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(11/11/15 5:05am)
In the midst of rising tuition prices, it’s important that the University explore all avenues to find ways to keep the cost of education down. To this end, the University has made inroads through its use of massive open online courses, or MOOCs. MOOCs are online courses open to anybody, often free of charge or with a small fee for a verification of completion. Online education is often thought of in terms of for-profit universities, but recently dozens of the nation’s top schools have initiated or increased their participation in the online education community, dramatically raising its scope and depth. Despite these changes, students have yet to see meaningful returns from that investment; to start, they cannot count MOOCs for credit.
(10/28/15 4:05am)
Imagine getting into a car accident and getting seriously injured. Imagine being raced to the hospital in an ambulance. Imagine rushing through the emergency room doors on a stretcher to receive desperately needed care. And then imagine waiting. Waiting for hours while crippled by pain and fear as the emergency room, the place you expect to be ready for you at any time, is too crowded to provide help.
(10/15/15 4:15am)
Opinion columnist Sawan Patel recently wrote an article entitled “White America wants you to conform – even at U.Va.,” in which he argues the recent Diversity Initiative Award, which will be awarded by the Honor Committee in coordination with the Black Student Alliance, Latino Student Alliance and Asian Student Union, is another example of the white minority “creating conformity” by “pushing Western ideals… on to minority groups.” He then juxtaposes this with the Not a Model Minority Week, an event he argues is a rejection of the idea that the success of certain minorities can be attributed to hard work. In this determination he is belittling the success of these minorities by attributing it to conformity, and unfairly labeling the struggles they face as easily surmountable by simply adapting to American culture.
(09/30/15 4:10am)
Smoke is rising right now from the trees of Washington state as the Okanoga Complex, the largest wildfire in state history, continues to burn through its forests. In its wake it has left 305,000 acres of scorched land, 170 destroyed homes and three dead firefighters.
(09/16/15 4:00am)
This year there has been a new addition to the alcohol-wise modules students are required to complete — a module about sexual violence that includes prevention techniques, risk factors and resources to assist survivors. This addition makes sense, and is necessary, in the midst of a nationwide furor over assault on college campuses. Our heightened awareness of its presence on Grounds and our own tumultuous year dealing with it has made action necessary if students are to feel safe.
(09/02/15 4:00am)
The past few years have seen racial tension rise to the forefront of the national consciousness, bringing up the issue of unequal and unethical treatment of individuals of different races. A non-stop hail of breaking stories has revealed in vivid detail the mistreatment of entire African-American communities by police, disturbingly brought to light by the racist policing techniques used by Ferguson police. Stories of unarmed black men slain by police have dominated the news cycle: Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner — these names endure in our minds. The bloody arrest of Martese Johnson by three overzealous Alcoholic Beverage Control officers even brought this tension to our Grounds.
(04/27/15 4:05am)
Once, when a parent wrote a tuition check for his child he could be confident that though large, that check was going toward providing crucial elements for his child’s education. This is no longer the case. Instead, a large chunk of a check made out for tens of thousands of dollars is feeding the burgeoning administrative staff on college campuses. Though an effective bureaucracy is essential for the running of any university, college administrations seem to be no longer doing their jobs with the efficiency they once did. Tuition money should be spent on professors and other items essential for a student’s education, not a bureaucracy that drags down the efficiency of an institution.
(04/13/15 4:05am)
On almost every college campus across the nation, the antiquated tenure system is one of the strongest links chaining universities to the past, loading them down with unnecessary costs and preventing them from modernizing at a necessary pace. Almost no other field in the world enjoys the easily abused perks that come with tenure, which include an almost guaranteed lifetime job and freedom of choice in research. As the University’s finances come under increased scrutiny with the introduction of the “Affordable Excellence” program, it is time to take a closer look at the tenure system at the University and across the nation.
(03/30/15 4:12am)
Over the past few decades, the incidence of mental illness across the nation has increased dramatically, and stress-filled college campuses are no exception to the trend. In fact, a recent survey of college counseling center directors found that 95 percent of those directors believe the number of students with severe mental illnesses is growing. However, what is almost as troubling as the occurrence of mental illness is how little of it is actually treated. Another survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that of the one in five American adults who suffer from a mental illness, only 39 percent had received treatment for their illness. While some of that can be chalked up to a dearth of resources devoted to treatment or the lack of awareness surrounding these diseases, a large part of it is due to the perceived stigma surrounding mental illness. People fear for the impact on their social lives and success if they are diagnosed with a mental illness, and therefore ignore their problems and avoid getting the care they need.
(03/16/15 4:05am)
As any casual visitor to the University can see, Jefferson’s name and face are omnipresent on Grounds. The Jefferson Scholars, the Jefferson Society and the statue of Jefferson on the Lawn demonstrate how his legacy lives on at the University he founded. Yet a recent article in The Cavalier Daily by fellow Viewpoint writer Alexander Adames questions this adoration of Jefferson on the grounds that “such sycophancy ignores the fact that Thomas Jefferson was a racist and slave owner.” Adames makes a valid point: to venerate Jefferson as a demigod would be to accept his ideas as flawless. However, Adames is wrong to say we can only “extol his ideas… instead of the man.” There is a middle road between the extremes of deification and rejection, one in which we accept Jefferson’s flaws as congruent with the flaws of the society he lived in, yet still admire him as a man for his intellectual contributions, leadership and the creation of the University we now attend.
(03/02/15 5:06am)
A student’s time in college can be at once the best and worst years of his life. While students experience newfound freedom, friendships and a multitude of unique experiences found only on college campuses, they also become vulnerable to the hidden dangers that lurk beneath the excitement. Loneliness arises as old high school friends fade from the social scene, and stressful schoolwork puts a tremendous burden on students who are used to being at the top of their class. Job searches and decisions such as which major to pick have consequences that will echo throughout students’ lives and are additional sources of worry at a time when students may not have family or close friends for comfort. Mental illnesses such as depression find fertile ground amid these conditions, when students are alone and susceptible to their dangers.
(02/16/15 6:11am)
When tallying up the college tuition bill, the tuition number tends to stand out the most and dominate what one thinks about the price of college. But while the president has lamented the rising tuition prices as a danger to the American education system, a small but significant portion of a student’s yearly budget has gone unnoticed — the price of textbooks. Almost every University student has experienced the shock of going to buy textbooks at the University bookstore and realizing the text needed for one three credit course costs upwards of $200. With prices for a single course that high, when multiplied by several courses and stretching over eight semesters of school textbooks can add a tremendous amount of money to an already substantial final bill for college.