One year on: What’s changed at UVA since the meltdown over Dragas-gate?
This story’s publication date marks a year to the day that UVA’s Board of Visitors defied public outcry for the reinstatement of ousted president Teresa Sullivan by holing up in the Rotunda for 11 hours and doubling down on its decision to force her out. It took eight more days for the University’s governing body [...]
Commonwealth’s attorney clears boy, parents in Crozet shooting
Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Denise Lunsford has determined that the 10-year-old Crozet girl who was shot to death by her brother in their living room last month was killed accidentally. According to a legal analysis Lunsford delivered to Albemarle County Police Chief Colonel Steve Sellers Thursday morning, no charges will be filed against either the [...]
Councilors say city utility fees are becoming too big a burden for residents
The Charlottesville City Council adopted rates for the city’s three public utilities for the coming fiscal year last month, and the numbers weren’t dire: Water and wastewater rates are up, but they’re offset by a slight drop in gas prices. But two Councilors still aren’t content. Dave Norris and Dede Smith say two fees that [...]
Dumler’s out—what’s next?
Eight months after his felony sexual assault arrest, four months after he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor sexual battery, and just five days after a judge denied a petition to force him out of office, Scottsville representative Chris Dumler announced his resignation from the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, surprising some of his harshest critics and [...]
UPDATE: Albemarle man killed in area’s second police shooting in two weeks
UPDATE, 3:30pm Monday, June 10: State police have confirmed that the man killed in an officer-involved shooting early Saturday morning in western Albemarle was Gregory A. Rosson, Jr., 21, of Crozet. According to the latest news release issued this afternoon, police received a 911 call for a “domestic situation” at an Afton address on Route [...]
To the polls Tuesday: Democratic primary recap
The Democratic primary is Tuesday, June 11, and besides the statewide contests for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General (in which Albemarle residents will cast votes, too), Charlottesville voters will select Democratic candidates for three upcoming races in November: Commonwealth’s Attorney, Commissioner of the Revenue, and Charlottesville City Council. Dave Chapman, who has served as Commonwealth’s [...]
“The door that opens when all other doors are closed”: An interview with ASG’s Peter DeMartino
As a reporter, you sometimes find yourself with a really great interview on your hands—one with a subject who is so compelling and well-spoken that you sort of want to sit back and let their words tell the whole story for you. I had that experience last week, when I sat down with Peter DeMartino, [...]
Put to the test: Why Charlottesville’s AIDS advocacy group is taking on Hepatitis C
Peter DeMartino did not witness the arrival of the AIDS epidemic in Charlottesville, but he knows the stories. “Quarantine, nurses in suits, food left outside the door, people not being bathed or touched,” said DeMartino, who in 2010 became the executive director of the city’s AIDS-HIV Services Group (ASG). “It was that time in the [...]
Good judgment: Hogshire awarded first-ever Gideon award
On Thursday, Judge Eward L. Hogshire addressed a packed Charlottesville Circuit courtroom—not an unusual occurrence. But he didn’t do it from the bench. Hogshire, dressed in his usual bowtie but not his usual robes, offered a few words from a lectern, the guest of honor at a ceremony held by the Citizens Advisory Committee for [...]
As Halsey Minor files for personal bankruptcy, former Landmark creditors get long-awaited payout
Former CNET CEO and would-be hotelier Halsey Minor filed for personal bankruptcy in Los Angeles County last week, just days after a federal judge’s order in a Virginia bankruptcy court ended a long battle over debts owed to Minor’s former Landmark Hotel contractors. Minor, a Charlottesville native who has faced escalating financial troubles since selling [...]
The cost of living: At least a third of residents pay more than they can afford for their homes. What next?
Most charming. Most walkable. Healthiest. Number one place to retire. Charlottesville loves its accolades. But there’s one distinction it could do without: Least affordable. The city’s high housing costs are not a new phenomenon, and neither are efforts to correct them. In 2010, the City Council adopted the goal of increasing its proportion of supported [...]
Council approves Human Rights Commission with enforcement powers
After two years of study and debate, Charlottesville has a blueprint for a Human Rights Commission. The City Council voted 3-1 last Monday to adopt an anti-discrimination ordinance and an agency to enforce it. For months, the discussion over what to do with recommendations to form a commission—first from the Dialogue on Race, and later [...]
A bug’s life: Cicada emergence is a mysterious, massive phenomenon
Sachin Gadani and a few friends recently spent a weekend combing Charlottesville for cicadas. The UVA MD-PhD graduate student is head of the University’s entomology club, and he and several fellow amateur bug lovers haven’t had to look hard to find the first local representatives of one of the greatest spectacles of the insect world: [...]
Fake ID trio remanded; feds say Rugby house held $1.3 million in cash
All three Charlottesville residents arrested last week for allegedly manufacturing thousands of fake IDs will remain in jail for the foreseeable future after each waived the right to a bail hearing in federal court Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile, details continue to emerge about the raid on a Rugby Road house that led to their arrests, including [...]
As dome nears completion, a new chapter begins for Rotunda
Jody Lahendro has led a lot of curious locals up the 61′ of creaking scaffolding that has surrounded UVA’s Rotunda for a year. Most recently, it was a group that had won a private tour at an auction to raise money for the iconic structure’s ongoing renovation. Once the visitors emerged at the lip of [...]
When a MOOC is more than a MOOC: How online learning is shifting the academic goalposts at UVA
Lou Bloomfield is behind on his correspondence. A teetering stack of letters and postcards sits on the desk of the UVA physics professor, creator of the much-loved undergraduate science-for-non-science-majors course “How Things Work.” They’re all from students, and full of praise and thanks. He’s met none of them. “I really want to be able to [...]
Saying goodbye
Whenever I hear anyone make a snide remark about a “townie,” I glare and then I puff out my chest. Who do these students think they are? They are the ones here temporarily, taking advantage of our turf. I moved to Charlottesville in seventh grade, and came to UVA as a first-year in 2009. My [...]
Bright young things: UVA’s self-directed synthetic biology stars
Ask some of the newest members of UVA’s International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition team why they plan to spend the summer in a lab on Grounds splicing DNA, and they have a tendency to talk over one another in their eagerness to explain. “It’s undergraduate research, but we’re not treated like undergraduates,” said 19-year-old Josh [...]
Idea, inc.: Darden’s iLab incubator opens its doors to entrepreneurs from UVA and beyond
What do a seven-millimeter-thick portable speaker, a blood-sampling catheter designed to mimic a mosquito’s proboscis, and habanero-pineapple hot sauce have in common? They’re all destined for the Darden School of Business, three of more than two dozen business ideas from a group of entrepreneurs who will form the first class to go through UVA’s new [...]
What’s coming up in Charlottesville and Albemarle the week of 5/13?
Each week, the news team takes a look at upcoming meetings and events in Charlottesville and Albemarle we think you should know about. Consider it a look into our datebook, and be sure to share newsworthy happenings in the comments section. The Belmont-Carlton Neighborhood Association is hosting a candidates’ forum for the Democrats running for [...]
UPDATED: Details emerge following fake ID ring raid
This is an updated version of a story that ran last Wednesday, shortly after the three Charlottesville residents arrested earlier in the week for manufacturing fake IDs appeared in court for the first time. Secret surveillance at the Charlottesville post office. Swapped license plates. Luxury cars paid for in cash. A stockpile of money and [...]
UPDATE: Three arrested in suspected fake ID ring appear in court
Three fraud ring suspects arrested earlier this week following a massive raid of a Rugby Road house are in custody after an initial appearance in federal court Wednesday morning. Alan McNeil Jones, 31, Kelly Erin McPhee, 31, and Mark G. Bernardo, 26, suspected of running a fake ID ring, were charged Monday night after heavily [...]
Two arrested, one at large following Rugby Road fake ID raid
Two Charlottesville residents suspected of manufacturing fake IDs are in custody and one is at large after a Monday night raid on a house near UVA. Kelly Erin McPhee, 31, and Mark G. Bernardo, both of Charlottesville, were arrested by federal agents executing a search warrant at 920 Rugby Road, according to Brian P. McGinn, [...]
Anatomy of an eviction: The Parrish family and the city’s public housing debate
When 50 members of the Public Housing Association of Residents and their supporters marched up the Downtown Mall last week to protest recent efforts by the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority (CRHA) and its director, Constance Dunn, to raise rents and make it easier for the agency to evict those who don’t pay, Janelle Parrish [...]
County sees turnaround on capital expansion
When the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors voted last week to push ahead with a plan to spend $11.8 million to turn an old building supply warehouse into the new home of the Northside Library, it added to a growing list of capital projects planned in the county for the next five to 10 years. [...]
Monticello makeover: $10 million gift brings goal of total restoration into view
Before another month gets torn off the calendar, the leading lights of Monticello will sit down together to discuss a task every nonprofit dreams of facing: How exactly they’re going to go about spending $10 million. It’s a conversation made possible by David Rubenstein, a co-founder of Washington, D.C. financial firm the Carlyle Group, who [...]
Tourism, tech, and the race to brand Charlottesville
At the start of the Tom Tom Founders Festival two weekends ago, a crowd filled The Haven on First and Market to rehash a question that Charlottesville loves to ask, but rarely manages to answer: Who are we? The “Aspen vs. Austin vs. Arlington” debate pitted several concepts of place against one another. Should the [...]