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(09/12/19 2:06am)
The Washington Post released an expose Sept. 9 recounting the predatory practices employed by the Medical Center to collect debts. To recap the story, the Medical Center averages over 6,000 lawsuits per year for medical debt collection and often goes after patients with as little as $3,000 in savings, using draconian tactics to coerce some of the most vulnerable members of the community.
(05/23/18 3:28am)
The minimum wage in Virginia currently sits at $7.25 per hour, consistent with the federal minimum wage and tied for lowest in the country. This rate, already egregiously low, only continues to fall in value due to inflationary forces in the economy. Prices have risen between 1.5 and 2.5 percent over the last decade or so, eroding the real value of the minimum wage and making it ever harder for the most financially vulnerable workers to make ends meet. In 2009, congress raised the minimum wage from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour, and yet the real value of the wage in 2009 dollars is now $6.13, less than before the most recent increase. This has led some to call for a one time increase to the minimum wage, to recoup the lost value. That solution is only temporary, and would put us in the exact same predicament a few years down the road as the relentless march of inflation continues to cut into wages. First and foremost, we must stop the bleeding by automatically indexing the minimum wage to inflation.
(04/29/18 3:54am)
Over the past few weeks, Democrats from across Virginia’s fifth congressional district came together to select the party’s standard-bearer for the general election against incumbent Rep. Tom Garrett (R-Va.). In February, local party leaders decided to hold a convention to select the Democratic nominee, with attending delegates to be elected by a series of caucuses across the district. Why party leaders decided to hold these caucuses rather than a standard primary is still somewhat of a mystery. What should be clear, however, is that the decision to hold caucuses was a mistake — both an undemocratic exercise and a missed opportunity.
(03/07/18 4:24pm)
In December, the Board of Visitors voted once again to raise tuition and fees across the University. With this latest increase, the estimated annual cost of attendance for undergraduates in the college now sits at a whopping $32,000 for in-state and $63,000 for out-of-state students, a hefty price that adds up to a small fortune over the course of four years. Meanwhile, counterintuitively, the University sits on an endowment worth $8.6 billion and counting. Despite this extraordinary wealth, the University fails to fulfill some of its most basic responsibilities as a public institution.
(08/14/17 9:01pm)
A few weeks ago, I wrote a column in The Cavalier Daily explaining the reasoning behind my belief that the alt-right rally should go on. The way I see it, white supremacists, despite their irrefutably toxic ideology, are entitled to the same constitutional liberties as anyone else. I figured, maybe naïvely, that allowing them to assemble in public under the scrutiny of daylight would galvanize public opinion against their hateful beliefs and reveal the rotting foundation on which their ideology rests. It’s safe to say that the words and actions of the agitators in town over the weekend have proven how foolish I was. That’s not to say I no longer stand by my belief in the sanctity of the first amendment. I still maintain unconditional support for the right of any individual or group to express themselves, regardless of the message. My concern stems from the fact that the series of demonstrations which unravelled in Charlottesville no longer, and perhaps never did, qualify as protected speech.
(07/21/17 12:04am)
The “alt-right” will descend on Charlottesville on Aug. 12. Preempting the demonstration, Black Lives Matter Charlottesville petitioned Charlottesville City Council to revoke the permit for the rally. Rather than waste energy pursuing an unconstitutional and unnecessary retraction of the permit, BLM Charlottesville should let the alt-right rally occur.
(07/07/17 1:58am)
The emergence and popularization of commercially available birth control in the 1960’s and 1970’s revolutionized our society, impacting not just dating and family planning, but also seemingly unrelated realms such as crime rates and enrollment in higher education. For the first time in history, women could, in theory, exert sovereignty over their personal reproductive lives. This sudden ability to put off or altogether avoid childbearing led to an unquantifiable increase in standard of living for women across the globe, with the added benefit of stimulating economies and setting the stage for improved gender equity and representation. Unfortunately, this explosion of empowerment has fallen distinctly short of one critically important milestone — equitable availability of accessible, reversible, male birth control.
(12/05/16 7:01am)
On Thanksgiving, a blogger unearthed old tweets from the account of Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy in a post on his website. In his post, the blogger criticized the content of Bellamy’s old tweets, a few of which contained offensive and inappropriate language. In light of the discovery of these tweets, calls for Bellamy’s resignation have begun to surface. In response to this pressure, Bellamy has apologized and expressed sincere regret for his words, while qualifying the apology with the acknowledgement that he has matured since posting the tweets. He has since resigned from the Virginia Board of Education. Although many of the statements and language in the old tweets are indefensible, the situation itself serves as a launching point for an important broader discussion about the lengths to which we should hold each other, especially public figures, accountable for past online posts.
(11/16/16 5:10am)
George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Given that most people are familiar with this sage advice, it is remarkable how often we forget its message. We, as students, are incredibly lucky to attend a university so thoroughly steeped in history, with a legacy reaching back to the founding of our nation. Like any institution that has persevered through the tumultuous and transformative periods in our nation’s history, our legacy undoubtedly carries the blemishes of the past. Chief among these are the scars left by the subjugation of black men and women and then segregation along lines of race and gender. It would be beyond condemnable for anyone to cover up these transgressions, regardless of the motivation.
(11/10/16 5:06am)
In Oct. 2015, during a Republican presidential primary debate, Lindsey Graham, a widely respected Republican senator, was booed for saying: “I'm not a scientist … But I've talked to the climatologists and they tell me that greenhouse gas effect is real, that we're heating up the planet. I just want a solution that would be good for the economy that doesn't destroy it.” The mere concession that modern climatological data is accurate was enough to trigger a release of vitriol from the polarized crowd. Instead of prompting a substantive debate about the best ways to balance economic and ecological concerns, he was shouted down immediately. Sadly, this incident is reflective of a greater trend in the Republican Party. This ideological divorce from the research of the scientific community at large is extremely dangerous for the future of political discourse and the future of climate policy.
(11/03/16 5:09am)
In 1948, N.Y. Gov. Thomas Dewey defeated President Harry Truman to become the 34th president of the United States. Or so claimed the Chicago Tribune, in one of the biggest mea culpas in campaign reporting history, perhaps second only to the Literary Digest calling the 1936 election a “Landon in a Landslide,” despite Roosevelt winning historic margins. In both cases, botched polling procedures resulted in comically inaccurate forecasts. The image of Truman triumphantly hoisting the erroneous headline has been seared into the political culture of the United States. It has become the worst nightmare of the frontrunner and the ephemeral glimmer of hope that fuels the last-ditch pushes of candidates behind in the polls.
(10/28/16 11:21am)
In recent years, academic institutions and private sector businesses alike have begun to realize and pursue the tangible benefits associated with different types of diversity, as evidenced by the establishment of affirmative action programs in admissions and hiring. While higher education as a whole has made great strides in the right direction of increasing gender and ethnic diversity, it has been noticeably lacking in the promotion of ideological diversity. It’s clear there is a significant divide between the ideological preferences of the faculty and staff of leading universities and the ideological preferences of the nation as a whole. Specifically, many top institutions serve as deeply liberal enclaves, despite the fact that the country as a whole is relatively evenly divided between liberals and conservatives. Universities owe it to their respective communities to expose their students to a wide range of different convictions from across the ideological spectrum.
(10/20/16 4:00am)
The “first-year 15” is the phrase perhaps second only to “finals week” in the measure of fear struck into the hearts of University students. It’s doubtless that if you haven’t experienced it yourself, you at least know someone who has, to some extent, packed on a few extra pounds here and there in their first couple of months at the University. Research shows the average weight gain in the first year of college is actually slightly more modest. Nevertheless, the majority of students gain some degree of weight in their first year. The mere mention of the phenomenon sends first years running to the Aquatics and Fitness Center, and rouses stress induced (or wistfully reminiscent) flashbacks of unlimited dining hall swipes in the minds of upperclassmen — complete with a dietitian's nightmare of ice cream machines and pizza and arrays of sinfully tasty treats. To its credit, the University does an excellent job of providing healthy choices in the dining halls, with a selection of fruits and vegetables widely available. Unfortunately, however, the dining halls have relatively limited hours of availability, and the current late-night food options are markedly lacking in nutritious and healthy alternatives.
(10/06/16 10:03pm)
For Democrats, it’s time to face an uncomfortable truth. While surely the result of a plethora of different contributing factors, Democrats need to confront the role they played in Donald Trump’s rise to prominence, and his seemingly unwavering persistence in the political arena. For decades, rhetoric on both sides of the aisle has been increasing in both polarization and intensity. The language used by politicians and pundits alike has become more and more partisan. For the last couple of cycles, Democrats have treated Republican nominees like caricatures as part of their stereotypical (mis)conception of the Republican Party. Why then, should it be a surprise to us that when someone who largely embodies many of these cartoonish characteristics takes the stage, the regular, already highly inflammatory rhetoric seems to have no effect? The partisan political rhetoric on both sides of the aisle has become so intense that there’s no way to distinguish even the most flagrant violations of decency.
(09/28/16 12:41pm)
As part of the information first-years receive about sexual assault, the John Paul Jones arena jumbotron depicted a harrowing sequence of events, demonstrating the possible roles bystanders can play in preventing a sexual assault. Sitting in the crowd, I had to stop myself from screaming at the bystanders, who simply sat back as a potential sexual assault was plainly occurring right in front of their eyes. Therein lies the fundamental failure of the program put on by the University — the reliance on overworn tropes of sexual assault and an accompanying failure to address the ambiguity which all too often surrounds sexual assault. When sexual assault prevention programs rely on the overworn cliche of the predatory strange man taking advantage of the intoxicated woman, they fail to prepare students for the murky reality of sexual assault on Grounds.