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(09/29/14 4:53am)
With the ongoing investigation into the disappearance of Hannah Graham, students, administrators and faculty have all become increasingly worried about the relative safety of our Grounds and of the greater Charlottesville area. As reasonable a concern as this is — and as terrifying as Hannah’s disappearance has been — some have unfairly placed blame for a perceived unsafe environment on the University.
(09/22/14 4:14am)
In our increasingly polarized country, one close gubernatorial race has caught the nation by surprise for how competitive it has become. In Kansas, the incumbent Republican Governor, Sam Brownback, is currently trailing his Democratic challenger, State Representative Paul Davis, in the polls.
(09/15/14 4:32am)
Much to the dismay of University students, the City of Charlottesville is finally going through with its 2010 plan to construct a fence around the railroad tracks between 14th street and Rugby Road. While the construction of a fence is a reasonable solution to the unsafe practice many students engage in — that is, crossing the railroad tracks — students have good reason to be frustrated by this development.
(09/08/14 3:04am)
Student self-governance is unique to our University and one of its most compelling features, but, as I have argued before, there are situations that merit its limitation. One such situation is the adjudication of sexual misconduct cases, overseen by the University’s Sexual Misconduct Board (SMB).
(09/01/14 3:29am)
Public school funding is consistently a hot topic in election seasons and during budget talks, as it should be. But while we endlessly debate the best ways to apportion funding and incentivize better results in schools, according to a 2013 survey conducted by the Horace Mann Educator Advisory Panel, dedicated teachers across the country have been paying as much as $600 out of their own wages to get necessary supplies for their students.
(08/26/14 3:51am)
In the time we’ve been away from Grounds, the country and the world have faced major challenges — from the recent exposure of police brutality to the continued disruption in the Middle East, there is no shortage of controversies to discuss. In the face of these issues, one controversy that has almost managed to slip under the radar is the question of whether or not newspapers, magazines and online publications should solicit so-called “native advertising” or sponsored content — advertisements that more or less mask themselves as legitimate articles. This controversial form of advertising is currently used by newspapers as prominent as The New York Times and is being considered by The Cavalier Daily.
(07/28/14 4:28pm)
Recently, a video of Staten Island resident Eric Garner being choked to his death by a police officer has gone viral, prompting discussion of the issue of police brutality (an area in which the NYPD has become increasingly susceptible to criticism). Following this, another video involving excessive force from the NYPD has surfaced, in which a police officer allegedly stomped on drug suspect Jahmiel Cuffee’s head.
(06/14/14 4:21am)
While Virginia and the nation mourn and celebrate the defeat of Eric Cantor, the outgoing representative of Virginia’s seventh congressional district, there has also been a significant change in the makeup of Virginia’s state Senate resulting from the resignation of state Senator Phillip Puckett, a Democrat from the 38th state Senate district.
(05/13/14 5:10am)
Recently, Editor-in-Chief of The Virginia Advocate Rob Mogni responded to my piece on what constitutes white privilege, which itself was a response to a piece by Princeton student Tal Fortgang. In his piece, Mogni makes several uninformed claims — the most ludicrous being that conservatism is oppressed — all the while belittling racial discrimination.
(05/06/14 4:54am)
This April, Tal Fortgang, a student at Princeton, wrote an article in which he expressed frustration with the fact that people around him assume he is necessarily privileged simply because he is a white man. But the premise of his essay — which was essentially that because of his family’s Holocaust story, he is not privileged — completely misses the meaning of “white privilege.”
(04/29/14 4:57am)
A week ago today, the Supreme Court upheld Michigan’s ban on affirmative action in its public universities, with only Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg writing in dissent. The case upheld an amendment to the Michigan constitution, which was voted for democratically. Importantly, this case did not determine the constitutionality of affirmative action; rather, it determined whether or not voters could vote on the specific policy used by Michigan public schools.
(04/22/14 5:12am)
Last week, the group United For Undergraduate Socioeconomic Diversity (UFUSED) hosted a panel on representation, diversity and community at the University, mostly a discussion of the barriers that prevent minorities from reaching conventional leadership roles at the University. The panel raised an important question: what can we as students do to combat the often exclusive environment that students who aren’t in the majority face?
(04/15/14 4:59am)
Last week, President Obama signed an executive order mandating that federal contractors allow employees to discuss their compensation with one another to promote equal pay for equal work (specifically targeted at gendered pay inequality). Critics of this order — and of a bill that just failed in the Senate, the Paycheck Fairness Act, with similar goals for the private sector — point to the fact that in the White House, on average women only make 88 cents for every dollar men make. That is only 11 cents higher than the national ratio between men and women, which is 77 cents to the dollar.
(04/08/14 5:06am)
Last week, my fellow columnist Elaine Harrington wrote defending Derby Days, Sigma Chi’s week of challenges in which sororities compete to raise money for the fraternity’s philanthropy. Criticism of the event stems from the fact that Sigma Chi essentially gets sororities to raise money for its philanthropy without having to do much work itself. For the most part, Harrington’s argument was persuasive: she wrote that Derby Days makes more fundraising possible and can be a source of bonding for sorority women. But she also asserted that whatever objectification of women arises — which, as she admits, it does — is acceptable because it is not mandated. This assertion dismisses the gravity of such objectification.
(04/01/14 3:52am)
Resident Advisors, or RAs, are undeniably valuable resources for first-years. They are well-trained in University rules and can even fill a mentor-like position for students who are having difficulty adjusting to college life. This difficulty in adjustment can stem from a number of sources, one of which is the highly sexualized nature of college compared with some incoming students’ high schools. To better address this adjustment, the University should more thoroughly train RAs in sex education so they can pass this knowledge on to their residents.
(03/25/14 5:22am)
The University and many schools around the country offer work-study programs for students who qualify for financial aid. These programs fall somewhere in between pure grant financial aid and ever-controversial student loans; they allow students to work off some of the cost of their tuition through campus jobs, so they can (ideally) graduate with minimal or no debt. There are some general drawbacks to these programs — for one, the fact that earned income from these jobs is taxable — but for the most part work-studies are conceptually sound. They are a good way for students to make education affordable and simultaneously benefit the school, and they certainly are preferable to the potentially crippling financial burden of student loans.
(03/04/14 6:21am)
Last week, Ben Rudgley argued for an end to the Women, Gender and Sexuality (WGS) major. Though his intent is good — he argues that the major “exacerbates the problem it professes to oppose” — his view severely oversimplifies the issue of gender equality and the basis for the existence of the WGS department. There is no ground — academic, social or otherwise — for eliminating WGS from the University’s list of majors.
(03/03/14 7:21am)
Recently, we published a piece by one of our new Viewpoint writers, Ben Rudgley, entitled “End Women’s Studies,” which called for dissolving the Women, Gender, and Sexuality major at the University. To briefly summarize his argument: Rudgley contended that the existence of a department devoted to the study of such divisive issues is itself divisive, in that it largely fails to attract and include the very people who need exposure to WGS, and it distracts us from incorporating such ideas into our other studies. It was a controversial piece, and rightly so — Rudgley made a number of provocative claims. We’re not writing in response to the merits of his piece, however, and this is not the first time we have published controversial material.
(02/25/14 7:17am)
The University’s contract with Aramark, the company that supplies our food, is set to expire July 1, and the University is currently in the process of deciding whether or not to continue this partnership. On the surface, there’s no immediate reason not to renew our contract: O-Hill isn’t exactly fine dining, but the food is basically satisfactory, and Aramark boasts some pretty impressive titles, including ranking as one of Fortune magazine’s World’s Most Admired Companies in 2013. But beneath the surface, Aramark has plenty of ethical problems, enough that the University should consider ending this relationship.
(02/18/14 6:59am)
Last week, the Virginia State Senate voted to table a bill that would require death row inmates to die by electrocution if Virginia is unable to supply lethal injection drugs. This bill presents an unfair and drastic change from Virginia’s current death row policy, which allows prisoners to choose between lethal injection and electrocution, with lethal injection as a default if prisoners don’t have a preference. Not only is electrocution an archaic method of execution, but taking away a prisoner’s right to choose his method of execution is unfair. Though the bill has been tabled, its very existence suggests that lawmakers are not giving this issue — and prisoners’ rights — enough attention.