Thursday, August 31, 2017

The Cavalier Daily Vol. 128, Issue 2

Thursday, August 31, 2017

“We should have been more aware” COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

Sullivan post ‘Unite the Right’

By Tim Dodson, Alexis Gravely, Eliza Haverstock, Mike Reingold, Thomas Roades | Pages 3-5

Nazis, Communists found a platform at U.Va. in 1963 PAGES 8-9

Editorial Board: City Council needs to grow up PAGE 14

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One-on-one with Kendall Street Company PAGE 18

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NEWS Five third-year students recently began living in The Perkins House, a new initiative associated with Theological Horizons and supported by the John and Vera Mae Perkins Foundation. The goal of the initiative is for the students to strengthen their connections with the Charlottesville community. The house resides in the 10th and Page neighborhood and is named after minister and civil rights activist John M. Perkins.

“The Perkins House is an intentional house that reflects the ideologies and theologies

Perkins House ties students with community New initiative allows students to stregthen connections within Charlottesville Spencer Culbertson | Senior Writer of specifically John M. Perkins,” Dominique DeBose, a resident and third-year College student, said. “We are striving to get to know our neighbors and kind of create an intentional community.”

Debose, along with thirdyear students Sade Akinbayo, Sarah Bland, Ameenah Elam and Isabella Hall, are the first to live in the new house. The goal is to build relationships with their neighbors and be a part of the community.

“We're seeking to learn from our neighbors and to get to know them through authentic relationships,” Perkins House Director Garrett Trent, a Col-

lege and McIntire alumnus, said in an email. “This is something that everyone can do, especially in the wake of Aug. 12.”

One of the major activities in which the residents will engage is spending each Sunday at the house or in the neighborhood, actively trying to get to know their neighbors.

“We’re taking a strong initiative to honor the Sabbath by blocking out most of our Sunday to being in the communities, however that looks like,” DeBose said. “Talking to neighbors, having dinners and things like that.”

DeBose said she wanted to live in the Perkins House to be more involved with the Char-

lottesville community and get outside the “bubble” she felt on Grounds.

“Living in dorms my first and second year and always being on Grounds and around other students, we tend to be in this bubble, not recognizing that we are a part of the community and that we have an effect on their lives,” DeBose said. “I recognize the need for there to be not such a gap.”

The 10th and Page neighborhood is racially and economically diverse and full of long-time residents as well as recently resettled refugees. Few students live in the neighborhood.

“We have so much to learn

and gain from our neighbors,” Trent said in a Facebook post.

“The busyness in our lives keeps us from even knowing their names. What if we committed to set aside time each week just to ‘be with’ our neighbors?”

DeBose said she hopes the house will encourage other students to engage with the community outside the University.

“I’m hoping that it will be a catalyst for students specifically to take initiative to go outside of [the University] itself,” DeBose said. “Not necessarily in a Christian aspect, but simply as a human aspect to go into the spaces around you in a very respectful and open-minded way.”

THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 2017

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Sullivan, Goluboff on U.Va’s response to ‘Unite the Right’ University President Teresa Sullivan sat down for 50-minute interview with The Cavalier Daily Tuesday morning to address questions and criticisms related to the University’s response to events in Charlottesville on Aug. 11 and 12.

Law School Dean Risa Goluboff, who is also chairing the working group formed to assess how the University handled recent events, later joined to provide insight on the purpose of the working group, their accomplishments so far and what they are planning to do in the future.

STUDENT DEMANDS Tim Dodson: So, obviously, thank you for meeting with us this morning. We really appreciate it. We know it’s been sort of a tumultuous time for everyone, but I guess these demands have been circulating around social media and in different student groups, so I guess we first sort of wanted to get your response to these generally and then we have more specific questions about the plaque on the Rotunda, Confederate plaques, and then the Jefferson statue as well. But maybe more generally, what has been your response at the administrative level to these ten demands that have been circulated?

President Sullivan: So they also asked to meet with me, and we are trying to find a time when that meeting can happen, and that’s one of the reasons why I rather feel that it would be respectful to talk to them about it first before I

Throughout the course of the conversationl, Sullivan acknowledged the areas in which the University could have responded better — such as the handling of the white national march on Grounds both before and after it became violent — and mentioned some of the actions the University is taking to better respond in the future.

Sullivan and Goluboff also briefly addressed a few of the demands being championed by the Black Student Alliance and numerous other student groups, including the recontextualization of

talk to everybody else. But, Dean Goluboff and I have also discussed this, and I think that some of these issues I need to hand over to her committee to work on. So for example, curricular issues. I don’t control curriculum. You know, from your point of view, maybe I control everything in the university; that’s not really true. Faculty control curriculum. So I can’t tell the faculty what to do. I can make suggestions, I am a faculty member myself, I can vote. I voted on the new curriculum in the College for example, but I can’t just order them what to do. So I do think that there will be, you know, a reference for faculty to talk about the curricular issues.

Let me talk around some of these for you. So, you know with respect to the Confederate plaque, for about a year and a half, a group of alumni and some people at the John Nau Center for Civil War History have been working on a

parallel plaque which is about U.Va. students who fought and died for the Union. That part of our history has not been covered before. And, my approach in general has been, let’s add to the things we know.

And so for example, the Memorial for Enslaved Laborers is a new way of commemorating. You know, we’ve also done other commemorations, including the renaming of Skipwith Hall, the renaming of Gibbons Hall. When the Board of Visitors is here September 13th, we will rename Jordan Hall for Vivian Pin. So, you know these are ways of adding to the pieces of our history that we recall and remember, and the President’s Commission on Slavery at the University has actually brought to light a lot of things we didn’t know about before. And this effort to find out who from the University fought for the Union, I don’t think anybody here knew there was anybody who fought for the Union.

the historical landscape on Grounds.

University Spokesperson Anthony de Bruyn was also present at the interview.

Reporters who were present at the interview were Editor-In-Chief Mike Reingold, Managing Editor Tim Dodson, Senior Associate News Editor Alexis Gravely, Associate News Editor Thomas Roades and Associate News Editor Eliza Haverstock.

A condensed transcript of the interview is below. A full version is available on The Cavalier Daily website.

I know this isn’t directly answering this question, but it is that we are thinking about the issues that are related to how we commemorate our history, and what it is that we commemorate. And of course students have been very actively involved in this. In the President’s Commission, there have been student interns. There have been students who have come to hearings and meetings. The whole Memorial for Enslaved Laborers began as a student movement, and is now in a fundraising period, so I think that’s moved very far. The Board of Visitors has approved it, they’ve approved the design, that’s moving along pretty quickly.

I told you something about that demand, so I know it doesn't answer directly the issue: do you remove it from the Rotunda?

Dodson: Are there elements on here that would require Board of Visitors approval? Would something like the Confederate plaques

require the Board of Visitors to authorize?

Sullivan: I believe it would, and here’s why I think so. They approved its placement there to start with, and so I think they would have to approve anything further that happened with it. But I also think they would seek a recommendation from the administration. And I think that there are a few other things that would probably require approval of the Board.

But anyway, if you don’t mind, I would like to go back to August 11th and talk little bit about that.

You know, that event was in my experience, unprecedented here, or at any other university I have been at. In retrospect, there are things that I think we would have done differently and we will do better in the future, should this ever happen again. And I can talk about some of those things we are looking at specifically. Also, there have been several after-action meetings.

RICHARD DIZON | THE CAVALIER DAILY

Over the course of a 50-minute interview with The Cavalier Daily, Sullivan responded to questions related to the University’s response to events in Charlottesville on Aug. 11 and 12.

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There’s one later on today in which we’re bringing outside experts to look at what we did and give us suggestions on what we could’ve done better.

OPEN-FLAME POLICY Sullivan: So let’s talk about the open flame one. So, I was aware of that policy to the extent that you could not have candles in dorm rooms. That’s the part of it I knew about, because there’s bunsen burners, the Lawnies burn fires in their fireplaces, they have hibachis, so the fact that we had a more general open flame policy, I cantily was not aware of. We will make our police aware of this in the future. There is a procedure for getting approval for the flame through Environmental Health and Safety, and we’ll be sure that the police can contact Environmental Health and Safety in the event of unapproved flames.

So, let me give you another example. The candlelight rally that was held a few days afterwards was 7,000 people attending. Well, we got approval for those open flames, okay? But we have subsequently also discovered, and this was actually again through a student who alerted us to it, a statute that we weren’t aware of, which we will also instruct the police about.

And this is 18.2-423.01 of the Virginia Code.

Dodson: This is what Dean Goluboff referenced in that email?

Sullivan: Yeah, that’s right. And

specifically it says ‘any person who, with the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons, burns an object — object, anything — on a highway or other public place in a manner having a direct tendency to place another person in reasonable fear or apprehension of death or bodily injury is guilty of a Class

to that is yes. I think the torches were like an accessory. But then they eventually became a weapon, so that was also an issue. In Boston, a week later, they wouldn’t let people bring sticks of any kind with the fear that sticks could be weaponized. Perhaps we need to think that way. I think that, you

But we were totally focused on August 12th.

And you know, we should have been more aware that something could have happened either before or after.” - University President Teresa Sullivan 6 felony.’ Now that’s pretty strong, and you know, I have to say I wasn’t aware of this. We are aware of it now. We’re going to make sure our police are aware of it too.

Dodson: If police had been aware of either the University policy regarding flames or the state statute, do you think things would have gone differently on August 11th?

Sullivan; Well, it’s hard for me to speculate about the counterfactual here. Let’s say that, just for the sake of argument, that the people were told they couldn’t carry their torches. Would they have still marched? My guess is the answer

know, what happened is going to be a wake-up call for law enforcement all over the country about what looks like a peaceful march and ends up not being peaceful, and what you do at that point, when it’s not peaceful. So anyway, those are some issues that I think we could have handled better and we will handle them better in the future.

AUG. 11 WHITE NATIONALIST TORCHLIT MARCH Dodson: In terms of the timeline on August 11th, I’m sure you’re aware of The Chronicle of Higher Education articles that have come out, kind of looking at the Uni-

COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

Law School Dean Risa Goluboff serves as the chair of the Deans Working Group, which is looking at how the University responded to recent events.

versity’s response to this. So one of the first articles that came out seemed to suggest that you first became aware of the fact that there was some sort of white nationalist gathering that was going to happen when I think you were visiting with Lawnies, and that was around I think 8:15 that evening. I think someone showed you a social media post or something, but then I know that in the email that came out August 15th, I think it noted that law enforcement became aware of this on some point on Friday afternoon. Was that information not communicated to you when they first became aware of it? I’m just sort of wondering what information was shared with you.

Sullivan: Well, that was not.

But, you know, law enforcement doesn’t tell me everything they know. There’s no reason to, you know. I would say that there was a lot of conflicting information. So there’s also information that there would be a rally at a park in the county, and that rally apparently didn’t happen. There was a lot of chatter, and some of it was misleading. And this week, there has come to light, and I can’t verify the authenticity of this, but there’s come to light some documents allegedly posted by members of these groups saying that it was really important to keep this a secret from the University of Virginia.

So, you know, it’s very hard for me to know in this situation what is true and what is not true. I can testify to what I myself knew, and I didn’t know. Malcolm Stewart was on the Lawn with me, and Malcolm showed me the social media post.

Malcolm is the Head Resident on the Lawn. I had spoken with Larry Sabato in the past because we thought it might happen Saturday night. And so we had laid out some provisional plans for what we would do on Saturday. Our anticipation was this rally would go on downtown until 5 o’clock. They had a permit from 12:00-5:00. And that after 5:00, they might decide to come back to the University and we need to be ready then. The police were ready, if that had happened. But we were totally focused on August 12th. And you know, we should have been more aware that something could have happened either before or after. We did set up our emergency operation center at 7 o’clock August 12th, and it demobilized at 4 o’clock August 13th. So, that's what we had been focused on and ready for.

Anthony de Bruyn: That was a joint emergency operation center which I’m sure you're aware is University, city, and county.

Sullivan: Actually we had the state there too.

De Bruyn: State was there too, of course. Right.

Dodson: I think in talking about what the University knew, I think one line in the email that came out, I think it was the 15th, was about how the alt-right pro-

testers didn't do what they said they were planning to do. And I think one critique that we’ve seen on social media is that that might have been a naive position, given that there are community members who were expressing fears and apprehensions that there was a potential for violence with these white nationalists who were coming to town. How do you respond to that reaction, that the alt-right misled U.Va. and that U.Va. was unprepared, or trusted what they were saying?

Sullivan: I think it’s fair to say that we were overly trusting in this case. I think that’s right. Our police are trained to work with peaceful demonstrations. Our typical peaceful demonstration is a group of students. They’re trained to basically be there if anything gets out of hand, but that’s essentially, I believe, the mindset that we had going into this. And in retrospect, that wasn’t the right mindset. That was a huge advantage to other cities and other police forces where this kind of thing was going to happen. But it would not be our mindset in the future. I think we would be differently prepared. It was very hard to know in advance what was going to happen, especially given competing sources of information that weren’t always clear or straightforward.

FIREARMS Sullivan: Let me talk about guns, because I think that’s another one of interest. How come these people were allowed to bring guns on our Grounds? So, Virginia is an open-carry state and also has concealed weapons. There has been a lot of back-and-forth about whether universities could be an exception to that general rule. Admittedly, this is contested terrain.

If you talk to my counterparts in Georgia or Texas, they’ll tell you that.

Risa Goluboff enters the room.

Sullivan: We have an attorney general’s opinion, which says that, first of all, the University, it’s not enough to have a policy against guns, you must have a regulation.

The Board of Visitors passed a regulation. And we’re allowed to regulate buildings, facilities, and events. But not just the Grounds.

So somebody who, this is a state highway here going through the University [she’s talking about University Avenue] somebody on that state highway can possess a weapon, they can get out of their car, they can walk around with their gun, but they can’t go into a building or a facility or an event.

I am talking with the University Architect, and then I would like to go to the Board with the possibility of having the Lawn declared a facility. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site, people are living in it, it’s an enclosed area with limited ingress and egress. We’re exploring this, and we’re also looking to see if there’d be any unforeseen consequences to doing that, things

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THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 2017 that we wouldn’t want to live with.

But as of August 11th, I don’t believe our police had the ability to stop open or concealed carry in that march, up until the point that things got out of hand, and the first punch got thrown. Then they declared it to be an illegal assembly. And at that point, boom, the alt-right basically disappeared into the shadows. But up to that point, I think that they were legally permitted to do what they did.

I have spent a lot of time in the legislature talking with legislators about limits on weapons at universities. I don’t believe we should have weapons at the University.

That’s just my position, and right now the law of the Commonwealth of Virginia does not agree with me on that point. That explains what happened with the weapons.

Risa, do you want to talk about the working group a little bit?

Risa Goluboff: Sure. Where to start? I don't know if you’ve read the emails I’ve sent and the website, so I don't really want to repeat, you know, all of that, but I would say that we see our task as looking at what happened so that we can make sure it never happens again. And I will say that, the first thing I would say is that it shouldn't have happened and I’m really sorry that it did, and I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. And I think we see our charge as both about open carry, you know that kind of logistical, practical responses that we need to move forward to think about the policies and review them, and think about how to make sure that everyone is safe going forward. And then on the longer term, to think about who we are as a community. We’re not the only university or the only institution in the U.S. that has a complicated past. How do we think about that past, how do we think about our future?

I think we’ve long done that.

We’ve been doing that in so many ways. The Memorial for Enslaved Laborers, the new names of buildings, you know, this is not a new conversation for us to have, but I think it takes on new urgency now. And so thinking about what that new urgency leads to, and how to think institutionally about what we want to do going forward.

I can say more, but I’ll stop there for now. You can ask more specific questions if you want.

CAMPUS SECURITY AND ALLEGED DISCRIMINATORY BEHAVIOR BY UPD Alexis Gravely: So, of course we’ve been reading your emails with the updates and things like that. So some students would argue that increasing the number of UPD officers on Grounds and their patrols isn't necessarily the way to make the University a better place, especially in light of the Latino Student Alliance’s statement on Sunday, alleging that students of

color on the Lawn were unfairly treated by UPD officers. So what are some other ways that the working group is looking to make Grounds safer and ensure those with bad intent aren't just wandering around?

Sullivan: Well I can tell you one thing we’ve done is to expand the ambassadors because the ambassadors had previously patrolled mostly off Grounds or near Grounds, so we now have them patrolling the Lawn area 24/7. They are not police officers, they’re not armed. But they can be sure that there’s nobody sneaking in there with evil intent, as you say. They’re there to help students.

Students need help, we want them to be able to get that help. We also hired the leading higher ed security consultant to come in, look at what we do, comprehensively top to bottom, and give us advice as to where we might have gaps. So it doesn't necessarily mean police, it could mean other things too. So we have layered security here, there are a lot of different things we’ve put in place for security, For example, the blue light system, much of which was paid for by the Parents’ Committee because the parents were concerned that students be able to get help when they need it.

So we’re looking at other ways that we can do that. We do maintain a continuing program of training for our police officers, and that particular incident you mentioned is under investigation.

Goluboff: I would add, in thinking about the policies, I don't

think like other universities, like the rest of the country, I think part of why this became such an important story is because a lot of people were taken by surprise by this threat. Not everyone, and it’s not to say there haven’t been racial threats of various kinds, but the violence and the brazenness,

I think part of why this became such an important story is because a lot of people were taken by surprise by this threat” - Law School Dean Risa Goluboff

the huge numbers, the unbelievable armory, like the whole picture. And I think we’re looking at the open carry as one piece of that. I think the second piece of that is the open flame, and thinking about the use of the torches and the meaning of the use of the torches. And, you know, we've had policies, but the police department has never been part of that process.

Right, so the police...our policies didn’t routinely inform the police who had approval or not approval, and so going forward, they will be informed. So that if there’s open flame, they will know whether its approved or not. There’s also this law about open flame devices used for intimidation. It wasn’t on our

I did lose my temper there, and I usually don’t do that” - Sullivan, talking about U.Va. Students United video.

know if you already talked about this. Was the open carry the first policy you talked about?

Sullivan: Yes. Goluboff: When I think about what happened and how do we go forward from that, the kind of big picture that I think about it in, is this is a kind of threat that we were not attuned to because it had been a kind of threat that hadn’t been posed, at least in the last century that I know of, the kinds of violence that happened on the Lawn in the 19th century I’m not familiar with it…

Sullivan: It’s where the Honor code came from.

Goluboff: Right, that’s my understanding, but I don't know the details, but I think we had an image of what threats look like. And we had a whole set of policies that were around that image. And I

that investigated and figure out what was going on.

Dodson: Was that brought to your attention on Sunday?

Sullivan: Yeah. The student involved wrote me.

U.VA. STUDENTS UNITED FACEBOOK LIVE VIDEO Reingold: So, a video was post-

radar screen because it hadn't been something that was on our radar screen. It’s a tragedy that it’s now on our radar screen. But, I think what we are thinking of is an attention to a kind of threat that we now have to respond to, and think anew about what the response looks like to these kinds of threats.

Mike Reingold: So, what would be your response to Latino Student Alliance’s statement alleging that students of color on the Lawn were unfairly treated by UPD officers?

Sullivan: I think that’s the same thing Alexis was saying.

Reingold: But I’m not sure if you guys directly responded to that.

Sullivan: Oh, well I said it was under investigation. Yeah. I corresponded almost immediately with the police department and Pat Lampkin’s office, so we could get

ed on U.Va. Students United Facebook page where they interviewed you — Sullivan: They didn’t interview me.

Reingold: Well, they came up to you and started asking you questions. But one thing that you did say within that essentially, was students also have a responsibility as well to tell the administration what they know. So what level of responsibility should students have in notifying people within the administration of potential events, and what responsibility should administration hold?

Sullivan: Well, let me tell you, first of all, I did lose my temper there, and I usually don’t do that, and I wrote a letter of apology to the student involved there. I didn’t mean to imply students were in any way responsible for what happened to them. The people who were responsible were the people who were wielding torches and pepper spray, and that’s where the responsibility lies. But, it is frustrating later on to have people say, “Well, we knew what was going to happen” when it’s not the case that University leadership necessarily knows what you know. In fact, I’d say it’s probably not at all likely that we know what you know.

And so, looking out for one another does mean elevating threats, if you’re aware of them. But I didn’t mean to imply those students were responsible for what happened to them because that’s simply not the case. Almost immediately, when the first tiki torch got thrown, which by the way, was thrown at Allen Groves, the police stepped in and declared it to be an illegal assembly. But not in time before other people got hurt.

ALLEGED KKK DONATION Thomas Roades: If we could, I’d love to get your response on one more of the demands. One of them mentioned that there was a $1,000 gift to the University’s centennial fund from the KKK in 1921, and they asked that that’s reinvested into minority groups on Grounds and in the community, and that

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part of our history is included in Bicentennial programming. Basically, do you acknowledge this gift?

The amount adjusted for inflation is about $12,000 so are there any plans to reinvest that money or are there any plans to include that sort of thing in Bicentennial programming?

Sullivan: I did ask the advancement office if they have any record of that, and it’s not clear that there was a gift. There was a pledge, payable over four years, and in that fourth year, the Klan nationally largely fell apart, so I don’t know that the money ever got paid. But that’s certainly not a gift that today we would accept.

I can’t be embarrassed on behalf of Mr. Alderman. I didn’t know him obviously, He died before I was born. I don’t know what motivated him. I do know that he had been part of the dedication of the Robert E. Lee statue. But that is a part of our past. As to what we do in terms of that money that we might or might not have received, that’s something we still need to have a discussion on. As I said, I’m not ready to talk about everything involved in the demand.

Goluboff: I would add one thing, which is I’ve been thinking about how does a university respond to something like this as opposed to a corporation or some other entity? And we have incredible talent here, and experts on historical memory, and architecture, and how we tell narratives about ourselves. We have all these students and faculty who have thought already a lot, and part of the bicentennial is thinking about this, how do you you grapple with a mixed history, which many universities have, which the United States has.

I teach Constitutional Law and the Constitution embedded slavery right in there. So we talk about, how do you embrace that document and also think about its flaws? I always talk about Martin Luther King, Thurgood Marshall, Barack Obama. They were what we call “constitutional perfectionists.” It’s flawed. How do you perfect it? How do you live with it?

How do you wrestle with it? And I think that’s true of our history, and this is one piece of that. When I think about where we’re looking for input, where we need to hear more voices of students, of faculty, of staff, of community members, thinking more about the historical questions and how do you live today with the different kinds of histories you have, some of which are positive and aspirational and part of the building of our nation, and some of which are really hard and complicated, and we’ve been struggling with and will continue to. I think that’s part of the answer to that question.

Read the full transcript at www.cavalierdaily.com

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An in-depth look at BSA demands Sullivan, other administrators respond to demands posed by the Black Student Alliance, numerous student groups Alexis Gravely, Eliza Haverstock, and Thomas Roades | Associate Editors On the evening of Aug. 21, the Black Student Alliance was joined by hundreds of students and community members in a peaceful march from the amphitheatre to the Thomas Jefferson statue north of the Rotunda to protest recent white nationalist events.

Before the march began, organizers asked those in attendance to face University President Teresa Sullivan, and read aloud to her a list of ten demands signed by various University groups before their march began. Just a few days later, the Student Council Executive Board endorsed the demands and Student Council representatives formally passed legislation in favor of the demands after a heated public comment session Tuesday evening.

According to Sullivan, the administration’s first step involved stricter enforcement of the existing University policy that prohibits the use of open flames. Sullivan said she had been unaware of the broad applicability of the University’s policy, having only seen it used for more innocuous purposes.

“I was aware of that policy to the extent that you couldn’t have candles in dorm rooms. That’s the part that I knew about … The fact that we had a more general open flame policy, I candidly was not aware of,” she said.

Sullivan said the University was alerted to the statute by a student after the rallies and will enforce it in the future.

“Now that’s pretty strong, and I have to say I wasn’t aware of this, but we are aware of it now and we’re going to make sure our police are aware of it too,” she said.

Along with these steps to restrict the use of open flames, Sullivan also said designating the Lawn as a University facility would prevent the carrying of firearms on the Lawn.

Charlottesville multicultural organizations; and include this racist history at U.Va. into education surrounding the Bicentennial Though the Office of Advancement was unable to be reached for comment, Sullivan said the office’s records did not clearly show an actual donation from the Klan to the University.

“There was a pledge, payable over four years, and in that last year, the Klan nationally largely fell apart, so I don’t know that the money ever got

The Cavalier Daily spoke with administrators and student leaders about their responses to the each one of the demands.

Demand 1: Remove the Confederate plaques on the Rotunda An appropriate place would be in a museum or in Special Collections A plaque entitled “Honor Roll” is installed on the Rotunda commemorating members of the University who died serving the Confederacy.

While University President Teresa Sullivan declined to address specific plans for removing the plaques on the Rotunda, she explained an effort she said has been underway long before the events of Aug. 11 and 12 to add another plaque recognizing University students who fought for the Union during the Civil War. “For about a year and a half, a group of alumni and some people at the John Nau Center for Civil War History have been working on a parallel plaque, which is about U.Va. students who fought and died for the Union,” she said.

Sullivan praised the effort to add a plaque memorializing Union soldiers from the University for helping to unearth a new, more positive detail about the University’s history.

“I don’t think anybody knew there was anyone here who fought for the Union,” she said. “We are thinking about the issues that are related to how we commemorate our history, and what it is we commemorate.

Demand 2: Declare the lawn a residential space Concealed arms and open flames should not be allowed within this space.

The Aug. 11 white nationalist march throughout Grounds was characterized by marchers’ use of torches, while numerous protesters throughout the weekend carried weapons both openly and concealedly.

RICHARD DIZON | THE CAVALIER DAILY

Hundreds attended the “March to Reclaim Our Grounds” on Aug. 21 to denounce recent white nationalist events.

She said police would be notified of the policy in the future, and that they would be put in touch with the Office of Environmental Health and Safety — the office which approves safe uses of open flames — in order to prevent unauthorized uses.

In addition to University policy, the University Police Department and administration could use a section of the Virginia Legal Code to prevent similar torchlit rallies in the future. § 18.2-423.01. states that “[a]ny person who, with the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons, burns an object on a highway or other public place in a manner having a direct tendency to place another person in reasonable fear or apprehension of death or bodily injury is guilty of a Class 6 felony.”

She said the University has the authority to regulate buildings, facilities and events within the University — including banning possession of firearms in those areas. Declaring the Lawn a University facility would give the administration the authority to extend those regulations to that area.

“I am talking with the University Architect, and then I would like to go to the Board with the possibility of having the Lawn declared a facility,” she said. “It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, people are living in it, it’s an enclosed area with limited ingress and egress.”

Demand 3: Acknowledge the $1,000 gift to the University’s Centennial Fund received from the KKK in 1921; re-invest this amount, adjusted for inflation, into existing U.Va. and

paid,” she said.

Given the disputed facts regarding whether the $1,000 was actually donated, Sullivan did not say there was any plan to re-invest the money — approximately $12,000 adjusted for inflation — to any multicultural organizations.

“What we do in terms of that money that we might or might not have received, that’s something we still need to have a discussion about,” she said.

However, University Law School Dean Risa Goluboff said she believes the alleged gift could play a role in programming for the bicentennial celebrations.

“We have incredible talent here, and experts on historical memory, and architecture, and how we tell narratives about ourselves,” she said. “Part of the bicentennial is thinking about this,

how do you you grapple with a mixed history, which many universities have, which the United States has.”

Demand 4: White supremacist hate groups, particularly U.Va. alumni Jason Kessler and Richard Spencer, should be explicitly denounced and banned from campus. They have already incited and perpetrated violence against students past the point of free speech Spencer and Kessler have made headlines as leaders in the white nationalist movement that led to the events of Aug. 11 and 12. Spencer, the head of the “alt-right” National Policy Institute, and Kessler, the organizer of the “Unite the Right” rally, both attended the torchlit march held on Grounds the night before the Aug. 12 rally.

According to University policy PRM-017, protests and demonstrations are permitted on outdoor University property as long as the protest is peaceful and does not disrupt normal operations.

“The University would have to prove that before such demonstrations, that it would be disruptive to the normal operations of the University,” John Rutherford, president of The Rutherford Institute, said. “The problem is, when you have a late-night ‘walk through the campus’ or whatever, are you disrupting the normal operations of the school? Probably not.”

Rutherford said banning Kessler and Spencer from Grounds would be more difficult if an appearance by them was sponsored by a University group. According to Rutherford, that type of policy would be in violation of the First Amendment.

“You cannot have content discrimination or viewpoint discrimination — in other words, you ban people because of what they’re saying or what they believe,” Rutherford said. “The First Amendment has generally held that you can’t do that.”

However, Rutherford said, if a demonstration were to get out of control and disrupt people from going into buildings and walking around Grounds, then at that point, the University Police Department can step in and move the demonstration out or to a different area.

“If you write a policy that says, ‘we only won’t allow white supremacists,’ that policy is going to be Constitutionally-suspect, in my opinion,” Rutherford said.

Demand 5: All students, regardless of area of study, should have required education (either inside or outside the classroom) on white supremacy, colonization and slavery as they directly relate to Thomas Jefferson, the University, and the city of Charlottesville.

The current curriculum changes only affect the College of Arts and Scienc-

www.cavalierdaily.com • NEWS

THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 2017 es and allow students to focus in on aspects of difference of their choice College faculty voted in 2016 to pilot changes to the general education curriculum beginning with a cohort of students in the current first-year class.

According to the College’s website, it is comprised of three main components — Engagements, Literacies and Disciplines.

Other schools at the University have and are still working to implement education on diversity and difference. Nursing Dean Dorothy Fontaine said in an email to The Cavalier Daily that the Nursing school already has several courses that discuss diversity and inclusion and are working to strengthen their offerings.

“The School of Nursing has several courses that deal with racial inequity, health care disparities and social determinants of health including race,” Fontaine said. “Our faculty is having creative dialogues on how we can address the issues the BSA is raising.”

Curry School Dean Bob Pianta said in an email to The Cavalier Daily that faculty in the Curry School have been working on implementing bias and inclusion-related discussions into curriculum for some time. Pianta said the Curry School has the “Common Read,” a program in which faculty and students read the same book related to diversity and inclusions and then participate in discussion groups and activities outside of class.

Pianta said because of the structure of the Curry School and its academic programs, they do not have “a specific common or core curriculum across the school,” which is why the Common Read was adopted.

Commerce Dean Carl Zeithaml also said although Commerce students begin the programs as upperclassmen, the school still focuses on diversity education. “...We do not have students enrolled in our program until they are third-year students, and these topics are really outside of our area of expertise,” Zeithaml said. “We already have an emphasis on diversity and inclusion from a business perspective, such as our required training session for all third-year students next week and various other courses, events and curriculum throughout the year.”

Demand 6: U.Va.’s historical landscape must be balanced. The statue of Jefferson serves as an emblem of white supremacy, and should be re-contextualized with a plaque to include that history. Additionally, more buildings named after prominent white supremacists, eugenicists, or slaveholders should be renamed after people of marginalized groups Black Student Alliance President and fourth-year College student said in an interview with The Cavalier Daily that the events of Aug. 11th and 12th show the importance of some of these demands.

“What we’re doing here is addressing … The current moment is showing how important it is to remove these symbolic facets of white supremacy,” Gobar said. “Plaques, names of buildings, things like that.”

While Sullivan did not directly

CELINA HU | THE CAVALIER DAILY

The statue of Thomas Jefferson north of the Rotunda is the subject of one of the 10 demands. Student groups have called for the statue to be recontextualized with a plaque.

address the recontextualization of the statue of Thomas Jefferson, she said University administration “is thinking about the issues related to how we commemorate our history, and what it is that we commemorate.”

She said, in general, her approach has been that the University should add to the knowledge of its past and find new ways to commemorate its history.

She cited the Memorial of Enslaved Laborers as an example of this approach, which she said is currently in the fundraising stage. The Board of Visitors has already approved the memorial and the design.

The renaming of buildings is an ongoing process and one University administration is currently pursuing.

Sullivan said when the Board of Visitors meets on Sept. 13, they will rename Jordan Hall — named for prominent eugenicist Harvey E. Jordan — for Vivian Pinn, who was the only female, African-American student to graduate from the Medical school in 1967.

Sullivan briefly addressed other buildings who have already been named after people of marginalized groups, including Skipwith Hall, named for Peyton Skipwith who was a slave that quarried stone for buildings at the University and Gibbons House, a first-year residence dorm named for slaves William and Isabella Gibbons.

Demand 7: Expand the working group on University response to the events of Aug. 11-12, 2017 to represent students of color and those affected by the violence of Aug. 11-2 On Aug. 18, Sullivan announced in a University-wide email the creation of a working group of deans and other University community members to lead efforts in assessing the University’s response to the events of Aug. 11 and 12, led by Goluboff.

The deans in the working group are the deans of the 11 schools and the libraries that comprise the university.

Deans from admission and central administration, for example, are excluded from the working group. Goluboff

believes this smaller group is vital in promoting efficient and effective action.

“When President Sullivan created the working group, she created it so that it could move quickly and do work expeditiously. I think if you’ve read what we’ve done in the last 10 days, we’ve done a lot. And I’m proud of what we’ve done,” Goluboff said. “I think there are pros and cons to having a small groups, and I think the pros are we can move. The potential con would be making sure you hear voices, and that’s something, we absolutely have to hear voices, but I don’t think they have to be on the working group.”

Bryanna Miller, the student member of the Board of Visitors, is a member of the working group tasked with making the student perspective heard.

Additionally, Goluboff has met with various students and had more meetings planned in order for students to voice their concerns regarding the group.

“We’re thinking about the ways in which we can create other venues to hear voices in addition to the community input forum that we have on the website, which we’ve gotten many emails and ideas and suggestions from,” Goluboff said.

She said she believes allowing more students to directly join the working group would hinder progress, but hopes they will continue to share their concerns, ideas and viewpoints in order to best represent the student population.

“I actually think the working group as set up is in a good form, and that the reason a student might want to be on the group is to have a voice,” Goluboff said. “They already have a voice through Bryanna, but I also want to make sure they have even more of a voice through various means, but I’m not sure that it’s on the working group itself.”

Demand 8: As of last year, the percentage of African American undergraduate students enrolled in the University was 6.4%. The University must take action to ensure that as a public

university, this number is reflective of state demographics at a 12% proportion. Given the impact of recent events, action on this step is crucial.

Gobar noted that the disparities mentioned in some of these demands affects a lot of different groups.

“Although we’re using that as an example, it’s not just African American students,” Gobar said. “But I would say that I think they are going to be disproportionately affected by policies in terms of recruiting and enrollment moving forward.”

According to Maurice Apprey, Dean of the Office of African American Affairs, the frequently quoted 6.4 percent figure for African American undergraduate enrollment at the University is a misleading percentage. In fall 2016, there was a total on-Ground African-American student enrollment of 8.14 percent, with 9.2 percent within the first-year class. This apparent discrepancy is a result of a change in the Federal requirements for counting that occurred in 2009, thus making pre-2009 data incomparable to data shown in previous years.

“If you’re Hispanic and African American, don’t ask me why, Hispanic trumps African American. You can also check the Mixed box. Tiger Woods and President Obama probably wouldn’t be counted,” Apprey said.

Apprey said he cautioned against quick action, and instead called on the administration to carefully plan how to best increase the enrollment of African-American students. As a public state institution, there are financial barriers that prevent a merit scholarship system that Apprey believes would be beneficial to retaining highly-qualified minority students to top private universities.

“If the administration of the University of Virginia can do something about increasing the number, they’ll have to address two things — merit scholarships to retain the best and the brightest, and two, provide more resources and more infrastructural support for when the students come,” Apprey said. “You can’t do it the other

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way, you cant use the percentage, have the students arrive, and then figure out what yo do. That’s not how you make decisions with this. You’ve got to anticipate, prepare and solve the problem.”

Francesca Callicotte, a third-year College student and president of United for Undergraduate Socioeconomic Diversity (UFUSED), said she signed onto the BSA demands because UFUSED has a specific interest in increasing the percentage of minority students at the University. She said she believes a long term approach would be more productive.

They didn’t say, ‘reach 12 percent in a year,’ it was stating that we want you to recognize and put us as a priority for the next years,” Callicotte said. “I think it’s completely feasible because they gave a lot of legroom for the administration to decide how they’re going to achieve these goals, and what is a respectable amount of time in order to do so. I expect the administration to respond, I’m hoping that the administration responds, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t.”

Demand 9: In 2016, the percentage of African American faculty was 3%. This percentage is unacceptable and disproportionate to the number of African American students. This disparity exists across all minority groups. Thus, proportion of faculty for an underrepresented group should strive to match the proportion of the student population of that group at minimum As with increasing African-American enrollment on the student level, Apprey said the practical solution to this low percentage of African-American faculty at the University requires a long-term process and attitude shift rooted in the undergraduate level.

“The answer to me is not going to be in the product, the numerical product, but in the process, the pipeline process,” Apprey said.

According to him, the statistics for diverse faculty 35 years ago was at or below four percent, just as it is today.

Rather than a race issue, he thinks it stems from fundamental lack of interest in pursuing a doctoral education.

“How do you get undergraduate students to get excited about research and other forms of inquiry in the undergraduate years, sustain it at the masters and doctoral and postdoctoral level so they can be prepared for the responsibilities of the faculty world,” Apprey said. “It’s a national problem, and a process issue.”

Demand 10: Issue a strategic and actionable diversity plan, with input sourced from minority student leadership, as done by peer institutions such as Georgetown University, Brown University, and Virginia Tech.

This plan should include a special emphasis on improving diversity and inclusion for faculty, staff, and students of color, as well as relations with the Charlottesville community Apprey said these plans already exist.

“We just have to publish it,” he said. “All schools have them.”

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FOCUS

THE CAVALIER DAILY

Nazi, communist speakers found platform at U.Va. in 1963

Over 50 years ago, during the spring semester of 1963, two particularly controversial speakers came to the University drawing criticism from all levels of the community.

On Feb. 7, 1963, The Cavalier Daily reported that the John Randolph Society, a conservative debating society active at the University in the 1960s, had invited Gus Hall, the secretary of the American Communist Party, and George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder and commander of the American Nazi Party, to speak at what was then known as Cabell Hall (today it is called Old Cabell Hall). The society’s stated purpose of their scheduled appearances was to inform students of the threat posed by Rockwell and Hall’s respective political ideologies.

The Randolph Society invites Nazi, Communist speakers to Grounds

Hall spoke at the University on Feb. 8 and Rockwell came on Feb. 14.

Henry Curry, then the vice president of the Randolph Society, wrote an article in the Feb. 20, 1963 issue of The Cavalier Daily about his experiences meeting Hall and Rockwell in an article titled, “Hall, Rockwell Show Many Differences.” He described them both as notable particularly for the interesting contrast they drew to one another.

“Both Hall and Rockwell had a lot of praise for today’s youth,” Curry wrote. “In his press conference Hall stated that he was glad that today’s young people were probing in both directions — left and right.”

Means is not certain that he actually attended Rockwell’s lecture, but he vividly remembers the audience’s reaction to Gus Hall’s lecture. Although Hall filled the Cabell Hall auditorium to capacity, many of his speech’s attendees found his ideology repugnant.

“There was a lot of booing — I remember very distinctly,” Means said. “I don’t remember if I went to Rockwell’s speech — I found it distasteful to even attend something that featured the Nazi Party.

But there was a lot of derisive reaction to it, and I suspect it would have been led heavily by fraternity people in those days — they made fun of him and did the same thing with Gus Hall.”

Stephen Barney, a 1964 University alumnus who attended both Hall’s and Rockwell’s

VICTORIA GIRON | THE CAVALIER DAILY

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Katja Cresanti | Senior Writer

speeches, recalls the student reaction as disapproving.

“Rockwell was the most memorable — he was roundly booed many times,” Barney said. “He cleverly asked the audience who had actually read ‘Mein Kampf,’ and I saw no other hand than mine go up. It is the most boring piece of drivel ever written.”

Even the invitation of these men to the University came as something of a shock to the student body. According to Barney, it was perhaps the controversy surrounding their appearances, or a natural sense of curiosity, that led over 1,200 students to pack the Cabell auditorium on the night of Gus Hall’s appearance 50 years ago.

“I presume that a great many came out of curiosity and the excitement of controversy,” Barney said. “In those days, there weren't that many interesting activities in evenings at U.Va., aside from partying. People tended to go to things, especially if famous people were speaking.”

The Cavalier Daily reported that Hall drew an audience so large, nearly 500 additional students were turned away at the door.

“I mean, this was a bombshell by the standards of what I thought Charlottesville was, what I thought U.Va. was, and it was not to be repeated during my five years there,” Means said. “This was about as political as I saw the school get.”

Gene Blumenreich, another classmate of Barney and Means, recalls some more specifics of Hall and Rockwell’s appearances at the University in 1963.

“Gus Hall was a feeble old man…that was my impression then,” Blumenreich said. “He was clearly no threat to anyone and talked about freedom of speech, which he claimed was being denied to him. I think there were several attempts in the 50s and early 60s to jail him.”

Blumenreich described Rockwell as the more troubling of the two.

“George Lincoln Rockwell was a neo-Nazi, just like the people who marched last Saturday in Charlottesville,” Blumenreich said in a phone interview Aug. 23. “I think he carefully chose what he was going to talk about to take out some of the more racist and obnoxious parts of his talk. So he was a controversial person, but his talk at Virginia was not all that controversial.”

Barney entered the University with the first class of Echols Scholars in 1960 and was a third-year at the time that Hall and Rockwell came to speak. He recalls the large crowds they drew.

“It would not have occurred to me or to any students, I think, that attending these speeches gave any insight into one's political beliefs,” Barney said. “These were big-deal 'events' and inspired curiosity.”

“I always had the impression that the real purpose of the invitation was to test the U.Va. administration,” Blumenreich added. “They passed.”

The University did not prevent these

controversial figures from speaking on Grounds. The Feb. 12, 1963, issue of The Cavalier Daily published an article on the controversy.

“In his first public comment on Hall’s appearance, President [Edgar] Shannon stated, by means of sheets given to those entering Cabell Hall, that all members of the University ‘should be able to hear the views of any speaker without interference,’” the article reported.

The Board of Visitors, however, did not hide their disapproval of the Randolph Society’s invitations. The Cavalier Daily wrote about a board resolution dissuading further selection of controversial speakers.

“The Board of Visitors admonished the John Randolph Society, and all other student organizations, to use greater discretion in the future as to the choice of guest speakers,” the article reported.

The Cavalier Daily also reported the invitations of Rockwell and Hall drew criticism from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, which ran an editorial encouraging students to "stay away in droves.”

...this was a bombshell by the standards of what I thought Charlottesville was, what I thought U.Va. was...

MLK speaks later that spring

Hall and Rockwell were not the last controversial speakers who would appear at U.Va. that year.

That same semester, there was additional controversy when the Jefferson chapter of the Virginia Council on Human Relations invited Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to speak in Cabell Hall. The organization was responsible for bringing to Grounds numerous speakers who opposed Virginia’s racial segregation policy.

Wesley Harris, then-chairman for the Human Rights Relations Council, was instrumental in bringing King to Grounds. Harris graduated from the University in 1964 with an engineering degree and now works as a professor at MIT. “U.Va. in my experience, 1960-1964, was a very racist environment with little, maybe no, support for African Americans,” Harris said. “There were no black women on campus — or Grounds, as we called it. We were not allowed to major in any of the possible programs in the College. There were no black faculty. There were no black administrators.”

Pat Joynes, another University alumnus who was a student in 1963, said in an email to The Cavalier Daily that he recalls seeing only a single civil rights protest, at the University Theatre on the Corner, during his time at the University.

“Less than five students with placards were protesting that blacks could only be seated in the bal-

www.cavalierdaily.com • FOCUS

THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 2017 cony, not the main floor,” Joynes said. “I remember a great student apathy regarding civil rights.

Student priorities were social, not political, from my point of view.”

Although King's speech at Cabell Hall on March 25, 1963 was not met with protests among the student body or administration, Harris said King’s appearance was not greeted respectfully.

“King did not get a full house — he got about 600-800 people,” Means said. “I don’t think people like Edgar Shannon showed up.

He was the president then, and he probably should have. It was a kind of passive-aggressive response.”

According to Harris and Means, the University was a dramatically different institution 50 years ago, at a time when the Civil Rights Movement was gaining traction and Virginia was still in the middle of massive resistance to it.

“I do put Martin Luther King, Jr., in a different category [than

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Hall or Rockwell], because while he was controversial at the school at the time, it was because of the extremely conservative people in the student body and not for what he said or did,” Blumenreich said.

“I think it’s clear that history has borne out his position.”

The community’s response to Rockwell and Hall

Although their opinions were expressed quite differently, University students in 1963 looked upon Rockwell with similar distaste as most students today look upon David Duke.

“The student response today appears to be vocal,” Means said.

“It was not terribly vocal at that time, and it was still fairly shackled to conservative ideology and conservative convictions. There weren’t people marching around in torchlight parades up and down the Lawn to protest or to support George Lincoln Rockwell’s presence. It was an understated reaction.”

The Cavalier Daily archives

of inviting the man. The rest of us ought to exercise our prerogative of staying away.”

Distaste for Rockwell and Hall seems to have been nearly universal among University students at the time, but there remained a diversity of opinion about how to react to their appearances on Grounds.

Some students advocated boycotting the talks, while others attended.

Although many of the University’s students at that time disapproved of Communism and Nazism, Hall and Rockwell still managed to fill their lecture halls.

The University considers a path forward

Goluboff also wrote a letter to the University community in which she described the working group’s plan to reallocate certain resources toward both short and long-term solutions.

“The General Counsel’s office is already exploring revisions to our policies regarding activities that can be constitutionally proscribed on our Grounds,” Goluboff wrote.

“The University is assigning significant resources, additional staff members and police, both visible and not visible, to ensure safety and security across Grounds as the semester begins.”

Goluboff described the tasks ahead of the committee as geared toward both the short-term and the long-term, all concerned with the security of the University and its students — not from the danger of disagreeable ideologies, but from physical danger, so that students and the broader community may continue to engage in respectful and productive dialogue.

“Going forward, we intend to use the energy unleashed by this moment to advance the University’s commitment to democracy, social justice, inclusion, and equity,” wrote Goluboff. “We have at our disposal the personnel, the will, and the resources to do not only what is needed but what is right.”

Some refreshing juice just around the Corner A nutritious power snack in a central location

LIFE I had already had lunch when I was walking down the Corner, on the way to 1515 to do some work, when I decided I was still hungry. I was wanting something that would leave me feeling refreshed afterwards. A coffee wouldn’t suffice, but a full meal would be too heavy. I passed by Corner Juice, and figured something fruity would be the perfect post-lunch snack.

I ordered the Tree Bowl, which was the blended base of acai, banana, mango and almond milk topped with blueberries, mango, strawberries and honey. I added granola — a decision I later appreciated, as the crunchy texture was necessary to balance the otherwise soft concoction. Served in a little to-go box, my order was perfectly portable to take to 1515.

I’ll begin with my only negative comment. While very delicious, and certainly refreshing, it was not something that I could not more or less imitate at home. Of course, my homemade version would not have the aesthetic, nor the perfect consistency, because I do not know how long the blender should be on, how much of each ingredient should go into the blended base, etc. However, I feel as though I could create a similar flavor at home and save a lot of money.

But I do have many reasons to advocate for eating at Corner Juice. First of all, the ease of having a perfectly crafted fruit dish prepared for you in

contain numerous op-eds expressing a wide range of opinions on the speakers’ appearances. The letters to the editor included in the Feb. 12 publication express a variety of viewpoints and arguments.

“It is the duty of society to actively encourage all forms of expression however repugnant they may seem so that these doctrines may be judged by their own lights,” Kenny wrote.

Another student, then firstyear law student Edward H. Powers, echoed Kenny’s sentiment in another piece titled “Right to Speak.”

“The important point is not what Gus Hall said, but that he was allowed to say it,” Powers wrote.

“His views were rejected, but at least they were heard.”

Robert Langbaum, an associate English professor, held a different opinion.

“There is no question here of giving Rockwell’s ‘ideas’ a hearing, since he has only one theme — hate,” Langbaum wrote in a letter to the editor. “The John Randolph Society exercised its prerogative

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Jamie Albert | Feature Writer about 50 seconds in the middle of a busy day is very convenient. I often do not have time to go home for meals or a snack if I forget to pack them in the morning, but I can usually squeeze in a quick trip to the Corner.

Secondly, the flavor was rich. It was obvious that the fruit was very fresh, that only the best ingredients were used and that different flavors were carefully selected to be mixed. I can see myself craving Corner Juice in the future, not only for its convenience factor, but also for the taste itself. The granola sprinkled on top was divine, and I may go back in a few days to see if they sell the granola separately. It was sweet but not overwhelmingly so, and perfectly crunchy to counterbalance the texture of the blended base.

Finally, the space inside the restaurant is very conducive for studying.

The windows at the front let in plenty of natural light, and there is light chatter but nothing overwhelmingly loud.

I think this is a very valuable aspect of Corner Juice, as students are often looking for places to do work without having to be in the rather intense library atmosphere.

All in all, I would recommend Corner Juice for days when you are in a hurry and do not have time to go home and have a homemade meal, but still want something nutritious and filling. And most importantly, be sure to add granola to whatever order you make!

JAMIE ALBERT | THE CAVALIER DAILY

I ordered the Tree Bowl, which was the blended base of acai, banana, mango and almond milk topped with blueberies, strawberries and honey.

I added granola.

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THE CAVALIER DAILY

LIFE • www.cavalierdaily.com

Top 10 U.Va. activities that could be varsity sports Some things are so difficult, you should get a medal Ashley Botkin | Top Ten Writer

1. Finding a table in Nau Hall

Nau is one of my favorite buildings on Grounds. The big windows create an open, airy feeling, the views are beautiful and there’s a Starbucks that takes Plus Dollars. Unfortunately, it seems that every other University student also shares my sentiments. If you want a table next to the big windows, you basically have to stalk the area like a lion stalks his prey in the savanna. Or my cat with a toy mouse in the kitchen, whichever suits your stalking style.

You have to be fast enough to keep an eye on the seats on all three levels and strike as soon as you see an open table.

If you can get one on the first try, you deserve a spot in the hall of fame and your face in a Coca-Cola-sponsored advertisement, just like all the other athletes.

2. Braving the dumpling line

Part of being a University student is eating dumps, but the necessary evil inherent in these delicious fried delicacies is the line of people you have to wait in to get some. Around lunchtime, people can be backed up all the way to the stairs of Minor Hall, and the sun is trying to melt everything into the ground, but you must remain brave! Start the line strong, finish the line strong. You will soon be rewarded with the taste of fried rice and dough and sweet, sweet Thai iced tea.

3. Figuring out the buses

Somehow the TransLoc app never seems to predict the exact right time the bus will stop at your dorm. Check it once, and the bus is coming in 15 minutes. Check it in five, and the bus is coming now! It’s here! Why aren’t you running?

Is this stop inbound or outbound? Why do the buses always wait six minutes at the Alderman Library stop? Although I have many questions and complaints about the UTS and its app, its shortcomings are nothing compared to those of the Charlottesville Area Transit bus service app. I do like that it combines UTS and CAT routes, but the live-tracking system is confusing and all the stops seem to be abbreviated.

And that’s not to mention the aesthetic needs a bit of an upgrade too. If you can get where you need to go without constantly checking your phone, then I applaud you.

Streaking the Lawn is inherently hard because it usually only happens when there’s a reasonable amount of alcohol in your body. The full stretch is also half a mile. Half. A. Mile. You may be scoffing at me right now but try running that naked and drunk. Not so easy now is it, Sober Reader? If you can make it from the Rotunda stairs, down to Homer and back without a scratch, you deserve a medal. Maybe only a medal made out of beer caps, but a medal nonetheless.

6. Getting into UGuides

I will admit I tried out for University Guides Service. I will also admit I was not accepted. Is anyone ever accepted? I feel like I’ve only met UGuide rejectees but never actual members. Do they even exist?

If you are one of the few who get in each semester, I would like to congratulate you. They should give you a full ride just for making it in. You basically have as much training and act as much a University celebrity as athletes anyway.

5. Taking an 8 a.m.

If you end up with an 8 a.m. class, I’m so sorry. No one should have to be up that early for anything. Every day will be an inner battle of whether you really need to be in class that day or if you could just hit snooze one (eight) more time(s). But I believe in you.

7. Getting a drink at Bilt during Survivor Hour

8. Finding good food in the dining halls

For those of you that have been to The Biltmore, you know the struggles of getting the bartender’s attention during the peak of Survivor Hour.

By the time you even get your $2 rail, the hour is pretty much through. To master Survivor Hour, you have to train like the athletes. You have to earn your drink. To increase your chances of getting a spot at the bar, buy a football training dummy so you can practice shoving people out of the way.

Practice your order for days before your trip to Bilt so you waste no time at the front of the line. Remember, there’s no crying in Survivor Hour and there is no ‘we’ in ‘drInk,’ just an ‘I’.

When you first tour the University, the dining halls do a good job of tricking you into thinking the food is actually good. The desserts are fresh and the pizza is steaming and there are more options than you know what to do with. But as the under-salted meals go by, you start to realize the options repeat week by week and you’ve been eating the same thing for days. Although you will be weary and craving a home-cooked meal, your perseverance will eventually reward you when you finally find that one meal worthy of eating again.

10. Navigating the sidewalks

During classes, the sidewalks are clear. The birds chirp, the sun shines and even the little squirrels seem cheery as you walk by. In between classes, children scream, sirens wail and a tornado forms in the distance.

Trying to avoid being shoved off the sidewalk by the oncoming tide of students is like completing an obstacle course, and somehow you always end up behind a group that takes up the entire walkway no matter how hard you try. And if you do end up tripping in the traffic, it’s not how you fall but how you get back up.

9. Smelling good the first three weeks of school

Backpack sweat is real, my friends.

So is knee pit sweat, eyelid sweat and I-didn’t-even-know-my-body-couldproduce-all-this sweat. If you thought you could stay fresh and lovely the first few weeks of school, think again.

There is no escaping the funk. Use this time of year to discover the best paths to class that are within a reasonable range of A.C. This knowledge will come in handy later in the year when the cold hurts your face or rainstorms practically drown you.

4. Streaking the Lawn

SEAN CASSAR | THE CAVALIER DAILY

www.cavalierdaily.com • LIFE

THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 2017

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Locals, students enjoy Sunset Series at Carter Mountain Weekly event boasts live music, food and beverages Gracie Kreth | Life Editor “It’s something we started here about eight years ago,” said Cynthia Chiles, the owner of Carter Mountain Orchard. “We have such a beautiful view of the area and people have asked us to watch the sunset so we decided to open one day a week so that people can be up here in the evening and and enjoy the mountains after our regular business hours.”

From the beginning of May until the end of September, Carter Mountain Orchard hosts what is known as the Thursday Evening Sunset Series.

From 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., the orchard remains open for the public to watch the sunset over Charlottesville. With food and beverages, including wine and Bold Rock hard cider, the venue also hosts live bands from the area.

“All the bands are local,” Chiles said. “Many of them play for us every year, but we also bring in some new bands, new talent, and mix it up a bit.”

The Sunset Series is open to everyone and has free of admission and parking.

“No admission charge and no parking charge,” Chiles said. “Really it can be as affordable as you like. We don’t charge anyone to appear.”

The event brings people of all ages to the orchard. The music is always appropriate, and the atmosphere is family-friendly. Attracting parents, children, local business people and University students, Chiles said the crowd can range from a couple 100 to a 1,000 on any given Thursday night, depending on the weather.

Chiles called the atmosphere fun and festive as it brings locals together to enjoy each other’s company and the beauty of Charlottesville.

“I think people here are very accepting,” Chiles said. “There are going to be people here that are young folks to older folks and everybody does their thing. People in this town like live music and appreciate being outdoors and nature, and I think it kind of fits the bill.”

Despite its distance from Grounds, third-year College student Kathryn

Novak said the Sunset Series also brings the University together. Novak and a few of her friends attended the event last week.

“I saw pretty much everyone I know and everyone I have ever met at U.Va.,” Novak said. “It really brings people together.”

Third-year College student Rebecca Soistmann has been to Thursday evening program multiple times this summer and spoke about the series as a good escape from University life.

“It’s a very good way to destress from the college atmosphere and get out of the U.Va. bubble a little bit,” Soistman said. “I love nature and the sunset and it’s just a really good time to be out with friends.”

“You sit on top of a mountain and drink a glass of wine or hard cider and have food and listen to music and look out over the twinkling lights of the [Charlottesville] and the sunset,” Chiles said. “You can’t do that everywhere.”

COURTESY SARA HALL

From 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., the orchard remains open for the public to watch the sunset over Charlottesville.

Local race for U.Va. Cancer Center Breast Care Program Charlottesville Women’s Four Miler will host some 3,000 runners Julie Bond | Life Editor COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

University students likely think of Foxfield as synonymous with a day of red cups, pastel clothing and little to no (horse) racing. However, every Labor Day Saturday, this location is home to the largest all-women’s race in Virginia — the Charlottesville Women’s Four Miler.

Hosted by the Charlottesville Track Club, the race will start and finish at Foxfield and should include over 3,000 runners. Through its 24-year tenure, the race has seen over 48,000 runners and has raised $3.5 million for the U.Va. Cancer Center Breast Care Program. Last year alone, the Four Miler raised $310,000 for the program.

The money goes towards funding care for breast cancer patients in Virginia, many of whom are treated at the University hospital. In the past, funds have gone towards things like paying for mammograms and doing on the spot readings so patients do not have to make multiple trips to a facility where they can get treatment. This is particularly helpful for women forced to walk or find a bus to transport them to a treatment facility.

“Especially in southwest Virginia, it’s hard to get [patients] to come back,” race founder and director Cyn-

thia Lorenzoni said. Her mother suffered from breast cancer.

Although the Four Miler has been around since 1983, it has only been connected to the U.Va. Cancer Center since 1996. Today, the end of the race features the “Motivational Mile,” in which anyone can donate $50 to put up a poster in memory of a patient or survivor of breast cancer.

Cynthia’s daughter Audrey Lorenzoni spoke to the importance of this part of the race.

“One of the coolest things about the race every year is watching the women finish and finish in groups,” Audrey said. “A lot of the women will pull down their motivational mile posters for their mom or whoever they made the poster for and will cross the finish line holding hands with it.”

The race offers the option to sign up as an individual or as a team. Some of the teams are mother-daughter pairs.

Audrey has been volunteering with the race since she graduated from the University in 2009, but her mother has been involved since the race’s inception. Cynthia and her husband Mark Lorenzoni founded Ragged Mountain Running Company, a shoe

and running apparel store located on Elliewood Avenue, in 1982. They began looking into putting on races almost immediately and were disappointed by the lack of races for which the police shut down roads. The Lorenzonis went to the track club, where Cynthia was on the board at the time, and asked why there wasn’t a race where the roads were closed down.

“They go, ‘they’ll never let you do it,’” Cynthia said. “I think they had tried and had a little problem. So we were like, ‘when was the last time somebody asked, right, because you won’t know until you ask.’”

The couple got the race approved and decided to have it at Foxfield, where there was a relatively flat stretch of Garth Road.

The race runs a mile west from the main fate of Foxfield and then goes back past Foxfield and runs a mile towards town, then comes back again.

These two hairpin turns and the common middle allow runners to see and cheer for other participants going the other way. First-year nursing graduate student Rachel Ward said this is one of the best parts of the race. Ward first ran the Women’s Four Miler when she was eight and has won the race seven

times since then.

“You never feel isolated,” Ward said. “It’s awesome because there’s always, always people cheering for you in both directions. You’re cheering for them; they’re cheering for you.”

Ward’s favorite part of the race is the gradual downhill in the last mile, where her high school cross country team always stands to cheer. Ward also works at Ragged Mountain Running Company with the Lorenzonis. She will not be participating in the race this year due to injury, but will miss the experience.

“This is an experience you can’t get anywhere else and something that no one should leave Charlottesville without having done,” Ward said. “It’s so much more than a foot race. It’s part carnival; there’s just like this festivity about it that I feel like is only rivaled by a concert or some other kind of event.”

Afterwards, participants and volunteers often hang out at Foxfield to eat, listen to music and enjoy the day.

Although the race takes only female runners, anyone can volunteer. The all-women environment is meant to make the race a unique experience.

“It’s very empowering; it’s very

emotional,” Cynthia said. “When the gun goes off it’s just a sea of women.”

Cynthia’s experiences with all women’s races later in life did lead her to want to put on a similar race.

“I was running in all these all-women races back in the early ‘80s all over the country and it was totally different,” Cynthia said. “The running boom was really getting started.”

All women’s races have not always been the norm for Cynthia, who ran competitively for years. In high school, she would show up to run races and not be allowed to enter. The race officials would let women run the course, but often refused to give them race bibs and count them as participants.

In high school, she ran in the woods because she didn’t want anyone to see her running. Since, she has competed all over the country, including racing in the Olympic trials. Today, she runs for enjoyment.

The race will take place this Saturday, Sept. 2 at 8:00 a.m. The race welcomes people of all skill levels and final registration will take place at John Paul Jones Arena Friday, Sept. 1 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.

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SPORTS

THE CAVALIER DAILY

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The three Keys to Football

Virginia versus William & Mary — a breakdown CD Sports Staff The Virginia football team will kick off its season Saturday with a game against in-state Revamped offensive line rival William & Mary at Scott Stadium. With a long offseason, it’s been awhile since the Coach Bronco Mendenhall agplayers have returned to the field since tallying a 2-10 record last season. The CD Sports gressively sought out transfer Staff takes a look at some players and keys to watch out for this weekend. options to build his offensive line this year, and found two pieces in two graduate transfers — guard Jordan Ellis Micah Kiser John Montelus and tackle Brandon Pertile. Last year’s group allowed 36 sacks and struggled to open up holes for runners on short yard situations, which killed far too many drives. The new-look O-line must hold back William & Mary’s pash rush and win third-and-short situations — both crucial aspects for keeping the Virginia offense in rhythm.

Players to watch Kurt Benkert

Keys to the game

CELINA HU | THE CAVALIER DAILY

Entering his senior season, quarterback Kurt Benkert will look to lead Virginia’s offense this Saturday against an FCS team in William & Mary. Despite a loss in last year’s season opener, Benkert played well — throwing for 264 yards and three touchdowns, tossing up only one interception and completing 76.5 percent of his passes. It will be interesting to see if Benkert can start the season off in similar fashion.

COURTESY VIRGINIA ATHLETICS

Tailback Jordan Ellis enters the season as Virginia’s lead back after tallying only 61 rushing yards all of last season. The junior has a bruising frame at five-foot-10 and 215 pounds and slimmed down his figure during the offseason in an effort to add speed to his game. Without graduates Taquan Mizzell and Albert Reid in the backfield this year, Virginia will look to Ellis first to grab the starting job. The William & Mary game gives him a chance to prove himself early.

Passing game

KATIE LOVELACE | THE CAVALIER DAILY

The senior leader returned to Virginia this season to get his degree and address some unfinished business with Virginia football. The inside linebacker finished out last season first in the ACC and No. 3 in the nation with 11.2 tackles per game. Look for Kiser’s name on many defensive award watch lists.

He’ll be the linebacker to watch this Saturday and going forward in the 2017 season as he leads the Cavalier defense.

Mendenhall and offensive coordinator Robert Anae will be looking to have Benkert throw the ball early and often. The passing game is certainly one of Benkert’s strengths — evident in the 421 passing yards he recorded against Central Michigan last season to break a Virginia program record. Look for Benkert to frequently match up with junior halfback Olamide Zaccheaus, who will try to fill Taquan Mizzell’s shoes this season.

Experience on defense

Virginia struggled on the defensive side of the ball at times throughout last season. With many first-time starters, experience was lacking. However, with a year under their belt and heading into their second season, this group has come back more seasoned and experienced, and will look to make an impact in this game as they try to showcase the improvements they’ve made as a unit.

Football starts 2017 season against William & Mary Virginia looks for strong start to season Rahul Shah | Sports Editor The Virginia football team returns to action this Saturday at Scott Stadium, as the Cavaliers get set to kick off the season at home against in-state rival William & Mary.

After going 2-10 last season, the players are excited to get back on the field to play in regular-season games again.

“Coming off the season we just had last year, we’re just excited to get going again and get that bad taste out of our mouths,” sophomore inside linebacker Jordan Mack said. “We’re very excited to…Hit that field on Saturday.”

The Cavaliers have history on their side, having won eight of the last nine meetings between the two teams.

However, after a disappointing loss in last year’s season opener against Richmond — another in-state FCS team — the Cavaliers know they have to be prepared for a tough battle.

“They’re a good team, and we’re not going to overlook them,” Mack said. “They have weapons that they

can hurt us with so we’re just going to prepare effectively so we can be ready to play.”

On the defensive side, Virginia will look to improve on its performance from last season, in which they gave up more than 30 points each in nine of their games. Virginia’s defense featured a plethora of first-time starters last year, and with this year’s squad more seasoned and comfortable, the Cavaliers aims to improve defensively.

“They are more mature, the defensive group, more consistent, they are more experienced,” Coach Bronco Mendenhall said. “From practice to practice, I don't see any way ups, way downs, highs and lows — I see consistent work.”

However, Mendenhall knows that there is still more work to be done.

“The mindset is developing, the execution is developing — they are becoming a group that I really like to coach,” he said. “I think the yield will show that. It will really be up to them

and me as to when — it's still going to take a lot of work.”

Though the depth chart for the William & Mary game was released early Monday afternoon, Mendenhall emphasized that there is a possibility changes may occur after this weekend’s game. Despite players having showcased their abilities throughout the summer, Saturday’s game will provide the coaches with an even stronger sense of where the players and the team stand.

“I can't promise there's not going to be changes after week one,” Mendenhall said. “Seems like there always is, no matter how much meeting time we put in, practice time, sometimes the lenses we see things through are practice lenses. Game lenses are different.”

As the season begins this Saturday, Mendenhall announced that the team had voted on captains last week — giving the honor to seniors quarterback Kurt Benkert, inside linebacker Micah Kiser and free safety Quin Blanding.

He also said that there will be a fourth captain each week from special teams.

“The team voted on those three players,” Mendenhall said. “Again, there will be a special teams captain that will be the fourth each week, and that will be rotating based on performance.”

In analyzing the past season, Mendenhall said that last year’s emphasis on fitness may have prevented the team’s physicality from being where it could have been.

“Sometimes, I listen to the way we play rather than watch the way we play…There's a sound of contact with physically-prepared people, as well as mentally prepared, with the intensity,” Mendenhall said. “The number of times that I heard that a year ago, it was lacking...It was a wake-up call.

We had spent so much time on just conditioning our players to where we could get through practice, the tempo we wanted.”

That’s why the team spent more

time this offseason focusing on physicality and strength, Mendenhall said.

“Once that baseline has been established, we've been able to target more size and strength to where hopefully the game sounds and looks different than it did a year ago,” Mendenhall said. “That's our intent.”

When discussing this year’s team, Mack said that their cohesion this year has helped create a culture that emphasizes playing football together as a team, and getting the most out of every player.

“I would just say the team’s closer…

It’s not just offense and defense, Mack said. “Everyone has a team. In the locker room, we’re very close and…We’re ready to play complementary football where we back each other up no matter what,” Mack said.

The game against William & Mary will begin at 3:30 p.m. Saturday and will be the first of three home games for Virginia to start the 2017 season.

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THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 2017

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Men’s soccer gears up to face Hofstra at Klöckner Stadium Cavaliers look to open season 2-0 at home Garrett Shaffer | Associate Editor The No. 12 Cavaliers look to continue their winning ways at home to open the season, facing off against Hofstra Thursday at 6 p.m.

Virginia (1-0-0) comes off an impressive 3-2 double overtime victory against a tough opponent in Villanova. The home opener saw the Cavaliers start slow, giving up an early goal in the seventh minute before taking command of the offense en route to a hefty shots advantage.

Villanova (0-2-0) was able to take advantage of a pressed Virginia offense, scoring on the break to pick up their tying goal in the second half. The Cavaliers need to maintain their aggressive nature of play that allowed them to get numerous shots, to better control the corner kick total and to prevent Hofstra’s (1-1-0) counter-attack.

“The quality of the game was great, and I give Villanova a lot of credit for that,” Coach George Gelnovatch said. “I think we created chances, scored three goals...I think we deserved three goals in the game. Now we got to try to figure out a way to not give up easy goals.”

Hofstra is looking to bounce back after a tough Monday night loss to No. 6 Maryland — falling to 0-2. The Pride want to get back to sound all around play, after an early own goal placed the team in a hole it could not dig itself out of. A win

against the Cavaliers could restore the squad’s confidence that began to form with an opening victory against Penn State.

“Every team that comes in here, especially non-conference — this is their biggest opportunity of the season to rack up a lot of points in the RPI,” Virginia senior goalkeeper Jeff Caldwell said. “They wanna come in here and take a win for us because that would define their year and probably punch them a ticket to the NCAA tournament.

We didn’t drop a game at home last year and we’d like to continue to have that approach in the non-conference [schedule].”

The Cavaliers have a favorable schedule to start the season, with all of their first five games at Klöckner Stadium. It is vital that the team use the opportunity not only to pick up wins, but also to develop chemistry and pick up extra practice and rest to start off fresh and prepared.

“Especially early on, if you can get a couple game in sequence at home and get some momentum, that’s the idea — to generate some wins and some enthusiasm in the group,” Gelnovatch said.

Following Thursday’s contest, the team will continue its streak of games at Klöckner Stadium with a 7 p.m. Labor Day contest against UNC-Wilmington.

WYATT ECK | THE CAVALIER DAILY

Senior goalkeeper Jeff Caldwell and Virginia look to improve to 2-0 Thursday night against Hofstra.

THE CAVALIER DAILY

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LEAD EDITORIAL

City Council needs to grow up

OPINION

Petty politics draw the focus away from the real issues at hand

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hortly after the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, City Council leaders were quick to point fingers. A series of leaked memorandum — which blamed poor communication between city officials for the chaos of the rally — show the mayor and city leaders bickering with each other, with none of them assuming responsibility. This debacle has created a divisive environment within City Council, with officials blaming each other instead of showing solidarity

in the wake of tragedy. Moving forward, City Council should do away with this childish behavior and begin to show unity in times of crises.

It should go without saying that following tragedy and chaos, a city’s public leaders have a responsibility to lead by example. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey’s destruction, Houston’s leaders and community members came together by offering refuge in their own homes and even volunteering in relief efforts. Mean-

while, following a reckless white supremacist rally, Charlottesville public officials can be found playing the blame game while community members struggle in search of unity and solidarity.

Comparing a rally to a hurricane might seem problematic, but the effects of the recent rally in Charlottesville should not be diminished, either. Home to our University, Charlottesville is currently playing a decisive role in the battle against white supremacy and neo-Nazism in

America. With Richard Spencer stating “we’ll be back 100 times if necessary,” one could be forgiven for thinking this is the first of many potentially-violent demonstrations. Instead of looking for someone to blame for the disaster left behind by one rally, council members should be working together in preparing for similar demonstrations in the near future.

Regardless of City Council’s preparation for the rally, which was frankly nothing short of in-

competent, this type of petty politics draws attention away from the real issues at hand. We are all part of the Charlottesville community, and we were all affected to at least some degree by the recent rallies. Assigning blame for the city’s poor preparation no longer matters. What matters is coming together and providing strong leadership in crises — City Council has failed to do both.

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SELF-DRIVING CARS — TRANSPORTATION OF THE FUTURE Removing human error from behind the wheel will save lives

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I’ll never trust my life to some robot.” It’s a common human trait — a fallacy — to resist surrendering one’s life to a couple thousand lines of code. People have always desired control over their own lives, but when the alluring new technology of self-driving cars becomes twisted into some dangerous innovation that threatens individual freedom, it necessitates an honest appraisal. Though difficulties lie ahead in perfecting the technology and defining regulatory uncertainties, a blanket opposition to self-driving cars fails to consider the most central promise of the technology — its ability to save lives. Every time a person steps behind the wheel of a car, there’s always a chance of a fatal accident occurring — for self-driving cars, there’s an opportunity to eliminate this threat completely.

I can understand this tepid resistance just as I can understand a senior’s preference for using checks over Venmo, or letters over text messages.

Changing the established order of things takes time, even more so when the benefits of such a paradigm shift aren’t fully considered and the threats cited differ sharply along generational lines. Only 48 percent of Americans in a 2015 poll said they would be willing to try a self-driving car. This resistance commonly cites individual crash cases and relative losers in the labor market

in articulating a broad condemnation, selectively ignoring trends and the potential for future improvements.

Self-driving technology is not perfect yet by a long shot, but betting against the talent and resources of the United States’ most innovative companies including Tesla, GM, Ford, Apple and Google — all of whom have their own self-driving car programs — does not seem like a prudent investment. Researchers have estimated that self-driving cars will be able to prevent at least 90 percent of roughly 35,000 traffic accidents in the United States every year, saving 300,000 lives over the course of a decade. Concurrent revolutions in batteries, electrical engines and ride-sharing further promise drastically reduced traffic congestion and diminished environmental impact.

One of the core arguments of self-driving opponents centers on the freedom or relaxation that we often feel when driving. The promise of seemingly limitless directional freedom and a machine which accelerates on command can give the impression that the act of driving is what we love so much. The mind-numbing lull of a trip on the highway or the thrill of cruising down the street to a Young Thug banger can be a welcome departure from the bustle of everyday life.

But it’s not the act of driving that we

love so much, it’s the time spent in the car that we crave. We use this time to think through our problems, share stories with a friend or just unplug from the myriad of screens that vie for our attention. Over and above the ability for self-driving cars to save lives is

to daily life and our economy. DUIs become a thing of the past. Family dynamics are bound to change when the family car can go pick up groceries during the workday or take the kids to and from soccer practice at night.

Our economy will certainly expand as

When considering two basic worlds, one where self-driving technology is prevalent and one where no such technology exists, reason dictates preference to the former.

precious time that this technology can return to people — time which a parent can use to take a nap on the commute home from work, freeing up time for her to play with her kids at home. Time which she no longer has to spend worrying over turn signals, ignoring countless distractions or navigating a minefield of potential car accidents caused by herself or another well-meaning person.

When considering two basic worlds, one where self-driving technology is prevalent and one where no such technology exists, reason dictates preference to the former. The implications of such a world when truly considered assure profound changes

millions of hours of lost business and personal productivity are now free to use again. New parking garages are being built with particular dimensions to easily convert the structures into office space or apartments.

The expected decline of car ownership after 2020 will only accelerate as Americans increasingly rely on ride-sharing services in lieu of purchasing a car. Elon Musk has even predicted that self-driving Tesla’s will be able to make an owner money during the day as part of a national ride-sharing and energy network. Despite some of these seemingly beneficial changes, there will naturally be downsides as taxi, Uber and truck-driving jobs di-

minish with each additional self-driving car on the road. Understanding that self-driving technology is a matter of when not if suggests we should start preparing now for the inevitable creative destruction in the job market, whereby ordinary, hard-working Americans must transition to add value in new areas of the economy.

Investments in education and job retraining suddenly become even more paramount.

The resistance to self-driving technology begins at the most basic level with millions of Americans reluctant to trust their life to a car that drives itself. We strive to make our own luck and when we’ve never been in a serious car accident we falsely attribute such a result to individual skill rather than exogenous factors. We must separate what we appreciate about time spent in a car from the realities of the inherent danger of a person getting behind the wheel. Continuing to oppose self-driving car technology becomes increasingly untenable when you stop and think about the millions of lives it will save worldwide and the economic boom it will provide our country. Why drive when you can take five?

BEN YAHNIAN is an Opinion columnist for the Cavalier Daily. He may be reached at opinion@cavalierdaily.com.

THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN EXPERIENCE IN CONTEXT Being black in America is an irrefuteably taxing experience, but we must not be discouraged from recognizing how far we’ve come, and how far we have yet to go

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ince moving to Nigeria, I have been asked one question repeatedly: “What is it like to be black in America?” In all honesty, I have been reluctant to reply, not wanting to delve into the intricacies of race and respond in a manner that satisfies neither the questioner nor myself. Yet, at a time in which white nationalist rallies have manifested within a mile of my alma mater, an honest response is warranted.

It should surprise no one that recent events have had a significant impact on foreign perceptions of the African-American experience. Hope that the United States had risen above the racism and prejudice of the past — a notion spurred by the election of President Barack Obama — has been replaced by renewed cynicism, if not despair. The countless police shootings of unarmed black men and the election of a U.S. President whose rhetoric has emboldened hate groups have left many convinced that the chasm between black and white Americans remains unchanged. Obama was the exception, as The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, because he “was able to offer white America…Something very few African-Americans could — trust.”

But is such a feat truly remarkable?

I think not. Indeed, such a remark reveals a frequent shortcoming in our

racial discourse, a tendency to reduce our social relations to a constant and simplistic struggle between black and white Americans.

In large measure, my viewpoint stems from personal experience. It is always easier to trust “white America” when you have grown up alongside its children. To be clear, my experience

It is also worth noting that prejudice and racial animosity transcend American social relations. In India, instances of prejudice and violence towards Africans are just as common.

Last year, an angry mob stripped and beat a Tanzanian student in retaliation for the death of a local woman, who had been killed in an automobile acci-

To let fears of bigotry color one’s perception of entire groups of people is to live in a constant state of anxiety.

was not free of bigotry and prejudice.

I quickly discovered that blackness is more often associated with athleticism than intellect, interest in black culture does not necessarily denote an interest in the well-being of black people and even the most vocal critics of police brutality might cross the street to avoid passing a person of color at night. Yes, these experiences can be taxing but they never dominated my social interactions.

dent involving a drunk Sudanese driver earlier that day. Africans have encountered similar hostility in parts of China, where immigrants have been accused of threatening public safety. Even within Nigeria, one can occasionally hear remarks disparaging African-Americans as lazy and inclined toward criminality.

Simply put, prejudice and intolerance are hardly exclusive to any one racial or ethnic group. To let fears of bigotry color one’s perception of entire groups of people is to live in a constant state

of anxiety.

Admittedly, President Donald Trump’s political rise should give many cause for concern. It is not just that he is willing to exploit racial tension for political gain — several of his predecessors have done the same. What is most alarming is the president’s utter indifference towards revelations such that white nationalists and other hate groups feel vindicated by his remarks.

To some, this may appear to corroborate allegations that Trump’s ascension to the Oval Office was fueled by white resentment or racial animosity. I would argue the contrary. There was no shortage of Trump supporters willing to distance themselves from the President’s attacks against Muslims and Latinos, and I am inclined to take them at their word. Instead, his victory seemed to be attributable to an equally deplorable tendency — an unapologetic willingness to overlook his racist and xenophobic remarks in favor of vague promises to bring back jobs and restore American grandeur.

Sure, many minority voters found Trump’s antics appalling, but it is worth noting that despite referring to Mexicans as “rapists” and “murders,” and spending months on the campaign trail disparaging the inner-cities, minority voter turnout declined and Trump re-

ceived more support from black and Latino voters than Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012.

So where does this leave us?

Being a minority in any country has always been fraught with challenges — being black in America is no different.

Still, one would be wrong to dismiss the social progress that the black community has made over the last half-century.

How many of those who lived through the race riots of the 1960s can truly say they expected to witness the election of the United States’ first black president within their lifetimes?

Sure, there is still much work to be done. The violence which occurred in Charlottesville last week is a testament to the lengths which some will go to oppose social justice. While I can imagine this is distressing to the many minority students who are beginning a new school year, I would urge them to stay strong and be brave. Periods of social progress have always been followed by attempts to undermine them, and the “Unite the Right” march was nothing short of another ill-fated attempt to preserve the fading remnants of a bygone era.

BRANDON BROOKS is a former Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily.

THE CAVALIER DAILY

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Five Types of College Roommates

HUMOR College: A time to meet new people, make new friends, share new experiences and, for many, a time to live for nine months in close quarters with a total stranger. You’ve heard the horror stories about awful roommates, and you pray that you won’t become the main character in one of them. Of course, nobody tries to be terrible, it just happens sometimes. But for those scared silly by the thought of living with a stranger, here’s a hopefully-reassuring list of the five most common types of roommates encountered in any college dorm.

1. The Early Bird: It’s who-knows-how early in the morning, you were studying (or partying) until who-knowshow late last night, and you hear it: the blaring of an alarm clock that you swear must have been

16

Jess Miller | Humor Writer invented to alert rural communities of impending bomb blasts during the Cold War. Unable to hear for a few moments, and certainly with no chance of falling back to sleep, you check your phone. 5:30 a.m. Then you remember it’s a Saturday. They let you sleep in an hour more than usual. This roommate is likely taking as many credits as the school will allow while being the president of three clubs and working two jobs. It’s impressive, you just wish there were more hours in the day.

Though having no pictures, no family records, no physical evidence of any kind, your roommate insists that they’re related to the “Blowfish” from “Hootie and the Blowfish.” All they have is a ticket and backstage pass from a 2004 tour signed by the members of the band. “My uncle got us incredible seats and we got to meet the band,” they claim, despite being hard-pressed to name even one “Hootie and the Blowfish” album. And as much as you may want to, don’t even think about mentioning that you think Hootie is more talented than the Blowfish. That’s one can of worms which should not be opened.

bed almost completely covered in viscous black ink, and even more so when you shook your new roommate’s hand, or rather their slimy, suction-cupped tentacle.

It didn’t take long to realize that, despite introducing themselves as a “normal human person, just like you,” your roommate was actually a 15-foot, gelatinous cephalopod stuffed inside a soaking wet, XXL button down shirt and no pants. From what you can understand of the sputtering of their gills and the vague slurping noises they make with their massive beak, they’re planning on majoring in Economics with a minor in Math or Physics.

er appears as a demented figure standing behind you when you look in the mirror, or a faceless apparition which haunts your dreams, everyone can relate to the poltergeist roommate. You don’t mind the disheveled heap of bones and rags they call a bed, or the levitating ancient tomes that fly around the room, or even the incantations the spirit mutters during all hours of the night. It’s when they possess your friends that really gets on your nerves. Of course, you know that it would be insensitive to tell them to “get a life.”

You were suspicious when you moved in to find your roommate’s

in 1821,” you’re met with a sigh and an eye-roll that says: “Dude, we know.” Whether the spect-

be reached at humor@cavalierdaily. com.

2. The One Who Claims Their Uncle is “the Blow5. The Night Owl: fish” from Famed 1990’s Like the Early Bird, except at Alt Rock Band “Hootie 3. The One Who Does a 4. The Poltergeist: night. and the Blowfish:” A classic. Every time you tell Terrible Job Hiding the You’ve heard it a hundred Fact that They’re Actual- your friends “guys, my roommate is the ghost of a 16-year-old or- JESS MILLER is a Humor columntimes. “Yeah, my mom’s brother ly a Giant Squid: phan who was run over by a cart ist for the Cavalier Daily. She may was one of the founding members of the famed 1990’s alt-rock band, ‘Hootie and the Blowfish.’”

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SOLUTION TO LAST WEEK’S PUZZLE EVENTS

Thursday 8/31 Men’s Soccer vs. Hofstra, 6pm, Klockner Stadium Women’s Soccer vs. Wisconsin, 8pm, Klockner Stadium Ballroom Dance Club Presents: Free Ballroom Lessons, 8-9pm, SAC OYFA First General Meeting, 6-7pm, Clark 107 Queer Student Union Presents: Pride Welcome Carnival, 6-8pm, South Lawn Thursday Evening Sunset Series, 5:30-8:30pm, Carter Mountain Orchard UVA Sharaara Tryouts, 9pm-12am, AFC MP1 UVA Career Center Presents: Cookies, Coffee, and Careers, 12-5pm, 1515 Friday 9/1 Field Hockey vs. Columbia, 5pm, Turf Field UPC Presents: Late Night Paint Night, 9pm-1am, 1515 UVA Alumni Association Presents: Button Giveaway William & Mary, 11am-1pm, Alumni Hall Saturday 9/2 Track & Field/Cross Country in UVA Duals, 8:30am, Lannigan Field Football vs. William & Mary, 3:30pm, Scott Stadium FLUX Presents: Open Mic Night & Interest Meeting, 7-10pm, Minor 125 Sunday 9/3 Field Hockey vs. Monmouth, 1pm, Turf Field Women’s Soccer vs. Richmond, 2pm, Klockner Stadium UVA Sharaara Tryouts, 11am-2pm, AFC MP4 Dance Committee at UVA Presents: Auditions for Fall Dance Concert, 1-3pm, Memorial Gym Monday 9/4 Men’s Soccer vs. UNC-Wilmington, 7pm, Klockner Stadium Tuesday 9/5 Biology Society at UVA First Interest Meeting, 6:307pm, New Cabell 489 Wednesday 9/6 Ballroom Dance Club Presents: Free Ballroom Lessons, 8-9pm, SAC 2017 Engineering, Science, and Technology Career Fair, 10am-3pm, John Paul Jones Arena UVA Career Center Presents: Pitches & Pastries, 9-11am, John Paul Jones Arena

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A Company like no other My evening with the Kendall Street Company

ENTERTAINMENT

Dan Goff | Arts and Entertainment Editor After sliding in next to me at a booth at Miller’s Downtown, one of the first things Louis Smith did was remove his cap, showing off his curly hair.

“The last guy who wrote about us said I had red hair, but I think it’s blonde,” he said. “Like a dirty blonde.

Don’t say I have red hair.”

So began my interview with Kendall Street Company — the entirety of Kendall Street Company. When I set up the interview with manager Nick Campero, I had assumed that it would just be a few members of the band coming to Miller’s. I was proved very wrong when, at about 5 p.m. on a Monday, I watched a veritable parade of young men file into the restaurant.

A waitress helped us shove tables together so that everyone could fit, and then official introductions were in order. Starting at my left and going in a loop around the bandmates, I was introduced to sax player Jake Vanaman, electric guitarist Ben Laderberg, drummer Ryan Wood, bassist and backup vocalist Brian Roy, Andrew King and Price Gillock — both keyboardists, with the latter also playing the flute — and the admittedly blonde vocalist and lead guitarist Louis Smith. Somewhere in the mix was the manager Campero, also present for the interview.

I shook hands with all eight men, and the interview began. I started with a question about their upcoming documentary “Plan Accordingly, Please Advise,” to be released right before their new LP “Space for Days.”

“Can one of you guys tell me something about that?” I had no idea who to direct the question to, but Gillock immediately replied.

“We had a really productive twomonth period and we also thought it would be kinda fun to throw together a documentary,” Gillock said. “We got a lot of nice footage of us just hanging out, and we thought it would be a nice

COURTESY KENDALL STREET COMPANY NICK CAMPERO

Legendary Charlottesville band Kendall Street Company performs at The Southern Cafe and Music Hall. The group gave an eye-opening interview about their origins and their future.

way to introduce ourselves to people that may not know us personally…and of course, the end of the documentary, we hope, is gonna be footage of us at LOCK’N.” The music festival, held Aug. 24-27, was at the time just a few days away.

Most of Kendall Street Company seemed unconcerned about performing at the festival, despite the fact that LOCK’N’s lineup included such household names as The Avett Brothers and The String Cheese Incident.

“I think it’ll be one of the bigger shows we’ve ever played,” Wood said.

“But the core of Kendall Street Company has been playing music together for four years now…We’ve gotten pretty tight with playing together…Despite a larger crowd, we’ll just hope that means a higher energy level.”

The conversation then shifted to the upcoming album “Space for Days.”

“How are you going to change things up with the new album?” I asked.

“It’s a little wilder...We go to some

wild places,” Smith said.

At least three members added, “We go to space!”

Laderberg described it as “an incomplete, emotional journey open to interpretation,” leading me to cite their traditionally upbeat sound and ask whether the new music strays from that sound.

“Yeah, we’re definitely trying to get weird with it,” Laderberg said. “We’re exploring some genres — we’re going to places we’ve haven’t necessarily been before.”

“What does it mean that you guys “go to space” on the new album?” I inquired.

Smith explained that the original idea came from the bar at Miller’s itself.

“On Monday nights, it’s very spacious…And then there’s also just the idea of the deep abyss of the totally unexplored,” he said. “Nobody really knows what’s out there besides the scientists with the telescopes.”

It was partially Miller’s’ location on

the Downtown Mall that brought the next question to mind.

“In light of recent events in Charlottesville, would you consider your music as an escape from reality or a more optimistic look on things? …

What would you say is your role as a band, as people making art, to serve the community?” I asked.

The tone at the table grew more somber as Smith tackled the subject.

“I think we just want to portray a positive vibe, really,” he said. “You know, spread love and bring people together in a place where they can enjoy each other’s company.”

Roy added that uniting people is what the band is all about.

“That’s the essence of the band name, actually,” Roy said. “Company doesn’t mean corporation — it means a company that brings people together, like with music or love or art.”

Smith did his best to describe his band’s purpose.

“I don’t know if it’s an escape from reality or politically charged music, but I think our goal is really just to help people be happy,” he said.

Roy jumped in with his own thoughts about their goal.

“Or experience emotion,” he said.

“That’s what music is — a vessel to share an emotion with a group of people and you share that with them, whether you’re playing guitar and singing with your friends in a living room or you’re playing for 3,000 people at LOCK’N. You’re trying to share that emotion with people, and the words might be kinda vague or the emotions might be kinda vague, but you want everyone to be in the same place.”

He finished by saying that, while the events in Charlottesville were “hard to think or talk about and...On all of our minds…It’s not so much escaping that and focusing on other emotions.

It’s contextualizing that and moving on.”

The conversation moved to a happier topic — the band’s album release show on Sept. 1 at The Southern Café and Music Hall.

“It’s an evening with Kendall Street Company,” Roy said. “So we’ll play our whole new record … We’ll do covers and a few of our older or newer songs.”

The band will be joined by various musicians from Charlottesville.

Among these are Erin Lunsford of Erin and the Wildfire and Asher McGlothlin, both University grads.

“It’s just a lot of fun playing with a lot of people,” Wood said. “It’s great having a six-piece band and then having other people to play on top of that.”

When asked if Kendall Street Company had anything to share with the student body, answers were varied. Gillock instructed everyone to “come to jazz nights on Thursdays at Miller’s” — with Smith enthusiastically agreeing — while Roy’s response was more broad.

“Get out and play with your friends, get your friends to come out and see live music,” Roy said. “There’s so much of it in Charlottesville — even just at U.Va. … Grades are important but you can learn a lot from this town that you’re not learning in class.”

The interview was over, but Campero invited me to stay for dinner.

Everyone ordered, and then we were somehow joined by even more people — various friends of the band, including the previously mentioned McGlothlin. Our group grew to such a size that we moved to tables outside, where we were a noisy but overwhelmingly friendly force of nature on the Downtown Mall.

Sitting with these giants of the Charlottesville music scene, eating, talking and laughing with them like I had known them for years — I felt very lucky to be among their Company.

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THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 2017

19

Singing to the top A look into highly-competitive audition process Shaelea Carroll | Staff Writer

RICHARD DIZON | THE CAVALIER DAILY

Nathan Pal, third-year College student and Academical Village People member, shows off his pipes at Rotunda Sing, one of the most hallowed a cappella events at the University.

For someone who doesn’t attend the University, it’s hard to explain what a large part of the undergraduate experience — a cappella — is. For those who choose not to be personally involved with a cappella, the musical groups are still present all over Grounds. Going to see an a cappella group’s fall or spring concert is a social event for many students, and for students who don’t want to pay to see the groups, free performances like Rotunda Sing and Lighting of the Lawn can be found year-round.

Judging from the entertaining and seemingly effortless performances the University’s a cappella groups put on, a cappella may seem closer to a high-energy social club than a group of highly elite vocalists, but the intensity of the audition process supports the latter. Any given a cappella group is likely to be one of the most competitive groups to join on Grounds with auditions beginning the first week of school.

In an average year, a cappella groups may listen to over 100 auditions between Thursday and Friday of the first week, offer callbacks to a dozen and ul-

timately take less than five. The numbers vary depending on the year and the group, but the level of competition stays constant.

The first round of auditions is focused on talent alone.

“If we don’t think someone is able to match with the group musically there’s nothing we can do about that,” Myles Stremick, a third-year Engineering student and the president of an all-male group, the Academical Village People, said.

Auditionees who are talented enough to score a callback find themselves invited to social events on Saturday before they ultimately must perform again on Sunday. The New Dominions, one of the co-ed a cappella groups on Grounds, hosts “callback cocktails” as a get-to-knowyou event. Stephen Diggs, a fourth-year College student and president of the New Dominions, said that the social event is completely optional and works to bring down the stress level “so the audition process doesn’t seem so scary.”

Alternatively, all-female group Hoos in Treble eats Bodo’s on the Rotunda steps with

prospective members. However, these social events are hardly mandatory. Both the New Dominions and Hoos in Treble admit they have current members who were accepted, despite missing out on this aspect.

“I think the social thing is one of those things that can only help you and can’t really hurt you,” Dani Bhadare-Valente, a thirdyear College student and the president of Hoos in Treble, said.

It may seem daunting for first year students to prepare to audition within only days of being on Grounds, but Diggs said waiting until the following year may put students in a worse position.

“The complicated thing about older-classmen is — if we already have five second years — then it’s hard to add another second year to that class,” Diggs said. “First years don’t have someone already in the group that they have to compete against, so it’s a little easier.”

This isn’t the attitude for all a cappella groups. Myles Stremick, a third-year Engineering student and the president of an all-male group, the Academical Village People, said his group doesn’t

focus so much on first-year students.

“We actually don’t take that many first years…Our fall semester, we usually only ever have one or two first years.”

The Academical Village People are unique in that they routinely hold auditions in the spring as well.

“We’re definitely not afraid to take people in the spring semester or in the fall when they’re second years,” Stremick said.

While musical ability provides the baseline, acceptance into a group can hinge on a variety of factors. For the girls of Hoos in Treble, personality is important.

“We are a group that really prides ourselves on just being nice,” Valente said.

While Valente said that personality was not the only factor, getting along with the group ultimately weighed heavily on their decisions.

“You’re choosing your friends for the next four years, so you’re not going to take someone that you really don’t like,” she said.

For the Academical Village People, the group looks for individuals with characteristics that

match their on-stage persona.

“Since we’re AVP, we’re always rocking out and trying to have a good time,” Stremick said. “If we don’t think they’re able to do that, we can’t take them.”

The ultimate deliberation over deciding who to accept often depended on what niche needed to be filled.

“A lot of it does come down to — do we need more higher parts in the group right now? Do we need more lower parts?” Stremick said. “ And it’s just a gamble.”

These dynamics can shift around from year to year, so students who find themselves cut from a group one year shouldn’t immediately count themselves out. Valente, who didn’t get into an a cappella group until her second year, said students should not get discouraged.

“People do slip through the cracks — not because they’re not good, but just because there are so many people,” she said. “I just don’t want anyone to feel as if they should be scared to come out.”

H&S HEALTH & SCIENCE

“The “Unite the Right” rally that took place in Charlottesville on Aug. 12 sparked violence — including a deadly car attack — which required a coordinated effort of many medical agencies.

The U.Va. Hospital had planned a protocol for the white supremacist rally on Aug. 12 for weeks, according to Dr. William Brady, Vice Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine.

Brady said that the hospital had prepared for the KKK rally on July 8 as a mass casualty event.

However, the hospital anticipated that the rally on Aug. 12 would be on an even larger scale and therefore intensified its previous plans.

Thomas Berry, Emergency Management Director of the U.Va. Health System, said in an email statement that the general plans were based off of other mass casualty incidents in other communities and countries.

“We have studied and learned from incidents such as Paris, Orlando, Aurora over the past one+ [years] to integrate some of the recent lessons learned for massive surge situations,” Berry said in an email to the Cavalier Daily.

The hospital undertook many measures to ensure that it could handle an influx of patients who might be injured the day of the rally. For instance, it decompressed itself such that non-emergency surgeries the week of the rally were moved to the following

THE CAVALIER DAILY

20

Ready to respond to crisis Leaders from U.Va. Hopsital spent weeks preparing for ‘Unite the Right’ rally Anugya Mittal | Senior Writer week as to open up more space for patients. Additionally, the nurses and physicians from across hospital departments — including emergency medicine, trauma surgery and anesthesiology — were trained to handle mass casualty incidents.

Furthermore, the hospital set up a large command center at the event itself the Friday before the rally.

“The command center had medical and administrative leaders at the medical center where we could make quick decisions, move resources around and be ready to alter our approach if needed,” Brady said.

According to Brady, he and others were monitoring the situation through real-time video feeds and police and fire radio frequencies at the command center.

The hospital also increased its security in a three-part plan according to Berry.

First, the number of entrances to the hospital was restricted to two main doors through the use of badges. Second, barriers were placed at both ends of Lee Street so vehicles with patients could arrive more easily with less traffic.

Last, access was further restricted to patient care rooms.

Preparation for the hospital response to the rally was an institution-wide effort. Brady said the planning was done by over a hundred leaders, including University President Teresa Sullivan.

COURTESY U.VA. HEALTH PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICER ERIC SWANSON

The University hospital prepared for and responded to the violence at the August 12th rally as a mass casualty event.

“I really regret that a life was lost, but I think the hospital was as prepared as they could be to take care of the people,” Sullivan said.

Berry elaborated on the degree of detail that went into planning for the incident.

“The deliberate planning pro-

COURTESY U.VA. HEALTH PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICER ERIC SWANSON

Access to hospital entrances and patients was restricted as part of the hospital’s emergency response plan.

cess included four major components — intelligence collection, small working groups for coordination and synchronization, a large working group to facilitate information sharing and a joint planning group for local, regional [and] state coordination,” Berry said in an email statement.

Most of the patients who were treated prior to the car attack suffered from lacerations — deep cuts — to the head.

“When the car struck the crowd, we saw that almost immediately on social media,” Brady said. “The police and fire frequencies reported it, and the command center at the event also called us.

So when that happened, we immediately notified the other doctors and nurses at the institution.”

Third-year College student Nandan Srinivasa was working at the hospital the day of the rally as a medical scribe. His job entails recording details such as the patient’s medical history and reason for visiting. According to Srinivasa, the hospital received word that about 20 people had been injured by the car and were coming to the hospital for treatment.

According to Brady, triaging — a process where patients are sorted in the emergency room by urgency of care — was moved from the emergency department to the main lobby of the hospital after the car hit the crowd of people. Chief Medical Officer Dr. Chris Ghaemmaghami said that

the triaging location was changed to accommodate a larger number of people.

“We were triaging in ambulances and out on the sidewalk right in front of the hospital, and then directing people to the ED from there,” Ghaemmaghami said.

Furthermore, the emergency department was put on EMS diversion so that non-critical patients would be diverted to Senatra Martha Jefferson Hospital for care. In an email statement from the hospital, the department said it treated 14 patients the day of the rally, with the majority of injuries related to trauma leg pain and head lacerations.

The hospital was in a hyperactive state with all the additional staff according to Ghaemmaghami.

“I had to see multiple traumas at the exact same time — one after another — but besides that I was able to see each trauma without much difficulty,” Srinivasa said.

According to Brady, the hospital handles multiple-injury events, such as car accidents, on a weekly basis. It is therefore well-prepared for mass-casualty events such as the rally.

“We activate our plans, we call in additional personnel when needed and we continue to take care of people,” Brady said.

www.cavalierdaily.com • HEALTH & SCIENCE

THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 2017

21

Synthetic biology students refine wastewater management U.Va. iGem team attempts to improve the wastewater treatment process by gentetically engineering bacteria Ruhee Shah | Senior Associate The University’s iGem team, comprised of eight students, is working to improve the wastewater treatment process by manipulating a bacterium called Paracoccus denitrificans. iGem, which stands for international genetically engineered machines, is a worldwide competition where primarily undergraduate students build genetically engineered systems.

As explained on iGem.org, “iGEM teams work inside and outside the lab, creating sophisticated projects that strive to create a positive contribution to their communities and the world.”

According to Steven Scherping, fourth-year College student and iGem team member, the team — tentatively named “Sewage PD” after the organism they work with, Paracoccus denitrificans — went through several ideas before arriving at their idea for the November competition. They decided to engineer a bacteria to both nitrify and denitrify wastewater — key parts of the wastewater cleaning process.

This research is necessary because wastewater contains ammonia (NH3) and ammonium (NH4+) — both of which are toxic nitrogen compounds.

The current treatment process uses two different bacteria to remove these dangerous compounds.

According to Scherping, the bacterium Nitrosomonas europaea (NE) performs the first step in the process — turning ammonia and ammonium into nitrates. These nitrates are still harmful, so a second bacterium, Paracoccus denitrificans (PD), turns the nitrates into nitrogen gas. Nitrogen gas is not harmful — it makes up 78 percent of the atmosphere.

While this process is very efficient, it is also very energy-intensive. The bacterium NE requires oxygen to turn ammonia into nitrates — this requires huge fans to shoot air into the wastewater so that the bacteria can function properly. The second bacterium, however, is much more efficient — it does not require any inputs to do its job of turning nitrates into nitrogen gas.

According to Scherping, the team is attempting to artificially synthesize three key genes from the Nitrosomonas, and insert them into the Paracoccus. This is novel for two reasons – there are currently very few organisms that can both nitrify and denitrify, and the success of this project

could help reduce wastewater cleaning costs. But according to Scherping, it is also notable that the team is using the Paracoccus over the more commonly used E. coli.

“We are using this Paracoccus denitrificans as our chassis organism, and that’s something that hasn’t really ever been done before,” Scherping said. “Synthetic biology mostly uses E. coli, because it’s well characterized and used in a bunch of different functions, and it’s a very robust microorganism.

So a lot of the challenge in our project has been getting our Paracoccus denitrificans to grow in ways that we can control, and then putting in these genes.”

While both Scherping and team captain, second-year Engineering student Vik Seshadri, agree that working with Paracoccus can be difficult, Seshadri said that the freedom and lack of structure of the iGem competition to be one of their biggest challenges.

“You have to design your own project — it’s entirely from scratch,” Seshadri said. “For us that was a really big hurdle, because I have to be able to say ‘hey, how do I test something out, how do I design an experiment’…With

seven other people who have as little to no experience as I do.”

However, the team does receive some guidance on the project from their advisors — Keith Kozminski, associate professor of biology, and Jason Papin, professor of biomedical engineering. Seshadri said the professors’ mentorship is hands-off — the mentors are there to answer questions and check on the team periodically, but the team overall works independently.

According to Papin, he has advised the team since it started at the University in 2007.

“I primarily advise on the computational modeling component,” Papin said in an email statement. “This year, I’ve provided guidance on computational tools that are available, strategies for modeling, etc.”

Despite the heavy lab aspect of the project — Scherping estimates team members spend 40-50 hours a week in lab during the summer and 10-20 hours a week in lab during the school year — the project has several non-lab components.

“One component of the project is human practices,” Scherping said. “So human practices is how our project in-

fluences the community and how the community influences our project.”

This involves engaging with experts in the community, from environmental science professors at the University to people at the local wastewater treatment facility. The team is also running an art competition in Charlottesville-area schools to introduce synthetic biology to high school and middle school students in a fun way.

According to Scherping, iGem also focuses on collaboration among teams. In July, Sewage PD hosted a conference for other teams in the mid-Atlantic region to come to the University and discuss their projects.

They are also collaborating with teams around the world to compile a document of regional differences in GMO regulations.

Seshadri emphasizes the diversity of skills necessary for the team — iGem is not just for biology majors.

Coding, writing and entrepreneurship are all large components of their project.

Engineering School organizes diversity speaker series Excellence Through Diversity Distinguished Learning Series seeks to bring perspective to Grounds Tina Chai | Senior Associate The University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science has revived its year-long speaker series, the Excellence Through Diversity Distinguished Learning Series, set to begin Sept. 8.

All events are free of charge and open to the general public. Locations for the lectures vary, but they will primarily take place in Old Cabell Hall, McLeod Hall, Newcomb Hall and the Law School.

The series will feature a range of speakers from disparate professional backgrounds — some of whom have not yet been announced.

According to Thomas Pilnik, program coordinator of the Office of Diversity and Engagement in the Engineering school, speakers were chosen largely based on student recommendation and then finalized by Gates and Pilnik to ensure the group of lecturers offer distinct, engaging perspectives.

The speakers also “reflect the most important contemporary scholars of Critical Race Theory,” Gates said.

Gates and Pilnik said they encourage feedback from students and faculty, which aids the planning process of these events. The current planning

team includes Gates, Pilnik, student interns and staff members across the University, Pilnik said.

The Excellence Through Diversity Distinguished Learning Series was founded last year by Gates, who said he hoped to promote diversity and engagement on Grounds through learning, shared experiences and discussion. While the series is coordinated through the Engineering school due

to Gates’ affiliation, it is supported by partners in various branches of the University, including Facilities Management, the provost and almost all other colleges, Pilnik said.

Last year, the initiating lecture of the series was given by Dr. Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, who expressed that excellence is a result of intersections between people's’ diverse experiences and perspectives.

“The mission of our office is to cultivate an environment at UVA in which everyone is wholly valued, affirmed and supported by redefining diversity as excellence,” Pilnik said in an email statement. “The series is a part of that mission, and intentionally brings people to grounds who are going to both challenge and affirm everyone the events touch.”

Since its inception, the series has expanded its reach. Attendance for the first lecture by Harvard philosophy Prof. Cornel West is predicted to include a myriad of communities — members of the Charlottesville area, students, staff and faculty from the University and those driving from neighboring cities such as Washington, D.C. and Richmond, according to Pilnik.

“Approximately 2,500 people from all schools [in the University] attended last year’s series,” Gates said. “We expect 6,000-8,000 people will attend this year.”

“I plan on attending and encourage others outside the University environment to attend because this series reLUCAS HALSE | THE CAVALIER DAILY ally celebrates diversity,” second-year centered on diversity is Cornel West.,College student Jenny Lim said.

“In the wake of the recent events in

Cornel West Sept. 8, Old Cabell Hall The first speaker in the Engineering school’s new series Harvard professor of philosophy.

Charlottesville, it might be expressed that diversity is seen as cultural pollution or harmful. But this event shows people that diversity is something celebrate and it brings us together.”

As such, The Excellence Through Diversity Distinguished Learning Series is expected to bring a unique perspective to issues within Charlottesville.

“The series is important to the UVA and Charlottesville communities as a testament of our shared values,” Gates said. “Our students, faculty, staff and fellow citizens need to feel like they belong here and that their experiences are both validated and valued. Not everyone feels this critical sense of belonging. The series can help.”

The College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, the Darden School of Business, the McIntire School of Commerce, the Office of the Dean of Students’ Multicultural Student Services program, the Office of African-American Affairs and the Office of Diversity and Equity also helped organize the program.

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