jumping down President Bush’s throat. Radical polemicist Amiri Baraka wrote a screed full of racist innuendo about our country’s political leaders. As a college senior, I personally clashed with hundreds of angry young militants beating on bongo drums in their war against the war on terrorism.

While many of my liberal friends also stood up for America, the fact remains that the protestors were not conservatives, but liberals. Democrats who now claim deep offense are crying crocodile tears. Where were they when Noam Chomsky, MoveOn.org and company, chomping at the bit, seized the tragedy to renew their raison d’être of slandering the United States?

As truthful as Rove was about liberals, Howard Dean was equally accurate in noting that Republicans are “a pretty monolithic party where they all behave the same, and they all look the same. It’s pretty much the white Christian party.” While the rest of his speech was typical Howard Dean — off the wall, angry and downright libelous — Republicans cannot deny the statistical fact that they are more demographically homogeneous than are the Democrats.

Of course, the blame for this phenomenon lies mostly with the liberals. The Democrats’ group-identity demagogues have turned race into a political allegiance rather than a physical or cultural trait. To wit, people are not ethnically black, Hispanic, or Asian; they are politically so. And unless they all march in lockstep with the liberal party line, they are denounced as race traitors. In light of this mindless groupthink, is it any wonder that the Democratic Party holds racial minorities in a headlock?

All of this is a slight digression from the issue at hand, however. The point is: Why shouldn’t conservatives call liberals on their failure to rein in the anti-American militants among their ranks after Sept. 11? Why shouldn’t liberals accuse conservatives, albeit hypocritically, of not being more inclusive? In short, why shouldn’t people tell us how they really feel? I for one, have made no bones in this column — or ever — about where I stand on the issues. And what’s so wrong with that?

In any event, I am not convinced the purported incivility in civil discourse is not really a creation of the chattering class. Even as they chide politicians for strong language, the pundits yell and scream at each other to be heard on TV shows like the “McLaughlin Group” and “Crossfire.” Meanwhile, the American people salute straight talkers like Sen. John McCain, and may they continue to do so. In a democracy, the greatest fear we should have is not the proliferation of passion and debate, but rather their extermination.

Eric Wang is a Cavalier Daily columnist. He can be reached at ewang@cavalierdaily.com.

THE UNIVERSITY’S Jeffersonian image took a hit this month when The New York Times reported that only eight percent of students come from families in the bottom half of the national income distribution. The Daily Progress reported that members of the Board of Visitors were shocked — shocked! — to learn that our public university has become a bastion of privilege. But this news should come as no surprise to even the most oblivious of our leaders. The University has a smaller percentage of low-income students than any flagship university in the nation, and one merely has to observe the iPod-toting masses on Grounds to realize that our student body has money.

The University has finally started to address the problem, but more must be done in both recruitment efforts and the admissions process. In the latest round of admissions, the admissions office aggressively publicized the Access U.Va. financial aid program and encouraged low-income students to apply. There was much rejoicing when the upcoming freshman class was unveiled, with 6.2 percent of students coming from low-income families, up from less than 5 percent last year. These numbers reflect welcome improvements, but 6.2 percent is not cause for celebration at a University that was founded in the name of public education.

If the University is to make true progress, low-income students must be admitted at a significantly higher rate than the privileged applicants who flood the admissions office each year. This year, for the first time, the admissions office used information from the financial aid office to identify students who were likely to qualify. In an interview, Admissions Dean John Blackburn said that the change is not a new policy, but rather an expansion of efforts to consider opportunity along with achievement. Low-income status is considered a “plus factor” that improves an applicant’s chances of admission, but even with this heightened consciousness, the rate of admission for low-income students has increased only three percent, up from 38 percent to 41 percent in 2005. African-American applicants were admitted at a rate of 59 percent under race-sensitive admissions, while legacy students, who essentially receive affirmative action for privilege, were admitted at a rate of 52 percent.

Socioeconomic affirmative action is necessary not only to achieve greater diversity, but also to compensate for the tremendous disadvantage that low-income students face in preparation for college. The new version of the SAT could add to this disadvantage since the new writing portion reflects skills that have been taught, rather than natural ability.

While he acknowledges that SAT scores are “helpful” to the admissions office, Blackburn is adamant that the SAT is only a small factor on an application that considers essays, academics, teacher recommendations and extracurricular involvement. In an applicant pool of over 15,000 students, the fact that SAT scores are considered at all will disadvantage low-income students to whatever degree that they are a factor.

One of the greatest barriers to increasing the admission of low-income students is that even under need-conscious admissions, application readers frequently lack information about a student’s financial status. Many low income applicants only apply for financial aid after they have been accepted, and while application readers can sometimes infer financial status based on a student’s location, the lack of specific knowledge is a huge obstacle to achieving socioeconomic diversity.

Blackburn said that he is working with the financial aid office on possible methods of early identification, including working with the College Board, the administrators of the SAT, to increase the number of students who are identified as low income before the admissions process. These efforts are crucial to the success of need-conscious admissions, and the University should not fear a radical departure from tradition, such as requiring some evidence of financial status to be submitted with every application. At the very least, the University should make clear to low-income prospective students that filing out financial aid forms early in the process can only improve their chances of admission.

The University’s highly subjective admissions process has the advantage of looking beyond numbers, but it also leaves little room for accountability. We are expected to simply trust that readers have been fair, and while we have no reason to doubt that this is the case, we also have no way of knowing whether low income students have benefited or suffered. All we can do is look at the results.

The outcome of this year’s admissions reflect significant progress, but to congratulate ourselves for these numbers is to accept the vast gap in opportunity as an inevitable reality. Access to higher education will never be equal, but the staggering overrepresentation of the wealthy should be unacceptable to all who believe in public education.

Cari Lynn Hennessy is a Cavalier Daily columnist. She can be reached at chennessy@cavalierdaily.com.

DURING both of his presi-dential campaigns, George W. Bush successfully played the part of a simplistic straight shooter. He may not have been the sharpest knife in the drawer (so the story went), but he was the guy you would not only want to share a drink with, but could put your trust in as well.

But ever since Bush and members of his administration began beating the drum for regime change in Iraq and insisting vehemently (and with highly questionable evidence) that this was the next front of the war on terror, that facade of trustworthiness has slowly started to crumble. It held through the last election thanks to a carefully crafted campaign. However, by stubbornly insisting that things are going swimmingly in Iraq despite reports to the contrary, and by flaunting a private accounts plan for Social Security that won’t come close to fixing it, the Bush team is eroding what’s left of its credibility. The results aren’t going to be pretty.

When asked recently for his opinion on Iraq, Bush responded that he was “pleased with the progress there,” citing events such as the national elections held in January. In his most recent weekly radio address, he conceded that the process was “difficult” but still confidently projected that the mission would end in “great triumph.” Even more optimistic sounding was Vice President Dick Cheney, who described the Iraqi insurgency as being in its “last throes.” Days later, those comments were rather flatly contradicted by General John P. Abizaid, Commander of the U.S. Central Command, who testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that the insurgency’s “overall strength is about the same” as it was six months ago and that foreign fighters continue to feed the conflict. Cheney weakly defended his own assessment, giving a dictionary definition of “throes” and claiming, “it can still be a violent period.” So while Bush explains how pleased he is with the situation based on events that occurred six months ago, his top general explains how the security situation hasn’t improved in six months.

The public isn’t buying the president’s story. According to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll taken from June 16 to 19, nearly six in 10 Americans now oppose the war, up from an even split only three months ago. Pressure is mounting on politicians to start thinking about bringing the troops home. When Bush first began making the case for invading Iraq back in 2002, he succeeded by insisting fervently that doing so was vital to national security, and a scared public believed him. But after two long and costly years of war and a string of hollow claims ranging from WMDs to the insurgency, a not so gullible public is losing its patience.

Similarly, the president’s obstinacy is beginning to backfire on the domestic front with his proposal for reforming Social Security. Bush’s plan for reform depends on the public believing that there is, indeed, a crisis in the program, so he has turned to the same ploys that helped him originally sell the Iraq war: scare tactics. Just as Saddam was labeled a threat that had to be dealt with immediately, so too has the Bush administration declared Social Security to be a system on the verge of collapse. But the plan for private retirement accounts that Bush has been advocating so vigorously in conjunction with such a message will not make the system fiscally sound, and Bush knows it. Social Security will be fixed either by changing entitlements or the taxes that fund them, and once again the public is not proving as naïve as Bush might have liked. Despite his coast-to-coast advertising, public support for the plan recently dropped to 25 percent, according to a June 17 poll by the New York Times and CBS News.

Bush’s stubborn insistence that there has been substantive progress in Iraq and on acceptance of his proposal for private accounts is losing him the confidence of the American people. There will likely be consequences. A bipartisan group of legislators in Congress has already called for a timetable for troop removal from Iraq, and their numbers will only swell unless Bush can make clear that even though progress in Iraq has not been stellar, to pull out prematurely would not only doom democracy’s chances in Iraq but create an even greater threat to American security than Saddam Hussein ever was. Additionally, by insisting that private accounts are the answer to Social Security’s woes, Bush is generating resistance to any reform and distracting from the real (if far off) problems with the system. If Bush wants to have a chance of salvaging his agenda, he had better start by really becoming the straight shooter he’s always professed to be.

A.J. Kornblith is a Cavalier Dailycolumnist. He can be reached at akornblith@cavalierdaily.com.

By Preston Gisch
Arts & Entertainment Editor
Heritage Repertory Theatre’s “Damn Yankees” ($14 for students; 8 p.m. at Culbreth Theatre through Saturday) is the most remarkable dramatic production I have ever seen at U.Va. From the detailed, versatile set to the creative, kinetic choreography to the strong, expressive voices in all the right places, the story of the worst-to-first place Washington Senators is a grand slam.

With his beloved baseball team in last place, Joe (Steve Tharp) makes a pact with the Devil (the animated Geno Carr). In exchange for his soul, Joe trades his aged, arthritic body for that of an agile, athletic 20-something baseball phenom (Rob Marnell). The resulting musical follows Joe’s rise superstardom as he takes the Senators to the top of the division, all the while coping with a worried wife (the nuanced Catherine Ogden), a manic Devil and a muck-raking journalist.

Greg Harris directs a hefty orchestra, 19-strong by my count, which does justice to “Yankees’” eclectic score — only a few cracked notes from the trumpets and the occasional tonal mishap in the strings section marred the otherwise on-pitch, on-tempo instrumental work. The leads’ voice work is even stronger, with the exception of Tharp’s upper-range solo, “Goodbye, Old Girl,” which is noticeably thin and wobbly next to the younger Marnell’s sturdy baritone.

Kiira Schmidt’s fantastic choreography starts the show with a wheeled-recliner chorus line and thrills with chaotic locker room dance sequences. A shining moment is the sultry solo number, “Whatever Lola Wants,” with Heather Mayes as the inimitable Lola.

Shawn Paul Evans’ stage-swallowing scenic design features enormous painted backdrops and well-crafted, sensible sets — Joe’s home is intimate, the locker room is realistically rendered and the silvery night club set is simply stunning.

None of the scenes or choreography would work without R. Lee Kennedy’s imaginative lighting design. Synchronized flashes enhance dance numbers, calibrated dimmers clearly distinguish outdoor and indoor scenes and the occasional spotlight draws audience attention without detracting from ensemble pieces.

But for all its homeruns, Robert Chapel’s direction strikes out here and there. Near the end of the quite long first act, the curtain drops for a bewildering, out-of-context fan club chorus praising Joe’s baseball prowess. And the first of “Damn Yankees’” many, tiered climaxes, the last out of the pennant-clinching game, feels rushed and underdeveloped.

Minor complaints aside, this production is a major league success. From start to finish, “Damn Yankees” knocks it out of the park. And at $14 a head, it’s a steal.

If it’s any indication of the quality line-up Heritage Repertory Theatre has in store, then this summer is sure to be a winning season.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — When rivalries are mentioned, most people think of the Yankees and the Red Sox, the Cowboys and the Redskins or Notre Dame and USC. Very few people would ever think of the United States versus Australia as being able to stand in the same category as those classic matchups. But in the women’s international lacrosse world, it is the most heated rivalry — a rivalry that has been stoked in the flames of four of the six championship matches in the history of International Federation of Women’s Lacrosse (IFWLA) World Cup.

“There’s a huge rivalry there, but there is also a huge amount of respect,” Australia head coach Max Madonia said. “It’s about playing sport at its best level.”

The two national teams added another chapter to their rivalry this past Sunday when they played to a 7-7 tie in the pool play portion of this year’s World Cup. The game was highlighted by three lead changes, five ties and a furious comeback by the Australians in the final two minutes to tie the game. The University was well represented in the game as alumnae Cherie Greer and Lauren Aumiller each scored two points for Team USA and Cavalier field hockey coach Jess Wilk had nine saves and three caused turnovers while playing goalie for the Americans.

Greer got the scoring started early, scoring the first goal 11 seconds after the opening face-off. Greer then quickly struck again, scoring her second goal 2:52 into the game. The tallies were Greer’s first of the tournament and gave the Americans an early lead.

“All players struggle now and again with confidence,” U.S. coach Sue Stahl said. “[Greer] was going through her battles, but she has come out of it and we are delighted.”

Aumiller made her mark on the game in the second half. Her goal gave the United States a 5-4 lead less than seven minutes into the final stanza. Aumiller’s second point of the match came on an assist from behind the net that gave the Americans a 7-5 advantage with just under six and a half minutes remaining. Aumiller was holding the ball behind the net when she passed to Danielle Gallagher on the left side. Gallagher quickly passed back to Aumiller who found Crista Samaras in front of the net for the apparent game-winning goal.

The Australians, however, fought back in the final two minutes. A goal by Sascha Newmarch with 1:41 left made it a one goal game. The Aussies won the ensuing draw and eventually got the ball over to Maryland alum and all-time NCAA leading scorer Jen Adams. Adams held the ball and fired a pass to Sonia Judd who beat Wilk with 17 seconds left in the game. Adams who was named player of the match with one goal and three assists felt that the comeback was indicative of the Australians’ attitude.

“When we step onto a field it’s all about Australia and we don’t think about the other team or who we are playing,” Adams said. “It was no different today. We had the same intensity we had the past few days, and I think for the rest of the competition. It wasn’t about the U.S., it was about Australia today and our ability to bounce back.”

Following the goal, Greer took a long shot that was easily saved by the Australian keeper to preserve the tie. A tie between the two tournament favorites in the pool play portion of the tournament whets the appetite for a rematch at a later point. The rematch is possible since Australia and the United States enter the crossover, single elimination portion of the tournament as the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds — setting up a potential rematch in the championship game.

It seems like the biggest rivalry in international women’s lacrosse is only going to get more intense.

Offensive tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson and linebacker Ahmad Brooks were both recognized as one of the top players at their respective positions this past week, with Ferguson listed as an Outland Trophy finalist and Brooks named to the Bronko Nagurski Trophy watch list.

A three-year starter and first-team All-ACC honoree in 2004, Ferguson is one of 36 candidates for the trophy, given to the nation’s best interior offensive or defensive lineman. Brooks, who was a first-team All American in 2004, is one of 50 candidates for the Nagurski — the award given to the top defensive player in college football.

Al Groh received his seventh verbal commitment for the 2006-07 season, as rising high school senior Chris Dalton chose to commit to the Cavaliers, according to the Roanoke Times.

The 6’2″, 162-pound wide receiver from Statesville, N.C. received scholarship offers from both Virginia and Clemson after running a speedy 4.38 40-yard dash at the Nike All-Star camp in Blacksburg, Va. in April.

During his junior season, Dalton had 37 receptions for 525 yards and also started at cornerback and returned kicks.