The presidential campaign office of U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., is in a rather nondescript building in northwest D.C. on the same block as Metro Center, not far from the White House. Erring on the side of caution I arrived for my first day definitely over-dressed for a campaign. I quickly realized it is not safe to wear a tie when you are spending a significant amount of time operating a paper shredder.

Much of my first week was spent stuffing envelopes, making hundreds of phone calls, putting together office furniture, making copies, typing lists, running to the post office and buying the office football at City Sports. While these were not exactly the most intellectually stimulating tasks, I made sure to keep my eyes and ears open and quickly learned the lay of the land.

The senator’s D.C. campaign staff is broken up into several teams. Most of my interaction was with the fundraising, Internet and research branches of the staff.

The fundraising team works at a frenetic pace to organize events, contact supporters and fill seats at the senator’s numerous fundraisers across the country. As interns we did a lot of data entry and assembly, as well as spent many a day in the conference room phone bank making calls for the fundraising team. We essentially made the same phone call hundreds of times to confirm invitations with donors. This sometimes got to be a bit of a drag, but every so often the calls would be broken up by an especially enthusiastic supporter, or by a call to a famous VIP. We also got to know each other better by chatting while we were on hold navigating the many mazes of secretaries and assistants.

After my first week I quickly got an opportunity to do some more interesting work. My first big assignment came from the research team who handed me a legal pad as I walked off the elevator one morning and told me to hike over to the Washington Hilton to watch and take notes on another candidate’s policy speech. Sitting alongside the press corps I feverishly took notes and quickly learned that it’s tougher than it looks to keep up. I then prepared a summary for the research team.

Apparently the team was impressed with my work. From then on I was frequently recruited to track speeches, conduct historical research, catalogue video from the campaign trail and manage the dozen or so TiVo’s tuned into everything from C-SPAN to Fox News and every other news outlet under the sun.

Unlike many of the college students that work in Washington each summer, I lived at home and interning was my second job. I’m still not completely decided on whether the benefits of free rent and home-cooked meals outweighed missing much of the storied D.C. intern happy hour scene, but balancing my time inside an office with coaching summer league swimming each afternoon was a definite perk.

Coaching did cut my internship a little short — I only spent the first five weeks of the summer with the campaign — but I left with the feeling I’d learned a good deal. Aside from the obvious honing of my typing skills, increasing my Xerox machine prowess and perfecting my polite, persuasive telephone persona, I learned a lot about the mechanics of a presidential campaign.

Everyone from the senior staff to the interns and often the senator himself shared a lot of the same office space and there were very real benefits to the close quarters. While not really “in the room” I did get to watch as policy and strategy that had been debated in the office unfolded on the floor of the Senate and in the Democratic debates. It was not only enlightening, but a real thrill to watch the senator on television one day and work with him in the office the next.

My internship experience was rewarding on a number of levels. I left with a job offer and enough experience to hit the ground running in politics after I graduate in December. Overall, as far as internships go, I couldn’t have asked for much more than that.

Well, the end happened pretty much just as I thought it would. I emerged from that beautiful ship in San Diego Harbor, weighed down by the spoils of my journey, tearfully greeted by my mother, calling out promises that I would stay in touch with too many new friends. A few were empty. Most were not.

Regardless, I dove headlong straight back into my own “reality,” as it was. We arrived on the West Coast May 14 and I was on a red-eye to D.C. that night. May 16 I was back in Charlottesville by 10 a.m. for an internship interview. That night, my friends threw me a surprise welcome home party which they abruptly turned into a joint party upon realizing that another of our friends was returning from a semester in London. And as I dove into that stream of hectic that is the life of Joe Wahoo, those unbelievable 100 days I spent on Semester at Sea began to fade, exacerbated by my short attention span.

But then, I’m sounding awfully negative.

It’s cool to be home! I can drive! I can go to the grocery store and choose my own awful diet! I get to see my dog, who I like to think missed me! I can play the drums! I knew that life would snap right back to normal. I kept that mindset the last few weeks or so of the voyage, knowing that if I didn’t, I would get depressed and terribly self-righteous upon my return, as I know many of my friends did and are still getting over.

What do I mean by self-righteous? Anyone on that ship who didn’t know already how destructive, wasteful, naive and ignorant Americans can be learned of it in a very, very big way. I fear that some alienating behavior may have developed upon their return. Oh well, they’ll get over it.

Within a month, I went from traveling around the world, stuck with 700 other people who I’ve now decided I liked a whole lot, to…

Summer in C-ville. It’s hot, it’s heavy and I think the solitude is about to melt my brain. This was truly the only real shock I’ve had. Imagine: Just when you, a loner by trade, get used to constantly being surrounded by people 24 hours a day and have become accustomed to having no privacy aside from the restroom (occasionally), you come back to this.

I write this sitting in my gigantic, empty apartment as all of my roommates are up north for the summer. I can count on one hand the friends I know who are here and are sometimes around to hang out with , and the closest ones are half a mile away. I bought some fish to keep me company, but I’m not sure they can hear me rambling to them through the glass of the aquarium.

I think perhaps I got addicted to having to open myself up and make new friends virtually every day on that ship. Maybe that’s why I’m losing my mind here. The people I don’t know here, aside from co-workers, just seem downright… unfriendly. I can’t even tell what I’m doing wrong. Is it that people on Semester at Sea were just more prepared to befriend new people or do summertime Charlottesvillians just have such rigid comfort zones? Donate to the “Save Erik from the reverse culture shock that he was warned about by the Study Abroad Office like it was the plague” campaign. Be his friend!

The true issue also remains, which I’m sure virtually anyone who goes abroad has to grapple with: How much do you cling to the new friends you’ve made and how much do you reconnect with your former friends and life, even if it means risking the strength of those new bonds? The answer is that I don’t know, but it’s an issue to consider for about three seconds before forgetting about it.

So I don’t mean to sound so downbeat with this piece, I really don’t. Hopefully, though, it serves to illustrate how much of a good, refreshing time I had on Semester at Sea. And again, I saw a lot of people here turn their noses up at the program when I mentioned that I was doing it. Come on. Don’t do that. You want to know about it, ask me. I feel like a new person, but I can still be intellectually pretentious, too.

A female University student was robbed early Saturday morning as she walked alone to her house on the 400 block of 17th Street, Charlottesville Police Capt. Chip Harding said.

The student reported to the police that as she was entering her door about 3:30 a.m., two men approached her and demanded her purse. One of the men then grabbed the purse and the two ran in the direction of the railroad tracks near Chancellor Street. According to Harding, the student described the robbers as two black men between the ages of 16 and 24 wearing black T-shirts.

Harding said the perpetrators were unarmed and he has no reason to believe that the robbery is connected to any other recent crimes.

– compiled by Daniel Colbert

The rising prices of housing in Charlottesville recently prompted the University to join a city task force that is seeking ways to make housing more affordable for area residents.

The University, as the largest employer in the Charlottesville area, needs to be a part of the task force to decide how to solve the problem for Charlottesville residents, said Dave Phillips, CEO of the Charlottesville Area Association of REALTORS.

“I don’t know what the task force will decide on, but it is great to see the University at the table, taking the first step,” Phillips said.

The current housing affordability issue stems from increasing taxes, according to Phillips, resulting in a situation where residents are having difficulty finding and affording a home.

One option the University is considering is to buy some of the housing around the University and sell it to University employees, Phillips said.

“The task force has a multitude of different options to solve the problem, from essentially subsidizing housing to awarding grants,” Phillips said. “It’s just a question of what the final picture will look like.”

Yet the University plays a dual role in the area housing market, acting as both the largest area employer and the source of thousands of students who opt to move off Grounds during their time in Charlottesville.

Many in the community point to University students as a group that is creating a high demand for housing close to Grounds, driving housing prices even higher.

Dean of Students Penny Rue said the University actually prefers students to live on Grounds, emphasizing the higher levels of security and better safety on-Grounds. Still, many students migrate to live off Grounds each year, a phenomenon which the University Housing Division has been working hard to combat, Associate Chief Housing Officer Marshall Hunt said.

“We are just trying to keep abreast in the local community so that we can keep our competition up there,” Hunt added.

“We are trying as best we can to put a lot of dollars into repair and renovations including an ambitious project in Lambeth where we are trying to put off-Ground amenities in on-Grounds housing.”

According to Hunt, a major attraction of off-Grounds housing is “location, location, location.”

The rush to sign leases for off-Grounds housing early in the year is another important factor in the situation and one Rue called, “fascinating.” Yet she also pointed out that signing leases early in the fall is unnecessary.

“Landlords understand the advantage they have owning the housing closest to the University and pressure students living there to stay another year.” Rue said.

The responsibility to change the annual off-Grounds feeding frenzy depends on the students themselves, Rue said.

“If students could come together and decide not to sign leases so early and remembered that second years are guaranteed housing on Grounds, it would be a lot better,” she added.

Now that they’ve worn the honors of Honor, they must venture out into the world to find their way. Only a month after Graduation Weekend, members of the graduated Class of 2007 have gotten their first taste of life outside of the University.

Many graduates have already begun their first jobs, though some may have signed on the dotted line sooner than others.

Ladd Flock, Career Services director for the College, explained that though most commerce and engineering-related jobs were found by students last fall, many College graduates may only now be landing their positions.

“Employers that seek Arts & Sciences graduates begin to look around graduation when the [recent graduates] are available,” Flock said. “Commerce and Engineering students [get hired earlier] in larger groups because [the employers] have to build training classes.”

The new graduates will fill a number of different positions spread all over the world, Flock said, as he expects this year’s graduating class to follow the same trend as the past few graduating classes. With regard to regional distribution, nearly one-third of the students end up moving to the Washington D.C. and northern Virginia area, he said. Another third generally moves to the New York and tri-state region, while others are positioned more sporadically.

“A lot of students are scattered all over the country and internationally,” he said.

According to information gathered from the near 480 College students who have already responded to University Career Services’ survey, students are choosing to fill a variety of careers and continuing with their education in assorted professional or graduate schools.

“The feedback we’ve gotten so far shows that a lot [of graduates] have found jobs through career fairs and HoosTrak, which is a big plus,” he said.

Off the beaten path

Though the traditional job market is the route taken by many University students, some members of the Class of 2007 have found more adventurous employment options and service-related opportunities, such as the Peace Corps and Teach for America.

Peace Corps continues to be a major draw for graduating University students explained Stephen Chapman, Peace Corps public affairs specialist.

“The Peace Corps involves two years of government service, mostly in education, health, environment and community development,” Chapman said.

According to Peace Corps statistics, the University ranks second among medium-sized universities in producing Peace Corps volunteers.

Teach for America is another very popular option for employment.

Class of 2007 graduate Sally Houston is currently in her third week of training in Houston, Texas as a Teach for America volunteer.

“Right now I’m teaching Texas history in summer school,” Houston said. “It’s hard … I have to be up at 5:30.”

Houston said she knew she wanted to work for Teach for America since her third year.

“I applied to a couple of other places but when I knew that I got Teach for America, I pulled all of my other applications,” Houston said.

Houston said she feels more prepared for her Teach for America service in many ways because of the experiences she had while attending the University.

“During the training, we’re not sleeping that much,” she said. “It’s hard for some of the graduates, but I’m fine because it is like a college finals week.”

Back to school

While many graduates are starting new jobs, others are heading to back to academia to further their knowledge and escape from the real world for a few more years.

After finishing his summer-long volunteer job recent graduate Josh Cincinnati will begin his studies at Stanford Business School in the fall.

“I love U.Va. but it is very cool to be heading out to the West Coast to get a different perspective on a lot of things,” he said.

Cincinnati said the activities he participated in outside of the classroom, such as his leadership positions, have been most influential in his life thus far after graduating.

“The activities and organizing events prepared me for [graduate school],” he said. “I think the only reason I am in business school is the work I did extracurricularly.”

Staying in C-ville

Many graduates have opted to continue their education on Grounds at one of the many graduate programs available at the University, such as the Darden School or the Law School.

Though students just out of undergraduate schools are not allowed to directly matriculate at Darden except in a JD/MBA program, the school still encourages graduates to apply, Darden Director of Admissions Sara E. Neher explained.

“I would prefer for people to have some work experience but I would be happy for them to apply while they’re still in school here,” Neher said. “We would give them a deferral so they would work for one to two years and then they can come after that.”

Neher said many of their students come from the University community.

“The University is our largest undergraduate school,” she said.

Susan Palmer, associate dean of admissions at the Law School, echoed this sentiment.

“The University of Virginia is our biggest feeder by the largest margin,” she said. “We call them ‘Double Hoos’ over here.”

According to Law School statistics compiled over the last four years, the percentage of University graduates per class comes to about 13 percent.

Overall, 48 percent of the classes’ students tend to have come straight from undergraduate programs, Palmer said. University students seem to exceed these averages, she added.

“University students tend to be a little bit younger,” she said. “They also tend to be very active in the Law School’s student government and the honor council — they have a genuine devotion to the community.”

The driver of a vehicle that struck a University assistant professor June 13 was charged with the felony of “maiming another while driving under the influence” in his first court appearance last Wednesday, according to a press release.

The driver, James J. Newman, had already been charged that night with driving under the influence after his minivan went off the roadway and struck Xianfeng Chen on the 100 block of Whitewood Road, according to releases. His trial date is still pending.

Chen is an assistant professor in the department of microbiology. According to Megan Rowe, Medical Center administrator, he was recently released from the University Medical Center.

Virginia drivers committing serious traffic violations can expect to pay up to $3,000 in additional fees starting July 1.

The fees, which are known as “civil remedial fees,” apply to both misdemeanors and felonies, including reckless driving and DUI, according to an explanation by the Office of the Executive Secretary of the Supreme Court.

The purpose of adding these fees was “to charge activity that caused congestion,” said Virginia Del. Dave Albo, who led the effort to include the fees.

The bill, which was signed by Gov. Tim Kaine in April, creates new ways of funding recently approved state transportation projects.

A Feb. 6 statement from Kaine regarding the bill noted that solving Virginia’s transportation problems “will require substantial additional revenues.”

According to Albo, the new fees “pay for about one-third of the new statewide revenue.”

He added that the money generated will be used for maintenance and construction.

The additional fees are applied to the annual driver’s license fee, Albo said. For this reason, they can only be applied to in-state residents.

According to Law Prof. Mildred Robinson, this could create a situation in which out-of-state drivers feel “a little less deterred” from violating traffic laws.

Robinson also said these fees will have a “huge impact” on less affluent Virginians.

Whether or not the new law is challenged in courts remains to be seen, Robinson added.

Albo noted that the new fees will only be charged to those committing offenses punishable by jail time. According to Albo, the only two ways a driver will face the additional fees is by committing a serious traffic violation or by accumulating an excess of driver’s license “points” with repeated tickets.

In last week’s article “University policy expands gym access,” the quote “This is not a terminal step by any stretch of the imagination” was misattributed. It should have been attributed to Wyatt Fore, former president of Queer and Allied Activism. The article on the Web site has been changed to reflect this correction. The Cavalier Daily regrets the error.

University football player Vic Hall was assaulted in a parking garage on Elliewood Avenue Saturday night, according to Charlottesville Police Capt. Chip Harding.

Harding said while the police are still investigating the incident, they believe Hall, a junior cornerback, was struck on the head with a bottle in the parking garage next to the Biltmore. He was treated for minor injuries at the University Medical Center and released. No other individuals were admitted to the hospital.

Police are still interviewing witnesses to determine whether a fight took place and what may have been the cause, Harding said. They have received several reports of shots fired in the area, but police are not certain that the reports are related to this incident. No arrests had been made as of press time.

The University athletic department declined to comment on the incident.