Fewer kids having kids
Local teen pregnancy is down but the Right can’t take credit for it
Teen idol Britney Spears may no longer be a virgin, but so far she seems to have averted one particularly momentous consequence of sex: pregnancy. And teenage girls seem to be following Britney’s lead as teen pregnancy and birth rates have fallen steeply over the past dozen years.
The social ills that drive teen pregnancy rates in the United States defy easy categorization, and trying to measure the value of various methods to combat the problem has proven equally vexing.
One current debate is over the role of abstinence-only education, which is currently en vogue in the White House and on Capitol Hill. Locally, teen pregnancy is down, and abstinence-only programs have hardly been visible on the landscape. Federal abstinence-only programs, which require that grant recipients abstain from teaching teens about condoms and other forms of contraception, are not prevalent in the Charlottesville area. In 2003, Virginia received only $828,619 of the $117 million the Federal government spent on abstinence-only education in 2003.
Yet local teenage pregnancy and birth rates have followed the national trend, falling since their peak in the early ’90s. From 1992 through 1994, about one in every 14 teenage girls in Charlottesville gave birth, according to a report from the Charlottesville/Albemarle Commission on Children and Families. That annual rate dropped to about one birth for every 36 girls during 1999-2001. Virginia’s teenage pregnancy rates also declined substantially in the ’90s, as did Albemarle County’s [see accompanying chart].
Local experts on teen pregnancy say the encouraging trend, which predates the Bush Administration’s abstinence-only push, can be attributed to a broad range of factors, including better sex education, access to contraceptives and increased fears about HIV/AIDS.
Saphira Baker, the director of the Commission on Children and Families, says efforts to curb teen pregnancy have “gotten smarter” in recent years. “We’re not a community in crisis because we have good programs in place,” Baker says.
One way local teen pregnancy programs have made strides is by targeting at-risk teens, such as kids who have had discipline problems or have had teenage siblings that have gotten pregnant, and helping them to feel that their lives matter, according to UVA psychology professor and teen pregnancy expert Joseph Allen.
“Kids get pregnant when they have a dim enough view of their future,” says Allen, who has worked on local teen pregnancy programs.
Allen says teens need more than information to push them away from the risky behavior that leads to pregnancy. He says an increasing number of successful pregnancy-prevention programs include volunteer opportunities that give teenagers “a vision of how they can fit into their community.” Without a link to the world around them, Allen says the risk of pregnancy fails to faze teenagers. As an example of an effective local program, Allen cites Teens GIVE, which puts teenagers to work with younger kids, the elderly or on environmental projects.
Dyan Aretakis is the project director for the Teen Health Center at UVA. She says an informal poll from several years ago found that 15-year-old girls visiting the center had already had sex with an average of four partners. Aretakis believes this number would almost certainly decline if a similar poll were conducted today. She says that education about HIV/AIDS has helped change teens’ attitudes regarding sex.
“HIV has served to make kids aware about the biggest dangers of having sex casually,” Aretakis says.
The news on teen pregnancy is not all good, however, says Maureen Burkhill, the associate director of Teensight, a local group that works with teens on pregnancy and STD prevention. Burkhill notes that teen pregnancy rates have actually increased slightly in Charlottesville over the past couple years, and that a large percentage of local teenagers still use drugs and alcohol and have multiple sexual partners. Though Burkhill and Gretchen Ellis, a planner at the Commission on Children and Families, agree that the slight increase in teen pregnancies in Charlottesville is not statistically significant and does not yet represent a trend, Burkhill says it is an indicator that the social disease of high teen pregnancy rates has yet to be cured.
Teensight runs an abstinence-only program for siblings of teen parents as part of its suite of services. Though Burkhill says the endeavor is going well, she says abstinence education shouldn’t replace all other teen pregnancy prevention efforts, particularly for teens who are already sexually active.
“My gut feeling is that it’s not the only answer,” Burkhill says.
Aretakis agrees. She says her organization talks about abstinence “all the time,” but that only teaching abstinence is naïve and unrealistic. Aretakis says the stakes are too high for teen educators to stay mum about contraception when talking to a teenage girl.
“Too many people don’t reach their potential when a teen has a baby,” Aretakis says.—Paul Fain
Declarations of independence
How will a more autonomous UVA affect Charlottesville?
In the pages of college-ranking magazines and in the eyes of prospective students, UVA reflects tradition and high academic standards. Locally, the view is more complex—UVA is a multibillion-dollar engine that drives growth and culture, while coughing out new buildings, roads and parking garages anywhere it wants.
Given these distinct views of UVA, it’s not surprising that some top legislators in the General Assembly (such as House Speaker William Howell, budget chairman Vincent Callahan and senior Democrat Richard Saslaw) endorse giving Virginia’s top colleges, including UVA, more freedom from State control, while locally the idea has earned a more tepid response.
Before this year’s General Assembly session commenced on Wednesday, January 14, the Commonwealth’s top three schools—UVA, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the College of William and Mary—started to promote an idea that would allow the schools to set tuition and out-of-state-enrollment numbers and to make investments independently. In turn, the universities would get less State funding and be subject to fewer State regulations.
The part about “fewer regulations” has Jan Cornell, president of the staff union at UVA, up in arms.
“I have a huge problem with all of it. We’re going to fight it as hard as we can,” Cornell says. “Nobody understands the implication it’s going to have on employees.”
Cornell has a list of concerns about autonomy, but her biggest worry is how the proposed change would affect the benefits and job security of 11,000 classified employees. As a State agency, UVA must currently follow State regulations that require the school to provide a strong benefits package, and abide by rules that make it difficult for supervisors to fire employees. With greater autonomy, Cornell says, UVA could become more like the Medical Center, which gained a similar measure of freedom from the State in 1996.
One result of that change was that the Medical Center cut expenses by switching its health insurance plan to an HMO that was cheaper for the institution, but more complicated and slightly more expensive for employees, says Sue Herndon, a hospital employee who weathered the change.
Furthermore, the Medical Center adopted its own policy regarding employee firings, a system that gives department supervisors broad powers. This opens the door for favoritism, says Herndon. In theory, two employees could make the exact same mistakes, and one might get fired while the other might not.
“It’s all up to the supervisor,” Herndon says. “That’s where it gets iffy.”
But even as Medical Center workers absorbed the liabilities of privatization—cheaper benefits and less job security—they didn’t see the benefits private employees usually enjoy, such as higher wages or the right to unionize.
“I understand where management is coming from. They’re losing money,” says Herndon. “But at the same time, they’ve got people in there making $500,000, and it’s the poorest workers that end up hurting the most.”
Cornell also believes that greater autonomy at UVA will mean more cronyism in the school’s contracts for such work as painting and flooring.
“If they’re out of the State system, they’ll be giving work to their friends. I wonder if they’ll look for the best deal,” says Cornell.
UVA spokesperson Carol Wood says UVA currently follows the Virginia Public Procurement Act, which requires a competitive bidding process for contracts and prohibits discrimination. Under autonomy, Wood says UVA “would continue to follow the guidelines of the Public Procurement Act. It’s a good business practice.”
The Daily Progress quoted Cornell on January 11 denouncing autonomy as “horrific,” and she admits she’s had to turn up the rhetoric against autonomy because, she says, many UVA employees don’t believe a change would affect them. In reality, no one can know exactly what will happen, because an autonomy bill hasn’t been drafted yet. Cornell says she has “no illusions” about defeating a bill that would be supported by three university presidents, but she hopes to drum up enough opposition so that any eventual bill will include some protections for the 50,000 employees at the three schools.
“I think UVA is spending more time talking to the press about this than its own employees,” says Cornell. “If they’re not talking to employees about it, we have to assume it’s not going to be good.”
Wood says UVA is planning a series of “town meetings” where employees will be able to ask questions about how autonomy would affect them. Should UVA gain autonomy, Wood says the administration will take employee concerns into consideration as it negotiates its charter with the State, which would happen over the course of the next year.
“This is just the beginning of the process. There will be a lot of listening going on to make sure we do this right,” says Wood.—John Borgmeyer
Secure transactions
Homeland security equals pork dollars for localities
Formed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the Department of Homeland Security has doled out $4.4 billion in grants to state and local governments under the rubric of the “War on Terror” as of March 1, 2003. In some major cities, like San Francisco, mayors have complained that the Feds have been too stingy and slow with the grants. In Charlottesville, however, the money has been a boon for local police and fire departments in times of tight State and local budgets.
The $7,094,688 that Charlottesville and Albemarle have received from Homeland Security will pay for things we hope never get used, like protective suits that resist radioactive fallout. But the money will also buy tools for day-to-day use, such as improved communications technology that will help City, County and UVA police officers talk to each other. The money flows through the Virginia Department of Emergency Preparedness, which divides the grants between cities and localities in the Commonwealth. Here’s how the money breaks down.—-John Borgmeyer
Charlottesville Police Department
Three grants totaling $160,000 to be used to purchase suits that protect officers against radioactive or biological fallout, gas masks, communication devices for the CPD’s crisis negotiation team, and a trailer to serve as a mobile headquarters in case of a major accident or disaster.
Albemarle County Police Department
Three grants totaling $183,328 to be used mostly for gas masks and one Kevlar ballistic vest.
Albemarle County Fire Department
Two grants totaling $178,260 to be used to pay a portion of the $400,000 it will cost to outfit the department with the latest Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA) equipment.
Charlottesville Fire Department
Two grants totaling $512,000 to be used for SCBA equipment. The department will work with City police to assemble a hazardous materials team and to purchase a mobile command unit.
Emergency Operations Center
Three grants totaling $6,061,100. One grant will pay for emergency training exercises, and another will equip the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), a group of citizens trained to respond in their own neighborhoods to disasters. Charlottesville, Albemarle and UVA together won the $6 million competitive grant that will help unify emergency communications between the three jurisdictions, including installing computers in all police cars.
Fade to black
The Goth set mourns the end of Tokyo Rose’s Dawning
The small cloth-and-marker banner hanging over the stage said it all: “The End is near!!!” It wasn’t a doomsday prophecy or existential credo. On Saturday, January 17, it was the truth for the near-capacity crowd of 141 at Tokyo Rose’s regular Saturday show, The Dawning, which that night held the final live performance of its five-year-plus run in the Rose’s laser-lit, couch-lined basement.
On January 3, Chris Knight, The Dawning’s concert booker, sent word out to the show’s mailing list and online message boards: As far as Tokyo Rose was concerned, The Dawning would no longer see the light of day. “The management has kindly given us space and supported us for years and they are finally ready to step away from the liability of having a high-risk event in their space,” she wrote in the message. The final live show would be Silent Muse, followed by a “wake” party with The Dawning’s five staff DJs Saturday, January 24, Knight announced.
Tokyo Rose owner Atsushi Miura’s decision came following several fights in the venue, including a December 27 incident that brought the police when a knife-wielding man, who had been drinking upstairs, fled downstairs into a performance by Goth band Bella Morte, Knight told C-VILLE. “The fights were probably the last straw for someone considering letting go the more aggressive, even the all-ages shows,” she says.
Following the Dawning’s demise, Miura will ban those under 18 from any of Tokyo Rose’s downstairs concerts, as well as discontinue all punk, Goth and industrial shows. “That music carries problem people,” Miura says. “Almost every time we have that, there’s problems or tension. I feel sorry for parents who have kids like that.”
Neither Knight nor Bella Morte’s Andy Deane and Gopal Metro, who pioneered The Dawning in 1998 as a regular Wednesday Goth night, blame Miura for his heavy-handed response. “Atsushi is awesome, straight up,” says Metro. “He’s always been a full supporter.”
Talent booker Knight says Miura’s only proceeds from the all-ages shows came from the bar—though he regularly faced liability threats from underage drinking, rowdy behavior and vandalism of the nearby Cavalier Laundromat.
“When he started hosting the shows he was of one mind. After six years of doing it, especially for music that he’s not really into, he’s just grown tired,” Knight says.
But the end of The Dawning leaves many displaced Goths upset and looking for reasons why. “There’s nobody really to blame it on,” says Metro. “I was going to say young people, but at our show, when Atsushi finally said ‘We’re done with it,’ it was adults causing the trouble.”
At the January 17 concert, regular Dawning attendee Skunk, 22, who works by day at Integral Yoga, blamed irresponsible people. “They need to know that this is not going to be the place to come and start shit.”
Other concertgoers merely mourned the loss of a hangout. “It was the coolest place in Charlottesville. I really feel comfortable here—even though I did feel like a fight could break out any minute,” said an 18-year-old man who asked to be called Nny.
For now, Dawning patrons can look to Knight for a solution. “Chris has got a head full of steam,” says Deane. “And she’s got a lot of people behind her.” Knight is currently raising funds to find a new space for Goth and other live music. “This town has got an enormous amount of musicians and they don’t have any place to play,” she says.—Ben Sellers