SPECIAL HOLIDAY EDITION
Tuesday, May 24
Allen polishes ultra-con credentials
After a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators orchestrated a compromise on the controversial subject of judicial nominees, moderates lauded an agreement that pulled the Senate away from a historic clash. Senator George Allen, meanwhile, bemoaned the triumph of public interest over conservative hegemony. “Overall, this is a major disappointment on principle,” said Allen in a statement released today. Meanwhile, Senator John Warner (R-Virginia) had helped to orchestrate the deal, which provided for a vote on three of the most controversial of George Bush’s judicial nominees. Two other archconservative nominees will likely be filibustered and not approved. “They have been…thrown overboard at sea,” Allen declared.
UVA to poor kids: Huh?
As part of a special section on “Class Matters,” The New York Times today featured UVA in an article that focused on class issues in the hallowed halls of our institutions of higher learning. The University, the Times reports, can claim the dubious honor of being the top public university with the smallest percentage of low-income students—8 percent last year compared to 11 percent a decade ago.
Wednesday, May 25
Dozens of teachers flee the O.C.
Today’s headlines speak to one crisis that Charlottesville thankfully averted, despite its troubles in the school division this year: 60 Orange County teachers plan to leave that school system, according to Mike Robinson, Orange County’s assistant super-intendent. Six will retire, and the rest have resigned, Robinson says. Six administrators and 22 support staff are also leaving the county school system, which currently employs about 360 teachers and about 750 employees total. Orange County’s difficulties can be attributed in part to its lag in teachers’ salaries compared to surrounding school divisions, including Albemarle and Charlottesville. A starting teacher’s salary in Orange County is $32,500 compared to $36,400 in Charlottesville and $36,956 in Albemarle.
Thursday, May 26
Games without frontiers
An Associated Press report published this morning in the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald puts Charlottesville at the center of a terrorism preparedness exercise said to be conducted by the super-stealthy Information Operations Center, an arm of the Central Intelligence Agency. According to Ted Bridis’ report, today was the final day of the three-day simulation of “an unprecedented, September 11-like electronic assault against the United States.” In his story, which relies on unnamed sources, Bridis says 75 government types pretended to react to mock computer attacks in a local conference room somewhere here. Dennis McGrath, a security technology expert at Dartmouth College, who is quoted by Bridis, told C-VILLE that “cyberterrorism” is a misnomer, advancing instead the term “cybersabotage.” “Making systems degrade that work well is not the same thing as causing mass casualties,” he said.
Friday, May 27
817,000 Virginians overcome gas problems
Despite the record-high holiday gas prices, AAA predicted today that a record 37.2 million Americans, including 817,000 Virginians, would travel more than 50 miles from home during Memorial Day weekend. About 84 percent of them plan to drive to their destinations, an increase of about 5 percent from last year, according to AAA. This despite fuel prices that have hit an average of $2.03 per gallon in Virginia.
Written by John Borgmeyer from news sources and staff reports.
Johnny, Janie, get your gun
In spite of national trends, UVA’s ROTC recruits remain steady
When Josh Sims joined the Army’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) in August 2001, his vision of the future seemed very different than it does now.
“I remember joking with my mom, saying ‘What’s the likelihood of having a major war?’” recalls Sims, who graduated from UVA this month with a degree in foreign affairs. On Saturday, May 21, he was one of 12 ROTC cadets commissioned into the Army, each of whom stands a very good chance of participating in ground combat in Iraq or Afghanistan very soon.
Nationwide, ROTC offices say recruitment has slipped by 16 percent over the past two years, mirroring an overall trend of declining enlistment in the U.S. Armed Forces. So far, though, there’s an opposite trend at UVA.
“Since 9/11, we’re up about 10 percent each year,” says Lt. Col. Hampton Hite, who oversees UVA’s ROTC program. In September 2001, he says there were 41 cadets in the ROTC program. In September 2005, “that number will be closer to 60,” he says. UVA enrollment overall during the same period has increased by about 10 percent, suggesting that ROTC is steady there.
Many of those cadets will drop out. Most do so before their junior year, when they are required to sign a contract to join the Army after graduation. Still, recruiting numbers are up, likely as a result of more scholarship money, says Hite. Before the terrorist attacks of September 11, UVA’s Army ROTC program offered only seven or eight four-year scholarships. Now they offer 14 or 15 full scholarships, says Hite.
“I think the Army has realized they have a recruitment challenge in a time of war,” he says.
Economics is often a factor when students decided to join ROTC at UVA, which enrolls a smaller percentage of low-income students—a mere 8 percent—than any other flagship state university, according to a May 24 article in The New York Times. Without ROTC, Sims says, his family would not have been able to afford UVA otherwise.
Before his junior year, Sims says he gave serious thought to whether he wanted to continue in ROTC. It was the promise of adventure more than economics that tempted him to stay.
“I like jumping out of airplanes,” he says. “My parents worked for the Department of Defense, so I knew what I was getting into.”
Col. John Vrba, who recruits students to join UVA’s Air Force ROTC, says that branch’s numbers are also stable. “We’re in the South,” he says. “The South has always been a very strong recruiting garden. It just goes back to the history of our country,” Vrba says.
UVA’s constant ROTC crop may also be due to the large number of military families living in Northern Virginia and Virginia Beach.
Lara Yacus, from Chesapeake, says her father was in the Navy for 20 years. When it came time to decide whether to drop out of ROTC or stick it out, “I don’t think I ever thought about it too much,” she says. The engagement ring flashing on her finger came from a fiancé currently stationed in Fort Hood, Texas, where she will soon be a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army’s transportation corps.
Like all ROTC graduates, she will lead a unit of about 30 soldiers (even though Yacus, at 20, isn’t yet old enough to buy alcohol). Army transportation has become an especially dangerous job, since insurgents in Iraq often target truck convoys with ambush attacks and bombs hidden in the road.
“There’s certainly nervousness,” says Yacus. “Nobody wants to be in danger. But I’ve been trained really well, and I feel this is a way that I can serve.”
Like many of their fellow UVA grads, Sims and Yacus are optimistic about the future. But while their peers contemplate entry-level career options, ROTC graduates prepare to lead the Army through what could be complicated years of overseas obligations and declining enrollment. “At the end of the day, it’s not as much about nation or country or those high things. It’s about those 30-some people looking to you to make decisions,” Sims says.—John Borgmeyer
Hip hop hooray
“The Boombox” plays it straight up
It’s around 11pm on a recent Tuesday night, and “The Boombox,” WNRN’s (91.9 FM) daily hip hop show, is entering its second hour. DJ Illustrious—ne Travis Dyer—fields a call from a promoter asking him if he’s going to play a single from aspiring Florida rapper The Grand Scheem. Dyer tells the promoter, who Dyer says has been canvassing East Coast radio stations for airtime, that he’ll probably play the track in about half an hour.
Dyer isn’t sure about the song himself. Sometimes, he says, “I’ll play stuff I don’t like because I know other people like it. I don’t want to slant it too much to my opinion of what hip hop should be.”
Dyer leaves it up to his audience to render a verdict—“I’m kind of curious myself,” he says—and asks listeners to call in with comments as he cues up the single.
Style and beats aside, it’s not easy to immediately know what to make of it. The Grand Scheem, it turns out, is a Pakistani immigrant. His nom de plume simultaneously refers to an avowal of his own materialistic ambitions as a new sort of outsider, and more broadly to a blood-for-oil critique of the war in the Middle East. Gangsta foreign policy, gangsta tropes wrapped around the outlaws hunted by Western forces, The Grand Scheem attempts to bend hip hop culture to yet another corner of the world. It’s safe to say WNRN’s phones don’t light up.
Pakistani rappers may not be typical of “The Boombox,” but the edgy, the unexpected, the as-yet unknown are. Freed from play lists set by corporate headquarters, “exclusive joints,” “local cats,” “cuts you’re not going to hear anywhere else” are the program’s hallmarks, as Illustrious said during a recent fund drive for the listener-supported radio station.
“I feel like this station is one of the only stations on the East Coast that’s even real hip hop,” Dyer says. “Other stations play the same songs four or five times an hour. It’s always the 50 Cent song or the Eminem song. With us, you’ll hear their singles, but you’ll hear them way before the other stations get them. By the time they get them, we’ve moved on to the next singles, a remix, or an album track by the same artist.”
And Illustrious isn’t the only one to speak high about “The Boombox.” Damani Harrison, by day a studio assistant and outreach coordinator at the Music Resource Center and by night a hip hop performer with The Beetnix, credits “The Boombox” for consistently airing “the full spectrum” of hip hop. “They’ll play underground, local and commercial hip hop,” Harrison says.
“One, as a musician, it gives an opportunity for people such as myself to have an outlet locally and, two, it’s so diverse because every night they’re playing different music. It keeps it from becoming homogenous. ‘The Boombox’ is much richer than commercial radio because it’s unadulterated.”
Quinton Harrell, through his clothing business Charlottesville Players, has been a sponsor of the show “on and off for a few years.” He says “The Boombox” is an “economically efficient way” to reach a segment of his market, but he’s less satisfied with the show’s late-night hours. “I don’t really fully understand the business behind it, why it’s not aired more or aired earlier,” he says. “It’s almost on the verge of being counterproductive. They should play it earlier so kids can hear it after school instead of late at night when they should be doing their homework. Being the only hip hop show, it should be on earlier and more.”
Harrison says the hip hop kids he works with at the Music Resource Center “live and die by ‘The Boombox.’”
Dyer, who has just passed the two-year mark at WNRN and is currently “The Boombox”’s program director, is a Madison, Virginia, native who says he started listening to the show when it first went on the air about 10 years ago. He was in high school when he met 1-Bit the Head Rayda (Frankie Lewis), who handles backing MC duties—answering calls, taking requests, delivering shout outs—on Dyer’s regular Tuesday night slot. Lewis, along with his brother Charles, is also the founder of Strong Quality Music, a Madison-based hip hop label with whom Dyer has frequently worked as a producer.
Dyer says the Boombox, which is “the most listened to program on WNRN,” aims to play about three local or independent acts during each of its five two-hour weekday broadcasts between 10pm and midnight, and five during its four-hour Saturday night broadcast that goes until 2am. “The Boombox” also includes a heavy dose of classic hip hop tracks and often features in-studio interviews with new artists.
“Every DJ brings their own flavor,” Dyer says of “The Boombox”’s different weekly shows. “On Wednesday nights, it’s more Down South hip hop, like Lil’ Jon type stuff. Thursday nights it’s more like underground New York style. Saturday nights is kind of a party vibe, for the weekend…My show I try to give them…brand new stuff that they’re hearing for the first time.”
“The Boombox” is a principal venue for new and aspiring regional artists, and Dyer says he has to cull through a packed mailbox of independent and home-produced recordings.
Harrison credits “The Boombox” with expanding the local audience for The Beetnix and their two CDs, Homesick and Any Given Day. “We received a lot of support from the college community and the artistic community. It wasn’t until we reached out and started going on ‘The Boombox’ and making tracks that we knew would go into the ‘Boombox’ rotation that we started getting the street recognition. When we were asked to come on and do interviews on that show, when we dealt with kids in the projects or the Music Resource Center, they’d say, ‘Yeah, we know who you are. We heard you behind Jadakiss.’”—Harry Terris, with additional reporting by Cathy Harding
Primary colors
Will democracy be the feel-good hit of the summer?
Is it time for another election already? Like the Sith and the Jedi, the politicians are back again, skirmishing with each other and hoping for your attention. While real estate taxes and transportation expenditures may not be your idea of a summer blockbuster, state elections do matter.
Right-wingers, moderates, and Charlottesville’s own homegrown liberals (or progressives, or what-ever they’re called now) are vying for control of the Common-wealth. Who are the good guys? Who are the bad? To help you figure it out, C-VILLE offers the following voter’s guide to the June 14 primaries. Virginia does not register voters by party affiliation, so all eligible voters can cast a ballot.
This guide includes campaign contribution totals as of March 31, and that itself presents a telling portrait. There may be a reason that, while everyone complains about sprawl, nobody does anything about it. The numbers suggest that the real estate industry has made a big investment in our politicians.—John Borgmeyer
Welcome to the 21st century
Monticello prepares for a sleek new visitor’s center
Is your supply of Thomas Jefferson coffee mugs and Monticello jigsaw puzzles running low? You’re in luck.
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which manages Monticello, is planning a new visitor’s center and gift shop to be built on the existing parking lot near Route 53 on Monticello Mountain. The Albemarle County Planning Commission unanimously green-lighted the plans on April 12, and the Foundation will seek a thumbs-up from the Board of Supervisors at the Board’s regular meeting on Wednesday, June 8.
Mike Merriam, director of construction management for the Foundation, says the total project—which includes a 40,000-square-foot visitor’s center, administrative buildings and the removal of some modern structures adjacent to the famous 18th-century mansion—will cost around $50 million.
“In a perfect world, we would be able to open the visitor’s center sometime in the fall of 2008,” Merriam says. “But the schedule will depend on our success in fundraising. I wouldn’t be surprised if it slipped by as much as a year.”
The Baltimore architecture firm of Ayers/Saint/Gross is designing the visitor’s center. According to County records, preliminary drawings show a modern-look-ing, H-shaped building with walls almost entirely of glass—not unlike the bus transfer station the City plans envisions for the east end of the Downtown Mall. The visitor’s center will include a gift shop and what Merriam calls a “modest café.” Once the whole project is finished, there will be parking space for 400 cars and 25 tour buses as well as a redesigned entrance to an African-American burial site on the property. The current visitor’s center on Route 20 is joint property of the City and County, and they would take control of the current structure when the new visitor’s center is finished.
The gift shop, offices and restrooms currently housed in a historic building on the mountaintop known as Weaver’s Cottage will be moved into the new buildings, as will offices currently located in the basement and upper floors of Monticello.
To accommodate the new construction, Albemarle County will tailor the zoning on Monticello Mountain. Since 1980, Monticello has been a “non-conforming use” in the County’s rural area, says planner Joan McDowell. The newfangled “Monticello Historic District” will include 868 acres on the mountain, although Merriam says that “96 percent” of the new district will remain undeveloped open space.
“Our first approach was to ask for all these various uses to be permitted in the rural area,” says Merriam. “Unfortunately, that kind of zoning change could have opened the door for other commercial activity in the rural area that the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors would not want. They asked us to think it over.”
The Foundation has actually been pondering the project for at least five years or so, when they considered building a new hot dog stand, according to McDowell. In 2002, C-VILLE reported that Monticello and UVA had struck a deal that would allow the Foundation to build a 95,000-square-foot visitor’s center on the site of the former Blue Ridge Hospital, a 140-acre campus just south of Interstate 64.
UVA’s Real Estate Foundation owns that site, which contains buildings that both UVA and Monticello had once declared to be historically significant. Monticello pulled out of the deal, while UVA still plans to build a research park as the historic buildings continue to decay.
“Some of our board members were uneasy with it from the start,” Merriam says of the Blue Ridge arrangement. “I think they liked the idea of having more control by being on our own property, instead of leasing from the Real Estate Foundation. It forced us to tighten our belts, and live within our means.”
Even with the scaled-back visitor’s center, Monticello’s fundraisers will be working overtime. Last year, the Foundation spent $15 million to buy land atop nearby Brown’s Mountain that might otherwise have yielded to a housing development.
“It’s a significant hurdle just to get the money to pay off the purchase price,” says Merriam. “This isn’t the booming ’90s anymore.”—John Borgmeyer
Semantic gang bang
Depending on whom you ask, the word “gang” means different things
In his 2005 State of the Union Address, President Bush said the word “gang” more times than he said the word “education.” Nationwide, according to federal statistics, there are approximately 750,000 gang members, comprising more than 25,000 gangs in more than 3,000 jurisdictions.
The “gang” issue hit home with the February arrest of 17 people, who were allegedly members of a local gang called the West-side Crew (or, al-ternately, Project Crud), on charges involving racketeering, narcotics trafficking, narcotics conspiracy and multiple violent crimes.
However, the word “gang” means some-thing different depending on whether the source is a sociologist, the Virginia Code or a man on the street. The question thus arises, to bastardize the title of a Raymond Carver book, of what we’re talking about when we talk about gangs.
According to UVA sociology instructor Robert McConnell, there are three sociological tenets that define “gang” in its contemporary context.
First, there’s “the recognition that a group of people are always together and somehow belong together,” he says, putting the minimum number of people at five.
Second, the group must be associated with crime and delinquency. Third, says McConnell, is the group’s acknowledgement of a distinctive identity that can be expressed, for example, through dress or hand signs.
The Virginia Code definition of a “criminal street gang” is consistent with the basics of the sociological definition as a group of delinquent people. However, the code says that “members individually or collectively have engaged in the commission of [a violent crime.]”
Read: It’s possible that if one member of a group identified by a name or symbol commits or attempts to commit a violent crime, that person could be prosecuted more severely as a result of being a part of said group. The alleged crime could thus graduate a group to a “gang” as defined by the Virginia Code.
McConnell says that the question of definition is a common debate when it comes to what’s on the books. A word or three can be the difference between apprehending a “gang” versus a “group of kids hanging out on the street.”
“Crime rates are in many ways the product of how crime is defined,” he says. “You can change the perception of the effectiveness of law enforcement by simply changing the definition of the kinds of people [law enforcement] are most likely to apprehend.”
Between downpours on a recent afternoon, 17-year-old Laquandra Jackson stepped outside her aunt’s Friendship Court rowhouse for a breath of fresh air. Caught off guard by this reporter, she hesitated when asked about her understanding of “gang.” Her father, Kenneth Jackson, however, overheard the conversation from inside and stepped out to encourage her.
A gang, she then said readily, as if reading from a dictionary, “is a group of people in alliance taking care of each other either by violence or something else,” elaborating further that she associates gangs with neighborhoods. Friendship Court, West-haven and Prospect Street all have their respective gangs, said Laquandra, a fact later confirmed by Detective Brian O’Donnell of the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement task force.
A student at Charlottesville High School, Laquandra has no direct knowledge of the city’s neighborhood gangs but, citing a friend who was recently stabbed, says she’s heard through the school grapevine about “lots of violence going on against kids from different areas,” a trend she attributes to gangs.
Her father then chimed in that when he was in school he had a “gang.” Or, as he defined it, “a bunch of kids that hung out together on the weekends and sat at the same lunch table,” highlighting discrepancies in generational perceptions of the word.
While gangs are undeniably an issue, it’s not like the Crips and the Bloods have set up shop Downtown, as they have in Lynchburg, says Detective O’Donnell. He acknowledges the existence of locally active gangs, but says that they’re “not nearly as organized” as the national gangs and he declines to hazard a guess as to numbers of gang members locally.
“You break up gangs into hard core members, associate members, wannabes,” he says, “and it’s hard to tell at any given time how many are actively involved.”—Nell Boeschenstein