To submit a Letter to the Editor, use our online form.

Mailing Address:
The Cavalier Daily
University of Virginia
PO Box 400703
Charlottesville, VA
22904-4703

Main Office: (434) 924-1083
Fax: (434) 924-7290
Editor-in-Chief: (434) 924-1082 – editor@cavalierdaily.com
Executive Editor: (434) 924-1090 – ee@cavalierdaily.com
Managing Editor: (434) 924-1095 – meditor@cavalierdaily.com
Chief Financial Officer: (434) 924-1084 – cfo@cavalierdaily.com
Operations Manager: (434) 924-6973 – om@cavalierdaily.com
News: (434) 924-1083 – news@cavalierdaily.com
Sports: (434) 924-6982 – sports@cavalierdaily.com
Opinion: (434) 924-6982 – opinion@cavalierdaily.com
Life: (434) 924-1092 – life@cavalierdaily.com
Photo: (434) 924-6989 – photo@cavalierdaily.com
Production: (434) 924-3181 – prod@cavalierdaily.com
Advertising: (434) 924-1085 – ads@cavalierdaily.com
Focus: focus@cavalierdaily.com
Health & Sexuality: health@cavalierdaily.com
tableau (Arts & Entertainment): tableau@cavalierdaily.com
Graphics: graphics@cavalierdaily.com
Online: online@cavalierdaily.com
Ombudsman: ombud@cavalierdaily.com

Not sure who to contact?
If you are unsure to whom you should direct your call or e-mail, please use the following information. If any of the individuals listed below is unable to provide assistance, please contact the editor-in-chief.

I would like to place an advertisement or have had trouble processing my classified ad through the online system.
Contact the Advertising Department at (434) 924-1085 or at ads@cavalierdaily.com

I would like to submit a letter to the editor.
You can submit a letter to the editor from this page of our website. If you have any questions while following this procedure, you may contact the opinion editors at opinion@cavalierdaily.com.

I would like The Cavalier Daily to cover my organization’s event.
E-mail life@cavalierdaily.com and tableau@cavalierdaily.com in order to have your event considered for inclusion in either section’s weekly calendar of events or for coverage in the form of an article.

I would like to join the staff of The Cavalier Daily.
Look at our Join the CD page on our website for instructions.

I would like to write a guest column for The Cavalier Daily.
Contact the opinion editors at opinion@cavalierdaily.com.

I have a news tip to share with The Cavalier Daily.
Contact the news editors at news@cavalierdaily.com, or contact the editor-in-chief at editor@cavalierdaily.com if you would like to preserve your anonymity.

I have had technological difficulties with The Cavalier Daily’s Web site.
Contact our webmaster at webmaster@cavalierdaily.com.

I would like to speak to someone about The Cavalier Daily’s distribution.
Contact our operations manager at (434) 924-6973 or om@cavalierdaily.com.

I would have a question or concern about the practices of The Cavalier Daily.
Contact our ombudsman at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.

I would like to contact the Managing Board member who oversees Opinion.
Contact our executive editor at (434) 924-1090 or ee@cavalierdaily.com.

I would like to contact the Managing Board member who oversees the Production, Graphics or Photo department.
Contact our operations manager at (434) 924-6973 or om@cavalierdaily.com.

I would like to contact the Managing Board member who oversees News, Sports, Life, Nation & World, Arts & Entertainment, Health & Sex, Focus or Gameday.
Contact our managing editor at (434) 924-1095 or meditor@cavalierdaily.com.

I would like to contact the Managing Board member who oversees the Advertising and Business staffs.
Contact our chief financial officer at (434) 924-1084 or cfo@cavalierdaily.com.

I am a member of the media and would like to interview someone at The Cavalier Daily.
All interview requests are handled by the editor-in-chief, who can be reached at (434) 924-1082 or editor@cavalierdaily.com.

Ways to Contribute
Cavalier Daily readers are always welcome to share their opinions on our content or University issues. This can be done either through submitting a letter to the editor or a guest column. All submissions are read by the Executive Editor, who decides what will be published in The Cavalier Daily. The Cavalier Daily publishes only exclusive content and will not reprint letters or columns printed in other publications.

Letters to the Editor
Letters to the editor can be sent through our online form. Letters to the editor must be less than 300 words and will be edited for style and content. Letters concerning The Cavalier Daily’s content and coverage or University issues will be the most likely to be published. If you desire to contact a specific section with a comment or complaint, please see the General Directory.

Guest Columns
Columns that adhere to our guest column guidlines and that concern University topics are the ones most likely to be published in The Cavalier Daily. Guest column submissions should be 700 to 900 words and sent to opinion@cavalierdaily.com. Following a submission, the Executive Editor will be in contact within three business days concerning whether the column will be published. If desired for publication, guest columns will be edited for style and content and the edited version will be provided for the author’s approval.

If you’re a local advertiser, please download our local media kit or our local rate card.
If you’re a national advertiser, please download our national media kit or our national rate card.
If you’re a non-profit, please download our non-profit media kit or our non-profit rate card.

For our production dates, please download our production calendar.

To place a classified ad online or in our print edition, use our online classified ad system.

Overview
Serving the University of Virginia since 1890, The Cavalier Daily remains students’ primary source of local, state and national news. Every day The Cavalier Daily offers solid reporting and standout editorials in the interests of the University community. But we also offer diverse content that appeals to broad audiences. Our Life features, movie and music reviews, and coverage of both men’s and women’s sports are regarded by professional associations as among the best in Virginia.

The Cavalier Daily is delivered five days a week during the school year to over 80 sites on Grounds and throughout Charlottesville and Albemarle County. According to independent surveys, every day over 80 percent of U.Va.’s student body – pick up a free copy of our paper.

The Cavalier Daily prides itself on being accessible to the community. The advertising department is no exception. Our staff is personable and attentive to detail. Everyone at the paper strives to be flexible to the customer’s needs. If your business, organization or charity requires the University’s attention, The Cavalier Daily remains the easiest and most thorough medium for delivering your message. We look forward to working with you.

Contact Us
Advertising Office – ads@cavalierdaily.com, 434-924-1085
Advertising Manager – Kaley Bender, ads@cavalierdaily.com, 434-924-1085
Chief Financial Officer – Allie Vandivier, cfo@cavalierdaily.com, 434-924-1084

The 123rd Staff of The Cavalier Daily

Managing Board
Editor-in-Chief: Matt Cameron
Executive Editor: Aaron Eisen
Managing Editor: Kaz Komolafe
Chief Financial Officer: Anna Xie
Operations Manager: Greg Lewis

Assistant Managing Editors: Charlie Tyson, Caroline Houck

News
Editors: Michelle Davis, Krista Pedersen
Senior Associate Editor: Valerie Clemens

Opinion
Editors: George Wang, Katherine Ripley
Senior Associate Editor: Alex Yahanda

Sports
Editors: Ashley Robertson, Ian Rappaport
Senior Associate Editor: Fritz Metzinger, Daniel Weltz

Life
Editors: Abigail Sigler, Caroline Massie

tableau (Arts & Entertainment)
Editors: Caroline Gecker, Conor Sheehey

Health & Science
Editor: Fiza Hashmi

Photography
Editors: Thomas Bynum, Will Brumas

Graphics
Editors: Peter Simonsen, Stephen Rowe

Production
Editors: Rebecca Lim, Sylvia Oe, Meghan Luff

Advertising Manager: Sean Buckhorn

For many University students, homelessness may bring to mind images of bums on the Corner, but fourth-year College student Garrett Trent has a different perspective. Trent has played soccer, attended festivals, created art and worked alongside the homeless for years. Today Trent volunteers with the HOPE Community Center to find innovative ways for University community members to interact with Charlottesville’s homeless community.
This summer, Trent worked with fourth-year Nursing student Amy Sikes and third-year College student Trigg Brown to organize HOPE’s “Meet Your Neighbor” Program, a series of community festivals held in local parks. With themes ranging from dance to healthy living to photography, the series not only offered the homeless an opportunity to engage in different activities but it also brought several community members together. This past weekend, “Meet Your Neighbor” concluded its summer program with its final event, the “End of Summer Celebration and Symposium,” at the Charlottesville Pavilion on the Downtown Mall.
For Trent, creating meaningful relationships between people of different backgrounds is his ultimate goal.
“In connecting my friends and fellow students with helping the homeless I see over and over again what I already had discovered: we don’t just help the homeless, they help us,” Trent said. “We need each other.”
More than 50 University students learned just how rewarding it is to help the homeless when they played alongside the Street Soccer CVL team founded last year by Brown. Team members must have been homeless at one point in their lives to participate. The team is one of 16 in the nation and competed in the U.S. Street Soccer Cup in Washington D.C. this summer, finishing 5-3. Although no one from the Charlottesville team will participate, a Homeless World Cup will be held in Milan this month.
Whether on the field or at the HOPE Center itself, there are many different ways for students to help out. Sikes has found a number of ways to become involved, ranging from after-school tutoring to celebrating “Christmas in July” with families in need.
Sikes also volunteered for “Factory Fridays,” in which she helped participants create and sell ornaments and other crafts. Half of the profit went to the individual craftsmen and the other half to the HOPE Center. Sikes said her experiences “help the homeless feel human,” adding that she is eager for other students to join in this effort.
“Whatever you’re passionate about, we find a way to plug you in,” she said.
Sikes was referring to more than helping the city’s homeless — HOPE also offers students a way to become engaged in public life in Charlottesville. A group of 15 first-year students found a way to get involved at the final “Meet Your Neighbor” festival this past weekend on the Downtown Mall. As part of the University’s Project SERVE, the students walked from the steps of the Rotunda to the Pavilion, picking up trash along the way.
“This is a fun activity and a good way to meet new people,” first-year participant Katie Brown said.
Activities such as these help underscore that “Meet Your Neighbor” is not only about providing a helping hand to the homeless, but about helping community members interact as well.
“We believe that everyone is everyone’s neighbor,” Trent said. After one look at the booths of participants at the event one can’t help but agree. Groups such as Food Not Bombs, the “Shades of Blue” Jazz Ensemble from Albemarle High School, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Charlottesville Health Access and a variety of chefs, environmentalists and families collaborate to put on the festivals.
One particular group from last weekend’s event was the “Jersey Boys,” a hip-hop/break dance team that awed the crowd with routines to the Black Eyed Peas’ “Boom Boom Pow,” and other popular numbers. HOPE Community Center Director Josh Bare said these community events “give people the stage to show off their talent.”
Two members of the “Jersey Boys,” Tahj “Showoff” Brookins and younger brother Shadee “Shine,” have been dancing since they were little and although they recently moved to the area, the brothers have joined several other dancers to perform at local events to become a part of the Charlottesville community.
In the midst of the melting pot of community members and organizations at “Meet Your Neighbor,” it is almost hard to tell who is homeless and who is not. The idea that homelessness is simply the man on the Corner asking for your change is lost here. What Trent and others hope is that University students will take the time to become acquainted with those around them, including the homeless they might not see everyday.
“When people become passionate about those in need around them and develop a vision for how they specifically can give back, the opportunities are endless and hope can thrive,” he said.

My family has had a backyard garden since I was in high school. Each summer, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and peppers cover our kitchen counter tops; and each August, my family tries to send me back to school with bags stuffed full of fresh vegetables. I know you might be thinking, ‘Great! Less money to spend at Harris Teeter.’ But when you live in an apartment with a kitchen so tiny it barely holds enough food for the six girls living there, it’s kind of hard to find the space, much less the time, to store and cook the 15 squash that your parents gave you.
When I counted 26 tomatoes sitting on our counter at home, I decided to do something quickly before my kitchen this year became the new community produce storage unit. After religiously reading online discussions in the Food section of the Washington Post this summer, I decided to try something new: gazpacho.
Now, I’m no chef extraordinaire. Actually, that’s an exaggeration: I can hardly cook. Pasta and chicken are basically all I eat at school. But this semester I decided to make a New (School) Year’s resolution to learn how to cook for real.
Gazpacho — pronounced just as it looks, which I learned the hard way — is a simple, tomato-based Spanish soup. It didn’t appear too hard to make, and it’s served cold, so it seemed like a refreshing twist for summer.
A friend surveyed the tomatoes sprawled across the table and picked five of the smallest ones to start dicing. Meanwhile, I began chopping everything else. I eyed the garlic, slightly unsure how to approach it, considering that the only time I’ve ever seen real garlic — as opposed to garlic powder — was back in the day when Buffy needed it to slay vampires.
The recipe may or may not have called for 10 tomatoes, and we may or may not have used only six. I accidentally used too much onion, and the recipe didn’t call for cucumbers, but we put them in anyway. Also, I have no idea what the difference between sherry and regular vinegar is, so I just didn’t tell my friend — it was only two tablespoons anyway, right? (Note: substituting ingredients does NOT work in baking. The sunken blue-green blueberry muffins I made in eighth grade Home Economics can attest to the fact that baking soda is not an appropriate substitute for baking powder.)
Satisfied with the ingredients in the blender, I pushed “Puree.” There was a loud whirring noise and a rush of air coming out from under the blender, but our plethora of veggies didn’t move. We tried again. Nothing. Thankfully, we found a new blender, shoveled everything into it and voilà — back in action!
The red soup looked exactly like it was supposed to once it finished blending, until it started leaking everywhere. Turns out the bottom had been unscrewed when I was taking the blender off, so my friend and I ended up just taking off the bottom and letting the soup dump into the bowl.
I called everyone for dinner and served the soup with garlic bread. My mom, after thanking me for making the meal, took the first bite.
“It’s … good? Mmm?” she said, glancing at my friend.
She stifled a laugh. She thought it was disgusting — a natural-born, cold soup hater. So much for trying new things. My dad, however, the self-proclaimed gazpacho lover, couldn’t get enough, so I guess we did something right. As for my friend and I, we thought it was okay — satisfying because we made it and it didn’t taste disgusting, more or less.
In the end, it was worth it — we got to eat something new, used enough tomatoes to keep most of them from rotting and had quite the cooking adventure. At less than a dollar per person (we only had to buy the onion and garlic), I’d say it was money well spent, though my mother might disagree.

Leslie’s column runs biweekly Fridays. She can be reached at l.keena@cavalierdaily.com.

I went tubing down the James River this past weekend with my two roommates. Lying in an inner tube as it floats down the somewhat brackish James, while mildly appealing in its own right, is also on the list of 110 Things To Do Before You Graduate — and my roommates and I are on a mission to check off every single thing on that list by the end of this, our fourth and final year at the University.
Although I originally balked at the $20 charged by the rafting company to rent us a tube and drive us to the launching spot, I remembered that the company’s Web site promised a two- to four-hour float down the river that would “relax us completely.” The chance for total relaxation was, ultimately, too tempting to pass up, and we grudgingly agreed to give up a bit more of our rapidly dwindling summer cash.
Although we had been promised complete relaxation, the day’s journey turned out to be anything but relaxing. First, the rain — when we woke up to a steady drizzle Saturday morning, we briefly considered canceling our river adventure but decided to press on with our plans. We’d already paid up front to reserve our spaces and the reservation fee was non-refundable.
A bit more money was spent filling up the car with enough gas to get us to Scottsville, and 30 wet minutes later, we arrived.
Despite ominous-looking clouds, we signed the waivers releasing the rafting company from any responsibility should we be foolish enough to drown or otherwise maim, injure or kill ourselves while on the river. We piled into an old, rickety yellow school bus that eventually dropped us off at the muddy banks of the James River with our large, inflatable tubes.
The river’s temperature was about 81 degrees, so we were pleasantly surprised to find — as we awkwardly clambered into our tubes — that we wouldn’t be submerged in frigid water for the whole trip. The drizzling rain also let up as we started our float, giving my roommates and I hope that this would be a delightful little adventure after all. Five minutes into the trip, however, we realized this hope was in vain.
One of my roommates, it turned out, is extremely afraid of aquatic life. No sooner had our tubes begun to move than she begun to wonder, loudly, about the fish and other creatures that might be swimming beneath us. “Did you watch Shark Week?” she demanded of my other roommate and me. “You know that a shark got trapped in a river somewhere in Rhode Island and killed two children, right?”
Despite our assurances that there were absolutely no sharks in the 3 feet of water flowing through the James, my roommate remained tense and jumpy the entire time. Each fish that we saw jump or tentacled plant that we floated over was enough to set her screaming. So much for the relaxing sounds of nature…
Roommate fears, however, were not the only thing that sunk the relaxation ship. The lowness of the river, while strengthening my argument against sharks in the vicinity, also meant that the water moved very slowly. The 4-mile trip did indeed take nearly four hours. Four hours floating down a river is just too long. After about two hours, our stomachs began to growl audibly. Not having thought the entire plan through, and having left our apartment at 9 a.m., no one had packed any sort of lunch. And, not being the types to drink at 10 a.m., neither did we have the distraction of alcohol that many other tubers seemed to be enjoying.
Additionally, the sun had come out. At first delighted with the warm rays upon our skin, after a few hours we quickly realized that the failure to put on sunscreen was going to result in some rather severe consequences. As I watched my skin turn from white to pink to red before my eyes, I attempted to drape my soaking wet T-shirt over the exposed areas that seemed to be the most burnt. Unfortunately, one small T-shirt cannot protect one’s entire stomach, arms, neck, legs and face, and I was reduced to moving the shirt frequently to new, burning spots in a failed attempt to beat the sun’s rays.
Three hours into the allegedly blissful trip, I’d had enough. I began paddling furiously with my arms towards the tiny speck on the horizon where the landing point was located — a vigorous upper-arm workout from which I have yet to recover.
Eventually, we made it out of the river and into the car. The drive back to Charlottesville found my roommates and I stinking of dirty river water, sunburned to crisps, exhausted from paddling the last quarter-mile, completely famished and unable to stop laughing. We giggled as we pulled weeds out of our bathing suits, laughed as we recalled our roommate’s sincere belief in the possibility of a shark attack and eventually ended up in hysterics when the palest of us discovered that her formerly white skin was now neon pink. The float down the James River may not have been the relaxing morning we’d expected, but it was certainly not one that we were going to forget.
Ultimately, isn’t that what the List of 110 Things To Do — and our time at the University — is all about? Not necessarily experiencing what you had originally expected, but creating memories with good friends that are going to last after our time here has ended? Fourth year, for my roommates and me, is going to be about experiencing everything Charlottesville has to offer together, regardless of where those experiences lead.
Still, I hope they don’t lead us back to CVS, frantically searching the aisles for aloe vera to slather on our sunburns.
Keely is co-editor of the Life section. She can be reached at k.latcham@cavalierdaily.com.

The University Judiciary Committee entered the world of new media Aug. 26, launching its own Youtube channel to better educate students about the organization’s frequently misunderstood system.
The channel is currently home to five videos that range in topics from “Filing a Complaint” to “Judge Information.” Each video acts as an instructional video, in which either University students or UJC members learn the steps necessary to navigate through a certain area of UJC’s Web site, co-Senior Data Manager Gavin Reddick said. Reddick narrates the five videos, providing a verbal, as well as visual, lesson.
While UJC originally created the videos last year and posted them on its Web site to cover different parts of its online system, Reddick said UJC decided to switch to Youtube after the popular Web site started displaying high definition videos.
Many of the videos currently found on the channel also act as training materials for support officers and judges, Reddick said.
“It can help guide members trying to use our online system,” UJC Chair Michael Chapman said.
Co-Senior Data Manger Yiding Li, who also helped put the videos online, said the channel will help the committee make fewer mistakes and decrease the amount of training time for committee members.
Aside from educating committee members, though, Chapman said the real intention of the videos is to reach out to the University community.
“It’s a really innovative idea that I don’t think other organizations have pursued yet,” Chapman said. “It helps the University as a whole understand what we do and what our processes are.”
For students unfamiliar with the system, the short two- to three-minute videos may provide a much clearer and user-friendly system than navigating through a Web site.
“I think that would be way better than reading through tons and tons of pages,” fourth-year Engineering student Archie Raval said.
Li added that the Youtube channel also acts as a way to increase transparency within UJC, so that students not only know how to accomplish tasks, such as filing a complaint on the UJC Web site, but also can view the steps and actions taken by UJC members.
“Right now, we view the channel as a portal of the UJC, and this can shed more light on how the committee works,” Li said. “Currently, there are some complaints that UJC is not as transparent as it should be and with this students can see how it works.”
Some students, however, would still like to see more videos added to the channel that are meant specifically for University students not part of UJC.
“I would like to see videos that are more personal or exciting to watch,” fourth-year College student Jason Duke said.
As of now, though, the channel remains in its beginning stages. Committee members hope to add new videos throughout the semester, and Reddick has already said he plans to upload dorm talk videos and other presentations as they become available.
“We’re looking for new ideas as to what to put on there,” Chapman said, “It’s something we’re actively working on.”
Students can find the channel, “TheUJC,” on www.youtube.com.

Researchers at the University’s Beirne B. Carter Center for Immunology Research recently received an $8.2 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to study how the body removes diseases infecting the immune system from the body.
Microbiology and Pathology Prof. Thomas Braciale and Microbiology Professor Young Hahn will study Interleukin-10, or IL-10, a regulatory chemical produced by the immune system as part of the human body’s response to diseases. Interleukin-10 also is responsible for stopping the body’s immune response from causing injury to itself.
Braciale will be studying IL-10’s effects on the immune system’s response to the flu, while Hahn is studying IL-10’s effect on Hepatitis C in mice.
“The immune system is really a two-edged sword,” Braciale said. “On the one hand it’s producing molecules that can kill the virus-infected cells, but at the same time those molecules have the capacity to injure normal cells if they’re not controlled.”
The immune system produces inflammatory chemicals to kill virus-infected cells and stop the infection from spreading, Braciale said. IL-10 is an anti-inflammatory chemical that stops the production of these virus-killing — but potentially harmful — chemicals.
As such, the balance of the body’s distribution of IL-10 is important in fighting off diseases like influenza. Research conducted at the University may even help scientists counter more potent strains of the virus, including H1N1 swine flu.
While swine flu behaves much like the regular seasonal flu, Braciale said the coat protein receptors on the swine flu H1N1 virus are different enough from the regular flu virus that more people are susceptible to contracting swine flu. As a result, swine flu is more likely to cause serious cases simply because it is more likely to infect people to begin with. Because of this higher potential for serious cases, Braciale hopes to find out what causes some people to contract more serious illnesses as a result of the flu.
Braciale has hypothesized that the one percent of people who suffer more serious illnesses as a result of influenza become sicker because their bodies do not produce enough IL-10. As a result, their immune systems may end up causing too much damage to their bodies, which can result in pneumonia and other flu-related diseases, Braciale said.
Braciale will test his hypothesis by studying patients who have contracted the flu.
“One of the big challenges is to try to get information from people … who go to Student Health and are diagnosed with influenza but it’s not severe,” Braciale said.
Such individuals probably have adequate levels of IL-10, Braciale said, and his research team would like to sample them, but it may be difficult to take samples from people who are more or less healthy and have little incentive to have their lungs probed. People with more severe cases, however, will already have minor operations on their lungs, so it should generally be easier to sample them, Braciale said.
While Braciale’s project hypothesizes that having too little IL-10 may make the immune system overly aggressive in its response to influenza, Hahn’s research hypothesizes that having too much IL-10 makes it more difficult for the immune system to combat hepatitis C.
To test her hypothesis, Hahn will study viral antigens analogous to hepatitis C in mice. Her research team will administer IL-10 to the infected mice to see whether their immune systems are inhibited by the chemical, Hahn said.
“The most [challenging aspect] will be [seeing] what we learn from the mouse [and deciding] whether it is really happening in humans,” Hahn said.

Several of the University’s first black students in the 1950s and 1960s returned to Grounds Friday to speak about their past University experiences, the challenges they faced and the institutional changes they have seen since departing Charlottesville.
“The Early Days Celebration” began with a discussion panel, titled “Looking Back, Moving Forward,” which was held Friday.
“Today we honor those who made it, who could get in, and who went on to do great things with their lives,” said Maurice Apprey, dean of the Office of African-American Affairs, in his opening statement.
Panelists included 1969 graduate David Temple, who was the first black student to integrate the fraternity system; John Merchant, the first black student to graduate from the Law school in 1958; and Dr. Vivian Pinn of the class of 1967, the first black woman to graduate from the medical school.
The discussion featured accounts of racism that students had experienced during their time here. Linwood Jacobs, who earned his master’s degree in education from the University in 1966, noted that a professor once told him in 1965 that he was innately inferior and that he could not receive anything more than the bare passing grade.
Pinn recalled that a fellow student had told her she would never graduate not only because she was black but because women had smaller brains, and so she was wasting a space that could have been taken by a man.
Temple said before deciding to join an integrated fraternity, he chose to meet with then-Univeristy Dean B.F.D. Runk.
“Runk told me no [N word] would enter the frat system, and he would do his best to make sure it didn’t happen,” Temple said.
Despite the challenging times, panelists had different reasons for attending the University at a time when racism was so prevalent.
Temple, who was extensively involved in the Civil Rights Movement, said attending the University provided another way to break down social barriers.
Merchant, on the other hand, said he was hesitant to come to the University.
“At first I had no interest in coming here, and I certainly didn’t want to pioneer a damn thing,” he said.
Although each attended the University for different reasons, the panelists agreed about how far the University has come since the 1950s and about how there is still work to be done.
“We have come a great distance since those early days,” moderator and English Prof. Deborah McDowell said. “We all know and tout the statistics that this university has the highest matriculation rate for African-American students among all public universities, but this should not give cause for complacency.”
Jacobs said he witnessed changes even during his time at the University, and despite all his difficult experiences, was offered a position when he earned his doctorate in education in 1973.
H. Timothy Lovelace, graduate Arts and Sciences student and one of the panelists Friday, applauded the work done by early black pioneers, noting that their work paved the way for future generations, not only for black students but for other minority students as well.
McDowell said the panel accomplished two goals.
“It indicated to all students the fortitude it takes to achieve one’s objectives, and that these objectives can be achieved even under straightening circumstances,” she said. “It also provided the audience with a concrete sense of the experiences of the African-American alumni at a moment of great social turmoil.”
The Early Days Celebration continued with an honorary dinner Friday evening at Carr’s Hill, and the alumni also attended the football game Saturday in President John T. Casteen, III’s private box.

The University Law School’s entering class of 2012 is its most diverse class ever.
In Jason Trujillo’s first year as the Law School’s senior assistant dean for admissions in financial aid, the Law School managed to improve both its academic profile and its diversity simultaneously by actively recruiting students who were offered admission to the University.
“It’s often hard to do many things well at once in admissions,” Trujillo said. “I think the great story is that we were able to do both at the same time.”
The percentage of minority students in the school’s incoming class increased this year from 16 percent to 27 percent, and the number of female law students also increased from 44 percent to 47 percent, Trujillo said. At the same time, the median GPA of students admitted increased from 3.80 to 3.85.
In the past, Law School admissions officers would spend a great deal of time traveling to encourage students to apply whereas this past year admissions officers cut back their traveling by two-thirds and instead used available resources to encourage admitted students to enroll, Trujillo said. By emphasizing retainment of admitted students, the Law School was able to increase the standard by which future classes will be judged.
Trujillo said recruitment also “was much more personalized” this year in that all applicants got a phone call from an admissions officer informing them of their status. Additionally, admissions officers put accepted students in contact with current students, faculty and alumni to talk to them about the Law School and life in Charlottesville.
“It was a total recruitment package,” Trujillo said.
—compiled by Kelly Morenus