Rep. Tom Perriello, pictured on the campaign trail last year, and delegates David Toscano and Robert Bell were shown scale models of turbines at the University’s Rotating Machinery and Controls Laboratory to simulate wind energy options. Photo by Jason O. Watson.

Rep. Tom Perriello, along with delegates Robert Bell and David Toscano, all of whom represent the Charlottesville area at various levels of government, toured the University’s Rotating Machinery and Controls Laboratory yesterday to examine the effects of wind energy. The Democratic and Republican leaders in part made their visit to show support for emerging power technologies.

The politicians were shown a scale model of a wind turbine, said Engineering Prof. Paul Allaire, director of the Jefferson Wind Energy Institute. The model, which is about 8-feet tall, was placed inside a wind tunnel that generates wind up to about 12 miles an hour, he added. The model turbine is an attempt to show how wind turbines could rotate and work, he said.

“But it’s very small and won’t generate much energy, so the plan is to build a 150-foot version,” he added, [which] would look like a cell tower.” The objective of this project is to develop a system capable of producing about 50 kilowatts of power, which could power a large farm or about six homes, he said.

The Jefferson Wind Energy Institute is working on this plan with the Charlottesville-based Central Virginia Wind Energy. In addition to presenting the scale model, the institute presented drawings of the proposed turbines to the politicians, Allaire said.

“We talked about the availability of wind energy in Virginia,” Allaire said, adding that there is “very good wind energy” along the coastal areas and in the Appalachian Mountains area along the western edge of the state. “There’s a large effort underway to develop offshore wind energy farms,” he said, as well as an interest in building a wind turbine manufacturing plant and establishing wind farms.

The politicians visited Grounds “in part to support the efforts of U.Va. to try to promote wind energy and other alternative energy sources,” Allaire said.

“He’s looking at ways in which this kind of activity can help to generate jobs in Virginia,” Allaire said about Perriello specifically. For example, he added, if Areva, a multinational nuclear power conglomerate, establishes a wind turbine manufacturing plant in Virginia, including the impact of in-state suppliers, it could mean about 20,000 new jobs in the commonwealth.

“A fair amount of this might come in Tom Perriello’s district,” Allaire noted, “so that’s why he’s interested in it.”

Perriello spokesperson Jessica Barba said Perriello has focused on alternative and renewable energy sources and how they can be “economic drivers” in central and southern Virginia from the beginning of his term.

“He’s toured a lot of facilities around the district that have promising projects going on,” she said. “[The work in the ROMAC lab]’s just one of many projects [Perriello]’s seeing … that have promise to become economic drivers of the area.”

In an effort to improve its outreach, Student Council has developed a number of programs to encourage co-sponsorship among student groups and to support the functions of contracted independent organizations.

Last Monday, 85 student leaders from various CIOs, seven members of the University administration and staff members from Student Activities and Business Services convened at the CIO Leadership Dinner in the Newcomb Ballroom for a keynote program with resources from dominant organizations on Grounds, including the University Programs Council, the University Judiciary Committee and the Fourth Year Trustees.

The dinner was intended to initiate conversations about co-sponsorship among attendees. At the same time, Council also debuted its revamped CIO Consultant Program earlier this semester. It is geared toward better informing CIOs of the resources available and the ways they can increase efficiency in terms of budgeting, outreach and fundraising.

The program works by assigning each CIO consultant and Council representative pair 20 to 25 CIOs for which they are responsible, Vice President of Administration Nikhil Panda said.

“The idea is that they see Student Council as a resource,” Panda said. “Each team is responsible for two things: The CIO consultant is to make sure they know their rights as an independent organization within the community and the representative will ensure the CIO is successful in any initiative they want to create.”

Through the re-creation of the CIO Consultant Program, Council Vice President of Organizations Colin Hood said he also saw a great opportunity to improve outreach through a different avenue.

“The CIO Consultant Program was created for the lack of outreach Student Council had with a lot of CIOs,” Hood said. “A lot of CIOs went through the appropriations process to create a CIO because they had to … there really wasn’t a relationship.”

Now, however, CIO consultants are encouraged to contact their CIOs regularly to address any pressing concerns or issues regarding the functions and operations of a CIO, Hood said. Additionally, Hood said he is currently working on a variety of programs, including monthly CIO education workshops. The first workshop will address recruitment efforts and the creation of a team of consultants, which could advise CIOs about specific issues such as sustainability and multiculturalism.

“It’s about rebuilding a relationship,” he said.

Both Hood and Panda said they are conscious of the limits of the program, though.

“87 percent of students on Grounds are involved in some sort of CIO organization,” Panda said. “While not all CIOs participate in the program, in theory, it’s a great way to reach out to other students.”

“They’re not going to [create] an ideal relationship,” Hood said. “There are just too many CIOs.”

Roshni Malamal Pattiath, the Hindu Students Council chapter coordinator, said she has been contacted by her CIO consultant, and thinks the program is a great idea, though she is not quite sure how to take advantage of all the available opportunities that come with it.

“I think it’s a very good idea on their part … to have a better functioning [CIO] community,” she said, “But if they can tell us how we can use the consultant, that would be nice … We haven’t seen the use for consultants yet.”

National Pan-Hellenic Council Treasurer Amber Young, who was also a former treasurer for the National Society of Black Engineers, thinks the consultant program would be most beneficial for less dominant CIOs on Grounds.

“It sounds like a way to help people know what’s going on,” Young said. “It’s good if they want to target not just minority organizations but also other organizations that don’t apply for appropriations and others that don’t [typically] deal with Student Council.”

Council President John Nelson  noted that the CIO Leadership Dinner and the CIO Consultant Program are just two examples of Council’s efforts to reach out to student groups at the University.

“We have programs like the CIO consultant program and the CIO dinner… in order to create that relationship between Student Council and student groups because we think that’s a really effective way for us to co-sponsor, share ideas and for us to have students bring ideas to us,” he said.

University Asst. Medical Prof. Jessica Connelly and researchers at Duke University have discovered a possible link between autism and genes that are turned on and off in DNA.

The research, which was co-led by Duke Medical Asst. Prof. Simon Gregory, focused on genetic differences between autistic patients and a control group. Connelly noted that they found that regions containing the gene OXTR, which has been previously connected with autism, were especially prone to being different among autism patients.

Although their research still needs to be replicated with a much larger sample, Connelly said the link could be a target for drug modification and thus possibly reduce disease.

The researchers first identified the deletion of the OXTR gene in an autistic patient and examined his family to see if that deletion was also present, Connelly said. It turned out that his brother was also autistic but did not have the deletion.

“Most people would say this means it’s not relevant, but we hypothesized that there are other mechanisms through which you lose expression of OXTR,” Connelly said.

Connelly and Gregory identified a high level of methylation — when a chemical group attaches to the DNA, usually to silences genes — of the OXTR gene in the brother.

Inheritable genetic changes like this that do not show up in the DNA sequencing are called epigenetics, Gregory said.

“We should be able to see methylation of people with autism in this locus in the general sample,” Connelly said.

Connelly and Gregory initially tested 119 people with autism, eventually focusing on 20 autistic individuals and 20 controls to find the same elevation of methylation in the region of OXTR.

They also checked available brain tissue samples of autistic people and found similar results.

Connelly cautioned that the team’s findings would not necessarily lead to improved treatment and added that only some autistic patients had this methylation. Others were actually missing the OXTR gene, which she said would make these patients’ conditions more difficult to treat.

The OXTR gene, which is a receptor for the trust hormone oxytocin, has been shown to improve the ways in which autistic individuals interact with others, Gregory said. He added that oxytocin has been used in drugs to treat autism but is very short-lasting and not a cure.

He said the important part of the research was simply to recognize the pathways involved in autism.

“This is a very novel finding,” Connelly added. ”It suggests an epigenetic mechanism for autism and in general an epigenetic mechanism for complex disease.”

There are times when doing the right thing means following the law, or performing a task. But there are other times when doing the right thing means defying the law — because justice is, in some sense, removed from the sphere of what is necessarily “allowable.”

To understand the first definition of good behavior is to understand that it is right for students to turn in papers on time, and that it is right for University community members to align themselves with sound reason and social convention. To understand the latter definition, one need look no further than the honor case of Allison Routman, and to what the Honor Committee “cannot” — but should — do in responding to her unusual circumstances.

As Routman’s father explained Sunday night, her case is one without parallel at the University, and so it should be reevaluated and potentially dismissed. With the sole exception of Mark Gruntz, who like Routman was dismissed during a summer 2008 Semester at Sea voyage for allegedly plagiarizing Wikipedia, there has not been another student dismissed by the Committee under the same conditions since perhaps the modern honor code’s inception in 1977. Routman and Gruntz were dismissed by faculty members, were non-University students at a distinct disadvantage and had little support aboard a cruise ship in the Mediterranean Sea. The trial procedures in the summer 2008 Voyager’s Handbook, moreover, could be seen as being in direct conflict with the Committee’s constitution, as they did not guarantee the same protections afforded to students on Grounds. The fact that Routman and Gruntz signed away these rights, and the fact that the Committee’s bylaws state that all SAS procedures are contained within the handbook, is nothing but a contrived means to skirt alarming issues such as constitution-bylaw agreement and the invalidation of basic guarantees. The mere thought that SAS participants must sign a waiver of rights — simply because of the program’s uniqueness and the inadequateness of the Committee’s efforts — but then are held to the same principles of governance and called University students, should strike any reader as perplexing. And so it should be concluded, once and for all, that the Committee did not handle these cases correctly, because the procedures in place at the time were written in error and poor judgement. In short, the Committee did the wrong thing.

To reopen the 2008 cases, however, is not allowable under the Committee’s constitution. To quote former Committee Chair Jessica Huang, “Once an appeal is denied, that’s it.” There is no formal procedure to reconsider a closed case — and so to a certain extent, even if current Committee members feel the past convictions were made wrongfully, they can claim their hands are tied. Likewise, the University’s Board of Visitors, which ultimately has some authority over the Committee, can do the same. Conveniently, the present procedures allow the Committee to dismiss any of the aforementioned problems without batting so much as an eyelash.

But are anyone’s hands really tied? Tied by insignificant bylaws and complex amendments, all of which the Committee already violated to a degree in Routman and Gruntz’ very circumstances?

To dismiss Routman and Gruntz’ charges is not a question of whether the pair plagiarized their papers. By all accounts, and considering the amount of evidence, it would seem clear that what occurred was at the very least ignorant plagiarism. The SAS procedures in play, however, made it such that neither was given a fair trial and both were almost assumed guilty of intent, because of an intent clause still in need of revision. What is at stake, therefore, is not a reevaluation of dubious papers, but a reevaluation of how the Committee acted and responded to concerns later brought to light.

On the one hand, the Committee and Board of Visitors could do the “right” thing, and follow its rules strictly and without discretion. On the other hand, these institutional bodies, these bastions of University thought and moral standards, could do something even greater: Ignore the rules. Recognize their errors. Forgive and rectify. Hold themselves not just to the procedures of honor, but to the ideal of Honor, with a capital H.

Because sometimes, two wrongs do make a right.

Ginny Robinson apparently didn’t get the memo.

That’s understandable, since Robinson wasn’t born when mathematician and musician Tom Lehrer declared satire dead. That form of humor and social criticism expired, according to Lehrer, when Henry Kissenger received the Nobel Peace Prize. Ironically, Robinson’s Cavalier Daily column (“The new American patriotism,” Oct. 14) concerned the most recent Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama. In these early months of the Obama administration, Robinson wrote, “A new spirit of patriotism is exactly what America needs. Forget the old, archaic model of American patriotism characterized by two-way dialogue and citizen dissent. In the new spirit of patriotism there simply is no room for political disagreement.”

Unfortunately, it seems that many people did not see that Robinson typed with her tongue firmly in her cheek.

This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened. The July 21, 2008 cover of The New Yorker may forever live in infamy. The cover art showed Barack and Michelle Obama in the Oval Office. She wore camouflage pants and an Angela Davis-style Afro. The bandolier slung over her shoulder like a beauty contestant’s sash doubled as a sling for the AK47 on her back. The then-candidate for president wore an outfit that would have looked at home in Osama Ben Ladin’s inner circle. A portrait of the Al-Qaeda leader George W. Bush once promised to bring back dead or alive hung above a fireplace wherein a Star Spangled Banner was burning.

The future first couple stood on the presidential seal, performing what Fox News famously labeled a “terrorist fist bump.”

The title of the artwork, “The Politics of Fear,” should have given a clue to the artist’s intent. But the title was inside the magazine, and people had already seen and judged the art before they knew what it was called. An allusion to the Obama campaign’s “politics of hope,” it aimed to satirize the fictionalized portions of the campaign against Obama, those portions aimed not at our better angels, but at our baser instincts.

A lot of people didn’t get it. And a lot of people who understood the artist’s intention thought the satire just didn’t work. It was too literal a translation of what the whacko fringe and its fellow travelers were actually saying. Which was kind of Lehrer’s point, I think.

When political opponents accuse the president of being a communist-socialist-fascist bent of denying health care to old people and Republicans; when a former Republican governor who was also a vice presidential candidate goes to what Republicans used to call Communist China and denounces the president and his policies in a speech from which she excludes the press — well, there’s just not a lot of room above that for anyone who wants to go over the top.

There may have been a time when presenting a presidential candidate and his wife as a Manchurian candidate and his radical accomplice would have been so clearly hyperbolic that it would have been understood as a clearly satirical jab at the political wing nuts America has usually tolerated and only occasionally followed. If such a time ever existed, we do not live in that time.

This is not completely new ground for American politics, of course. When Mr. Jefferson ran for president, his opponents warned voters that the many horrors certain to come to pass during the Virginian’s administration would include their wives and daughters being forced into prostitution.

Many years after Jefferson’s administration, a small town in the Shenandoah Valley was having what its elected officials considered a terrible problem with feral cats. While the debate raged among cat haters and animal lovers and would-be cat regulators, someone wrote a letter to the editor of a neighboring city’s newspaper suggesting that the simplest, most effective fix would be to add cats to the list of animals that may be legally hunted. The writer even offered recipes that would turn the problem into delicious, nutritious meals. For reasons that aren’t all that clear to me now, I thought it was a hilarious bit of satire. I printed it.

I told one of the hundreds of angry and appalled people who wrote and called that the letter was satire, like Jonathan Swift’s modest proposal that the solution to Irish hunger was for the Irish to eat their babies. He didn’t mean it literally, I said. Swift was using hyperbole to make a point.

I could almost hear the veins behind the ear at the other end of the phone line explode before that caller demanded to know who this Swift fellow was and what could be done assure that someone put that madman under lock and key.

Perhaps satire is dead, but it clearly retains the power to singe its users as well as their targets. Any would be satirist should keep that in mind.

Tim Thornton is The Cavalier Daily’s ombudsman. His columns usually appear on Mondays.

WHAT DO you think when you hear the names Gosselin, Suleman, and Heene? Do any of these parents really think about the well being of their children? Furthermore, does society care about the welfare of children in the media? For society to truly care about child welfare, it would require us to no longer care about the whereabouts of the aforementioned parents, and for news crews to turn off their cameras due to the apathy of viewers. However, for Americans today, it appears that we are more interested in the failing of other people’s families than taking the time to worry about what goes on in our own. It is a tragedy how certain parents capitalize off their children and become famous based off what their children have accomplished  — i.e. Lynne Spears, Dina Lohan, the Duggars, and Gary Coleman’s parents. This epidemic is not limited to the Gosselins, Sulemans, and Heenes, but is repeated throughout pop culture. We are taught that there are two ways to become famous off your children: either make your child famous, or have an abundance of children. It seems as though nowadays simply having children makes you famous, for the common thread is that if these none of these celebrity parents procreated, no one would know who they are.

This idea of becoming famous though your children is not limited to the parents mentioned above. It starts with stage moms and starts with beauty pageants. When I watch Toddlers & Tiaras on TLC, I repeatedly see images of kids screaming in discomfort and their parents exclaiming how much their kids “love it!” It is extremely vexing to see a stage mom that is extremely overweight and unattractive yelling at her eight-plus year-old daughter and putting her on a diet, telling her she needs to lose weight. Some kids really do love to perform; however, most of the images I see on the show are parents who do not embody the values they impose on their children. The season finale on Oct. 21 had an 8-year-old girl stating how she felt as though she had to compete with her mom, a mom who gladly brought upon the competition. Even though this mom was overweight, this did not stop her from putting her child on a fruit-only diet for a week so that she can be “skinny and pretty.” Is it appropriate for parents to force their kids into images of beauty that they themselves are unable to obtain? Should a parent force their child to become an image of perfection that goes against their ability?

The lesson that the Gosselins taught pop culture is that having many kids can be a gold mine in the sense it can bring book deals, fame, and fortune. This then gave rise to the Duggers whow have eighteen kids, and Nadya Suleman who also had a litter of children. Both of these parents would not be famous nor have a television show had they not had an abundance of children. If these people did not have the support of the media, at least in the case of the Gosselins, that they would not be able to support their children financially. This idea is continuously supported by Kate Gosselin. For example, during an appearance on Good Morning America (after Jon nearly liquidated their entire account), she stated that one of the purposes for the show is to provide for her kids.

Other examples abound. Nadya Suleman, who selfishly and intentionally impregnated herself with eight children for speculated fame, can never really give equal amounts of love and compassion to eight children that are all in the same age group. To illustrate the expense of raising a child, according to the U.S. census press release, the median income of an American household is $50,233. Using babycenter.com’s “Cost of Raising Your Child” calculator, if a child is born in 2009, in a Virginia suburb, with the median income of a U.S. two-parent household, with no college, the total cost of raising the child is $208,692, with the “cost for the first year (excluding college)… [being] $11,594”. Imagine that number times eight — the lowest number of kids these families have. That number is enough to make Warren Buffet cry. In fact, having one kid costing you $208,692 is probably enough to convince at least one reader to reach for birth control this weekend.

The warning shot for America is the speculation that the Heenes used their child to strike a deal to obtain a reality television show contract. How insane will parent capitalization of children get? Furthermore, are these cases simply parents getting compensation to offset the cost of raising a child, or is this something more? If that is the case, maybe we should hug our parents a little tighter over break for not handing us a receipt after college graduation totaling over $200,000 with an interest rate tagged on. The saddest thing of all is the fact of when these kids are old enough to look up their family, they will see their parents in this light. Furthermore, in an age where a child is too young to consent to sexual experiences, and unable to take trips, get tattoos, or do anything in between without permission, how can a child truly decide if they want to be on television — especially if they are not old enough to understand the consequences?

Liz Ford is a Viewpoint writer for The Cavalier Daily.

After witnessing the 34-9 loss to the eleventh-ranked Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets on Saturday, I realized that Virginia football must change specific aspects of their game in order to become successful in an increasingly more challenging ACC. With a coaching staff that forever seems to be under fire in Charlottesville, and a defense that forever seems to stay on the field, the offense and special teams of the Cavaliers must step up in order to compete and win against the elevated competition the Wahoos must face each week.

First off, “defense wins championships,” but field goals don’t. The Virginia offense must extend the time off possession longer each game to give our nationally-ranked defense a chance to catch their breath. Especially with a run-focused triple option offense such as Georgia Tech’s, the offense must convert on nearly every third down opportunity in order to keep the ball and control the tempo of the game. During the game, Virginia was just 2 of 11 on converting 3rd down opportunities, and kept the football for only 17 minutes and 17 seconds. Also, the U.Va. offense was unable to punch the ball in the end zone when the team desperately needed six points. Similar to the Maryland game last week, Virginia cannot obtain a 1st and goal and just settle for a field goal. It’s unacceptable. Lining up in shotgun formation and running draws is not fooling anyone, not even William & Mary and especially not Georgia Tech. Penalties and poor play calling in the red zone leads to more field goals, which will lead to more losing against strong opponents.

Secondly, Virginia’s special teams must improve if the team ever wants to win six games this season and become bowl eligible. Special teams are such a crucial aspect of the game of football, and a potential mistake can be disastrous. Although U.Va. had many successful special teams plays on Saturday, allowing kickoffs to go out of bounds and fumbling punts are two of the easiest mistakes to avoid. When Virginia kicked the ball out of bounds on a kickoff, an automatic penalty gave Georgia Tech great stating field position at its 40 yard line. Good teams will capitalize on the opportunity and put points on the board. Also, we cannot afford to continue to muff punts and essential gift-wrapped points to the other team. Virginia seems to have a knack of allowing our defense to display their talent, instead of letting them have the rest they deserve.

If Virginia football can improve the offense and special teams, it could consistently become a powerhouse in the ACC. It not that our team lacks talent, but rather that we oftentimes disadvantage ourselves and put our opponents in prime position to win. Without costly, avoidable mistakes, Virginia could beat ranked teams such as Miami and Virginia Tech. That would ultimately increase excitement and attendance next year in Scott Stadium.

Edward Smith
CLAS I

In her column entitled Safe Sex, Claire Shotwell extols the virtue of an upcoming event, the “Sexual Arts and Crafts Fair.” At this event, UVA’s chapter of “Voices for Planned Parenthood” (Vox) will give information to students about “safe sex” and set up competitions in which students race to properly place condoms on vegetables.  But Vox’s event could actually harm students.

One premise of “safe sex” education is that youths will engage in premarital sex whether we tell them to or not, so we might as well teach them how to reduce the risks involved.  So this is what “safe sex” educators do — they teach people methods of risk-reduction.

But here’s the catch: casual sex has risks that most people are not aware of, risks that cannot be reduced. Because these risks cannot be reduced, Planned Parenthood and its affiliates tend to simply ignore them. As a result, Vox and groups like it give students the impression that they are aware of all of the risks involved in casual sex when in fact they are not. The increased confidence with which a person so “educated” is likely to feel towards casual sex could result in devastating consequences.

I am thinking now of one risk in particular, emotional risk to women.  Women who hook up are at emotional risk because of a hormone called oxytocin, which when released creates a feeling of strong emotional attachment.  In men, the release of oxytocin during sex is moderated by very high levels of testosterone.  But women do not have this protection against emotional devastation.

According to Dr. Miram Grossman, a former UCLA campus psychiatrist, oxytocin is released in the female brain during labor, nursing, emotionally intimate interactions, and physically intimate interactions.This means that a woman who hooks up is likely to create a strong emotional bond with her short-term partner, whether she wants to or not.

But that bond is likely to go unreciprocated.  Given the assumption that a hook-up results in no further relationship, a woman might be embarrassed to even pursue one.  And if she does, there is a strong likelihood that she will be rejected.  For these reasons, many women who hook up are left emotionally devastated afterwards.  For more on this, the book to read is “Unhooked” by Washington Post reporter Laura Sessions Stepp.

In sum, there is no condom for the heart.

As such, Vox ought to inform students of all of the risks involved in casual sex, even those risks which cannot be lessened.

There is a further point to be raised about Vox’s fair.  Its tone is one of levity, as if sex is just another fun pastime.  Thus the games involving vegetables. But this is inappropriate — do we have no reverence for the human person, no respect for boundaries, no thought for the heart?  Just how cynical and jaded does Vox think we are?

Reece Aaron Epstein
CLAS III