Last night Student Council formally announced the Free Newspaper Project, a joint initiative with the Arts & Sciences Council, which will provide University students with 1,500 free USA Today and New York Times newspapers daily.
Student Council Architecture Rep. Steven Reilly, who is the project’s lead organizer, said the idea came to him after learning that other colleges and universities across the nation offer similar programs.
“I thought it was something great because it takes people out of the U.Va. bubble and it helps students understand what’s going on in the world,” Reilly said.
Student Council originally approached the Arts & Sciences Council because it desired additional funding for the project, ASC Vice President Madhumathi Reddy said.
“They needed someone to co-sponsor the program with them, and we have funding and we thought it would be a great way to get our name out there while providing a great service for students,” Reddy said.
Student Council President Matt Schrimper said half of the $14,000 funding for the project comes from Council and the other half comes from Arts & Sciences Council.
“I’m really pleased to be able to work with another organization,” Schrimper said, adding that “Arts & Sciences has been tremendous to work with.”
Student Council and ASC started working together on this issue during the summer, Reddy noted. By launching the program this fall, the organizers hope students will become more informed about the upcoming election.
“When we were trying to figure out when to start the program, we thought the election would be a great time to start because people are very involved in the news and in politics,” Reilly said.
Although Council members have expressed excitement about the project, they also recognized that some students are concerned about the possible environmental impacts it might have, including people worried the large number of newspapers on Grounds could be detrimental to the environment by creating excess waste, Reilly said.
Student Council Environmental Sustainability Committee member Connie Migliazzo stated that while she is glad Student Council wants to educate students about national and global news, she feels the councils should perhaps look into providing memberships to online publications for students to avoid creating waste.
“I just don’t think [providing actual papers] is necessary,” Migliazzo said.
Both councils, however, have come to an agreement that they feel will help reduce the harmful risk to the University’s environment.
“We are going to be placing recycling bins next to every newspaper stand to encourage people to recycle their newspapers,” Reddy said.
Reilly added that Council will try to attempt to encourage students to recycle as much as possible.
“We want to take as much action as we can to reduce the waste that is being created,” Reilly said.
Migliazzo, however, noted that even when recycling options are available, students often don’t think to use them.
The project, which launches Monday, will have a trial run from Oct. 6 through Nov. 7, after which both councils will try to gather student feedback about the project.
“After the trial period, funding from Student Council and Arts & Sciences Council will take the program into the spring, at which point we want to reassess the program and decide if we’re going to continue it and if so, what form we intend to continue it in,” Reilly said.

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, which coordinates higher education within the commonwealth, announced Monday that it received a $1.1 million College Access Challenge Grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
SCHEV’S goal for the grant is to create “better access to higher education [for] under-served populations” in Virginia by spreading awareness of financial aid, SCHEV spokesperson Kirsten Nelson said, adding that the grant was available to any state that prepared proposals to facilitate increased access to higher education.
SCHEV will work with “first-generation college students and low-income families” to provide information about college and financial aid to help to “de-mystify college” for them Nelson said, noting that the grant will not be used to provide financial aid.
She said she hopes that the work accomplished using the grant will encourage students to apply to college who would not otherwise do so.
University Financial Aid Advisor Yvonne Hubbard said that while the University already strives to “provide a lot of assistance to the students and their families about receiving financial aid,” the grant will still be beneficial.
“More knowledge earlier is a good thing,” she said.
The grant will support one of SCHEV’s efforts to promote access to college called Super Saturday, a program in which students can meet with a financial aid professional who will help them fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The University, along with Piedmont Virginia Community College, plans to help with the program, Hubbard said.
SCHEV also hopes to use the grant to continue researching what other outreach programs of this kind already exist, Nelson said. The University is taking part in this research, Hubbard said; the University is one of the founding members of the Virginia College Access Network, an agency that works with SCHEV to provide information about available outreach programs.
Monica Osei, SCHEV assistant director for academic affairs and student programs, said SCHEV will also partner with the Virginia Department of Education, Virginia Community College System and Virginia College Savings Plan to create a Web site for college saving programs.
One of SCHEV’s major goals, Nelson said, is to take the perception that college is out of reach and change it for those “whom college education will be a wonderful match and whom may have the resources, but just do not understand them.”
Hubbard said that the outreach program led by this grant will hopefully result in more parents and students feeling confident about the process and completing the financial aid forms.

The University tested a new emergency siren system at six locations across Grounds between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m..
“It was exactly as we had anticipated,” Director of Emergency Preparedness Marge Sidebottom said. “All of the sirens worked, and all of the public address capabilities worked.”
The system is an exterior notification system, which means it is designed “primarily for people who are outside at the time,” Sidebottom explained, noting the system is meant to be used in situations “when we have verified that there is imminent danger.” Such events could include a sudden weather emergency like a tornado, a spill of hazardous material, or a threat of violence, Sidebottom explained.
The system was designed by the vendor, Communication Specialists of Virginia, Inc., to meet University-specific needs.
“We have a very different topography, which requires some additional work and expertise to determine how all the areas on Grounds are covered,” Sidebottom said, noting that the hilly nature and size of Grounds requires that the University use “six different sirens, which cover everything from North Grounds through the [Academical] Village.”
While the Office of Emergency Preparedness is primarily responsible for the implementation of the system, students were also involved in its implementation through the student group Hoos Ready.
“We handle feedback,” Hoos Ready President Colin Hood said. “A lot of people do communicate with us, and we in turn talk to the Office of Emergency Preparedness.”
Hood added that the organization is currently evaluating student, faculty and staff responses to the drill with the hopes of improving the system.
Efforts to improve emergency preparedness systems in general, Hood said, have been influenced significantly by the April 2007 Virginia Tech shootings.
“I think the tragedy set a tone of university emergency preparedness for every university in the country, the world and especially at U.Va.,” Hood said. “It initiated major projects.”
Virginia Tech has had a siren system in place for several years, according to Virginia Tech Police Officer Geof Allen, who said the system was used in April 2007.
Virginia Tech’s siren system differs from the University’s in that Virginia Tech uses a voice-driven system, in which “you can actually speak from a consul in [a] dispatch center,” Allen explained. The University, meanwhile, employs standardized messages approved about a year ago, Sidebottom said.
“All the devices [at the University] have the same messages,” Sidebottom explained, noting these scripted messages can be used during emergencies specific to a particular location on Grounds.

In a move that mirrored action taken at a number of other law schools, Harvard Law School decided last week to abandon its old grading system, eliminating the use of letter grades. In an e-mail to the Law School student body, Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan said the new grading classifications will be Honors, Pass, Low Pass and Fail.
The new system will apply to students entering Harvard Law School in fall 2009 and possibly current students, as well.
Yale and Stanford’s law schools have also made similar transitions in their grading systems; Yale’s new grading system has been in place for a few years, while Stanford’s new scale went into effect this semester.
According to Stanford Law School’s statement about the issue, the previous grading system “conveyed a false sense of precision in describing differences among students, especially to employers.”
In addition to changing the grading system, Stanford Law also is eliminating its “Graduation with Distinction” honors that were based on grades and will instead recognize students for outstanding performances in individual classes. This recognition will be marked on students’ transcript and will allow future employers to compare students’ performance.
At the University of Virginia, Law School Dean Paul Mahoney said officials have no intention of adopting one of the newly developed grading systems and will continue to use letter grades. Mahoney also said he also does not believe others schools will adopt the new system, adding that he is doubtful the new system will be advantageous to students in the lower half of their class.
Mahoney added that he believes Harvard’s decision to transition to a grading system similar to Stanford and Yale’s comes from a sense of competition.
“I think Harvard believes it was in severe competition with Yale and Stanford, and they must have believed they were losing some students for having a different grading system,” Mahoney said.
Yale is in a different position than Harvard and Stanford, Mahoney said, because it has always been the top-ranked law school according to U.S. News & World Report; even students with low grades at Yale Law School will be attractive to employers.
“I’m skeptical it will produce any advantage for Harvard students,” Mahoney said.
Second-year Law student Adam Richards, who completed his first year of law school at the University of Virginia and now attends Stanford Law School, said he thinks law school exams are an arbitrary measure of how well one has mastered a given material. The new grading system, he said, “takes away the pressure of putting too much weight on something that is arbitrary.”
Richards added that the new system may create a disadvantage for those students who want to distinguish themselves from their peers.
At Harvard, Robert Allen, editor-in-chief of Harvard Law Review, said he believes the change will be positive.
“Over three years you’ll still see a distinction based on the number of passes and high passes,” Allen said. “With that in mind, I don’t think employers or judges who are hiring students for clerkships will have trouble differentiating among the most qualified applicants.”

With support from the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative, Electrical and Computer Engineering Profs. Avik Ghosh and Mircea Stan are conducting research that could lead to the development of computer chips that produce less heat. Such a technology would have an effect on laptops, cell phones and other technological devices, Ghosh said.
Ghosh said one of the “driving forces” of the microelectronic industry for the past few decades has been to create smaller computer chips that operate faster and cost less. Because of this drive for better chip performance, the NRI funds universities’ research regarding computer chip capabilities using donations from companies in the industry, the federal government and some state governments, NRI Director Jeffrey Welser said.
At this stage of development, computer chips are very small and have a billion transistors packed into a single chip, but they become very hot when they are in use, Ghosh said. They also become “leaky,” he added, which means that even when a chip is not operating, it still emits heat. These concerns are “the biggest impediment” to making computer chips even smaller, he said.
“In about 20 to 30 years, [computer chips] will become about as hot as the sun,” Ghosh said, adding that this is a major concern for the industry. “These problems are fundamental, and we can’t circumvent them with better designs or materials. We have to figure out ways to do computation in a fundamentally different way.”
Ghosh and Stan are currently looking at several methods of reducing the heat produced by a computer chip, including spintronics, which encodes information in the spin of an electron in order to decrease the amount of heat today’s binary coding uses, Ghosh said. Another area of their research involves investigating whether researchers can block the transfer of heat from the computer chip to the device in which it is contained and allow the device to use less power, he said.
By 2020, Welser said, the NRI would like to be producing an alternative to the current chip, which has seen little change in its basic design in the past 30 years.
The research is currently in its first phase, though, and Ghosh said he does not expect to “create a miracle, but to [provide] specific answers [to basic questions] which will have a bearing on the problem.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same. What’s old is new again. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
The hubbub about this sign ban has, amazingly, kept its pace even a month into school. It hasn’t suffered the usual fate of the college cause, doomed from the get-go to be tossed aside in favor of some newer, more pressing and oh-so-much more dire crisis. While the blank signs protest wasn’t executed flawlessly in the Richmond game, the fact that there are rumblings of a second protest for Saturday’s tilt against Maryland shows just how deeply this is getting under students’ skin.
And I’ve gotta say: I love it.
But you may be shocked — shocked, I say — to learn that this isn’t the first time students of our beloved University have had to deal with pressures from the administration when they try to express themselves at a sporting event. Surely not at this school, the very paragon of unchecked intellectual freedom, never wavering from its devotion to Jeffersonian ideals.
Yet in the late 1970s, that was very nearly the case.
Those were the days when basketball was king at Virginia. The Cavaliers had won what still remains our only ACC men’s basketball championship in spring 1976 on the back of the incomparable Wally Walker. My parents were undergraduates at the time and lived by the mantra, “Football is social, basketball is serious.”
Those were the days when students got their tickets by waiting in line, not online. The terrace outside old U-Hall was packed with tents and lawn chairs as early as two weeks before a Carolina or Maryland game — base camp for basketball junkies. Terry Holland, Jeff Lamp and Marc Iavaroni and the rest of the Cavaliers’ hardwood heroes would swing through, bringing pizza and sandwiches to keep morale high. There was no such thing as a casual fan.
But that fervor led to the student section getting a little rowdier than was comfortable for the powers-that-were. Referees and opposing teams alike were treated to a barrage of something less than the full vocabulary of the student body. The exact limits of obscene speech is an issue to be settled by courts much higher than those made of parquet, but University officials decided they’d had enough and cracked down.
The president at the time, Frank Hereford (more infamously remembered as The Man Who Canceled Easters Weekend), wrote an open letter to the student body in this very publication. His ultimatum was simple, direct, and dire: Clean up your act, or we won’t let you into games anymore.
Student response was quick in coming. Instead of griping, students got creative. The next game was against Maryland and its reviled coach, Lefty Driesell, whose most prominent feature (aside from garish plaid jackets and red slacks) was his glistening bald head.
The Pep Band took matters into its own hands, arming each student entering the game with a laminated sheet. On one side was a caricature of Lefty, his cheeks puffed out and steam spewing from his ears in cartoon anger, a fuel gauge about to burst superimposed on his ample forehead.
On the other side was a list of 50 of the most vile, profane, stomach-turning taunts and jeers the band could concoct. If I were to reprint even one, my editors would show me the door in record time. Suffice it to say, mothers and anatomically impossible acts made several repeat appearances.
How did that solve the problem, you ask? Instead of every student screaming a semi-intelligible string of four-letter words, the leaders of the Pep Band would simply hold up a sign with a number on it — let’s say 42. Everyone would look down at his or her sheet, read what was there, and begin chanting “Forty-two! Forty-two!”
Hereford wrote another letter the next day, commending the student body on its ingenuity that didn’t sacrifice one iota of fandom.
So what’s the moral here? Don’t get mad, get creative. And more importantly, get organized. This is an era of instantaneous information. One clever computer geek can access the grades for an entire program with the click of a button. Facebook pictures and profiles provide more than enough fodder for getting under visitors’ skin. We can come up with something better than “Greivis has a big nose,” or “J.J. sucks” (though both are true).
As hard as it may be to stand behind the Cavaliers right now, that’s exactly what has to happen if this sign ban will ever be repealed. Show them that what they’re stifling is, for the most part, beneficial. Show them that we can actually pay attention at a game and make our voices heard at that crucial moment.
Show them we’ve still got what it takes.

Virginia men’s tennis had a strong showing at the U.Va. Ranked Plus One Invitational this past weekend, winning one singles and one doubles flight.
Sophomore Sanam Singh continued to remain dominant for Virginia, capturing the title in the A-2 singles flight. He defeated senior Enrique Olivares of East Tennessee State, who is ranked No. 31 nationally in a close but decisive match (7-6, 6-4).
“Singh is playing at an extremely high level,” head coach Brian Boland said. “His ability to play an all-court game has come a long way over the last couple of months.”
Sophomore Michael Shabaz also played in the final for the A-1 flight, losing to No. 39 Duke sophomore Reid Carleton. Shabaz was able to push the match to three sets with a final scoring of 7-6, 4-6, 6-2. Even though he lost in the singles championships, he had a very impressive win in the quarterfinal match by defeating No. 10 ranked sophomore John-Patrick Smith of Tennessee. Smith was runner-up in the NCAA singles championships last year, losing to Virginia graduate Somdev Devvarman.
“Smith is one of the best players in the country,” Shabaz said. “I have been playing a lot of tennis and working on my game, and it paid off. It was a close match and it could have gone either way, but I was able to come out on top.”
Though Shabaz was upset in the singles, he bounced back to take the A-3 doubles flight final with senior partner Dominic Inglot. The pair ended with a top performance, defeating Smith and Tennessee junior Davey Sandgren in an 8-5 final.
“Michael Shabaz had a great weekend,” Boland said. “He deserves all of the success because he has put so much time in over the last several months getting himself into shape and he still has room to improve as he will continue to get better each day.”
Also having a notable performance for Virginia were freshman Drew Courtney and junior Houston Barrick. In the third-place match for the A-1 singles flight, Simon Childs of Louisville defeated Courtney 6-3, 7-6. Courtney made a great effort to get to the third-place match, though, as he had to first beat a string of competitive players. In an earlier match against No. 67 Nebraska junior David Bendheim, Courtney made a comeback after dropping the first set but winning the next two in a final match score of 3-6, 6-2, 6-3.
“Our first-year [students] are doing so well,” Boland said. “Drew Courtney beat several ranked players this weekend, showing what a tremendous amount of improvement they have made in such a short time.”
Barrick had a stellar performance in his singles match, defeating No. 55 Tennessee sophomore Boris Conkic 2-6, 7-6, (10-7). The match went on to a tiebreaker ending with Barrick coming out on top.
“Barrick is playing his best tennis yet since he arrived at Virginia,” Boland said. “His development as a player is incredible and he has made huge strides over the last several months. His game is coming together and is growing into what we knew he was capable of.”
Though this was only the second tournament of the season for Virginia, but the players are already showing a strong level of play.
“They deserve the success thus far because they have all worked so hard,” Boland said. “I am so pleased at where we’re at already for this season.”

In 1923, Babe Ruth hit the first home run in the newly opened Yankee Stadium. He famously wondered afterwards who would hit the last one out of the stadium (turns out it was José Molina, the Yankees’ current backup catcher).
But Ruth said something else in 1923 about Yankee Stadium, too. “Some ballpark,” he commented, in what we now know to be the understatement of the century.
Sure, in 1923, it might have been “some ballpark,” but 85 years later, it’s a lot more than just a baseball diamond. Let me enumerate the ways that the home of the Bronx Bombers is more than just the grass and dirt and fences and stands it’s made of.
Yankee Stadium is a museum. A walk through its fabled Monument Park, a section of the park with plaques and statues honoring some of the greatest baseball players of all time, is more educational than a day watching the Discovery Channel and more inspiring than a Dale Carnegie book. With their 26 World Series titles, the Yankees have seen some of the most legendary athletes ever to play the great American pastime.
Yankee Stadium is a cathedral. Sports are a secondary form of religion in this country, full of rituals and superstition and spiritual leaders. The stadiums and arenas are the churches, and there is no greater place to play sports than on the corner of East 161st Street and River Avenue. Like St. Patrick’s Cathedral less than seven miles away, Yankee Stadium is a beautiful piece of architecture and a solemn place of meditation for the residents of the largest city in the United States. The stadium has even seen its share of real religion take place — three popes have said Mass on the grounds.
But Yankee Stadium is also a battleground. You think that when the Brooklyn Dodgers toppled the Yanks in the 1955 World Series that it was just fun and games? Blood, tears and sweat have been shed out there, all in the name of victory. In all, 16 hard-fought World Series have ended at the stadium, and that’s just baseball. From 1936, when Max Schmeling beat down Joe Louis, to 1962 when Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers beat the New York Giants for the NFL Championship, and beyond, the stadium has seen plenty of war.
Yankee Stadium is a place of mourning. After thousands lost their lives in the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, and New York lost one of its great symbols in the World Trade Center, for some, every other great New York symbol became a memorial and reminder of the tragedy. Every sporting event became a way to purge the pain. The Yankees in their stadium were both.
That memorial is also a home to thousands across the nation and world. Just ask second-year College student Anthony Conty, the self-proclaimed biggest Yankees fan at the University. He’s seen two games from the stands of Yankee Stadium, both of them victories for the Bombers, but the stadium might as well be his second home since he watches every Yankees game on TV.
“It’s not like any other stadium,” Conty said. “I mean, Babe Ruth used to play there. Babe Ruth! He’s the icon of baseball.”
Conty said his favorite thing about Yankee Stadium is how many great players have accomplished legendary feats there, from Lou Gehrig, whose “Luckiest Man” retirement speech is arguably the defining moment of Yankee Stadium, to Aaron Boone. Aaron Who? Just the guy whose 11th inning walk-off homer in the seventh game of the 2003 American League Championship Series is Conty’s favorite Yankees moment of his lifetime. He even remembers what he was doing as he watched it: helping his family replace flooring.
“We were all sitting on the new hardwood floors watching the one TV we had in there … It was pretty sweet,” he recalled.
Yankee Stadium is a witness to revolution. In 1923, sports were small talk. Since then, they’ve transformed from a niche to a bustling industry and microcosm of humanity. Yankee Stadium has seen the best and worst of the changes firsthand. Babe Ruth was the first modern athlete, a personality and an icon. Knute Rockne, who gave his “win one for the Gipper” speech at Yankee Stadium in a match, was among the first to romanticize and sentimentalize the sport of football. In 1923, sports were little more than leisure. Now it’s a show business.
Yankee Stadium is a magnet for heroes. The Yankees have had so many great leaders and hard-working contributors it’s almost comedic how many numbers have been retired. The only single digit uniforms available are Nos. 2 and 6, but they won’t be around for long. Former Yankees manager Joe Torre wore 6, and his bust and number will probably be added to Memorial Walk before long. No. 2 is currently worn by Derek Jeter, a future first-ballot Hall of Famer and stone-cold lock for having his jersey retired by the boys in pinstripes.
Yankee Stadium is a mainstay in the otherwise tumultuous world of sports. Its history and simplicity remind us sports at its best is about so much more than flashiness and nine-digit salaries. It’s about people of all types coming together on a regular basis from the scary New York landscape surrounding the stadium to enjoy an afternoon of guiltless, red-blooded competition between some of the greatest athletes in the world. When Yankee Stadium crumbles this November and the New Yankee Stadium across the street opens its doors, A small piece of the already scarred soul of baseball will die. What the Yankees may gain in bigger attendance and increased ads revenue, they will lose in the muted emptiness of the giant hunk of grass, steel and concrete trying to replace the greatest stadium in the history of American sports.
After all, inspectors said Yankee Stadium could maintain structural integrity for several more decades. Maybe the resources and effort put into it would have been better placed somewhere else, rather than into trying improve upon perfection. Do you think New York’s public education system, which graduates less than 40 percent of its Hispanic and black males from high school, could have used that $400 million in tax money spent to built New Yankee Stadium?
Ultimately, though, Yankee Stadium is a piece of history. Even after it’s demolished this November, nothing can take away the thousands of contributions the facility and its users have made to the world of sports. Some ballpark, indeed.

Though athletes are directly responsible for a team’s success, it takes much more to ensure that a team reaches its highest potential. The coaching staff is an important asset to any successful team, working with the team members and helping them realize their potential. While most of the credit goes to the head coach, the assistant coaches play just as important a role in preparing a team for a game.
First-year assistant coach Ted Wade brings years of volleyball experience to the Cavaliers. Having been an University of Texas assistant coach and working with the U.S. Youth and Junior National Teams, he has been a part of several successful programs and knows what it takes to win.
“We finished fifth both years, made the NCAA Tournament, missing the Final Four,” Wade said of his experience at the University of Texas. “It was really good prep to see what college volleyball is about, what it takes to win and how much commitment and time and effort it takes, which I think is one of the reasons [Head Coach] Lee [Maes] likes to have me here, so that experience can carry over to his team.”
Working with the 2006 U.S. Women’s Junior National Team, Wade had the opportunity to coach some of the finest players in the world.
“We finished fourth in the world,” Wade said. “The kids are super good, the best kids in the U.S. in their age group.”
With the Cavaliers, Wade works primarily with the middle blockers and calls blocking schemes with the defense during plays. Having been with the team for several months, he said the biggest challenge is stamina.    
“Our challenge is to be able to pull out our best game for longer periods of time,” Wade said. “It’s all in there. It’s there for 5 minutes, sometimes 10, 15 minutes. We got to get it to two and a half hours. But it’s in there.”
Coaches must work together to make sure everyone is on the same page and focused on the common goal of winning. Maes has high regard for his assistants and knows they are critical to the team’s success.
“Ted is our defensive coordinator,” Maes said. “He oversees our scouting, so he does a really nice job in terms of evaluating what an opponent does and it helps. As a staff we get together and we make our game plan based on the work he does in preparation.”
The Cavaliers have high regard for Wade’s work. Junior defensive specialist Brittani Rendina said Wade has made a significant impact on the team.
“He’s really involved in every play,” Rendina said, “So we always look to him for feedback. We’re really glad to have him; he’s a big contribution.”
Senior middle Shannon Davis, who was a part of the Austin Juniors Volleyball Club when Wade worked there, said she appreciates what he does for the team.
“He brings so much knowledge to the game,” Davis said. “He’s played and coached forever. I’ve known him for such a long time. He knows the position well, he knows the game well, and he really just adds with our other two coaches to make a great threesome.”
Team chemistry, whether it is among players or coaches, is critical for a team to do well. Wade fits in well with the Cavaliers, earning the respect of players and coaches alike. The Cavaliers hope to build upon this team chemistry to have a successful season.

The Friday, Sept. 26 Sports article “Squad Hosts Pair of Strong ACC Schools,” incorrectly stated that junior defensive specialist Brittani Rendina is now a scholarship player. Rendina is, in fact, a walk-on addition to the team.
The Cavalier Daily regrets the error.