Month: November 2017

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News

In brief: August 11 bombshells, sexual harassment and more

Neo Nazis, alt-righters and white supremacists encircle counter protestors at the base of a statue of Thomas Jefferson after marching through the University of Virginia campus with torches on August 11, 2017. (Credit Image: © Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via ZUMA Press)

What UVA knew

Through a public records request, the Chronicle of Higher Education obtained nearly 3,000 documents from the University of Virginia before, during and after the notorious August 11 tiki-torch march through Grounds. “Together, the emails shed light on the mentality of a university administration and a campus police force that were caught off guard by a throng of white supremacists who used one of the nation’s premier public institutions as the staging ground for a demonstration reminiscent of Nazi Germany and the worst days of the Ku Klux Klan,” writes reporter Jack Stripling in his November 20 article.

The biggest bombshells

They might come as tourists. “Of course we anticipate that some of them will be interested merely in seeing Mr. Jefferson’s architecture and Lawn,” President Teresa Sullivan wrote the Board of Visitors in an email on August 9, two days before the Friday night march.

The Cassandra figure. Captain Donald McGee with university police warned his supervisors August 8 that there could be a repeat of the tiki-torch march held in May and the Rotunda and Lawn might be targeted because white nationalist Richard Spencer is a UVA alum.

If charcoal grills are allowed… McGee noted that the torches were a fire hazard, but university police were unaware they could enforce UVA’s open flame policy.

Blame the victims. Sullivan was famously videoed chastising a student for not telling the administration what the Unite the Righters’ plans were. “Don’t expect us to be reading the alt-right websites,” said the president. But student and faculty warnings appeared unheeded.

Call the first lady. Religious studies prof Jalane Schmidt heard chatter about a march Friday afternoon, but fearing she wouldn’t be taken seriously because she’s an activist, she notified Mayor Mike Signer’s wife, Emily Blout, an assistant media studies professor, who said UVA knew since 3pm and that she “went to the top.”

We’ve got this covered. University Police Chief Mike Gibson expressed confidence that the upcoming situation was under control when offered assistance from the city and county police, which kept officers nearby on standby. When the march started, one lone UVA officer was spotted on the Lawn.

Eli Mosley lied? The Unite the Right security guy, Identity Evropa’s Mosley, told UVA police the group assembling at Nameless Field was smaller than he expected, would march up University Avenue and not through Grounds—and would pick up its trash.

“In my 47 years of association with the University, this was the worst thing I have seen unfold on the Lawn and at the Rotunda. Nothing else even comes close.” —Professor and Lawn resident Larry Sabato in an email to Sullivan August 11 after the neo-Nazi march through Grounds.

 

 

 

In brief

And so it begins…

Cramer Photos

National Book Award winner and UVA creative writing professor John Casey is the focus of a Title IX complaint filed by former MFA student Emma Eisenberg, who alleges he touched her “inappropriately” at social functions, didn’t call on her in class and referred to women using the c-word. Casey is preparing a response, according to NBC29.

White power playbook

The apparently bogus UVA White Student Union posted a screed on Facebook that’s almost exactly the same as one posted for hoax organizations in 2015 at more than 30 schools, including UC Berkeley, Penn State and NYU. UVA says the owner of the page is likely not a UVA community member, and the White Student Union is not an official school organization, the Cav Daily reports.

“I felt like [August 12] was so volatile and it changed the mood of the whole country. My thought was: If these men aren’t held accountable, it will convey the message nationally that you can beat the life out of someone and just get away with it.”—Shaun King on why he dedicated himself to identifying violent alt-righters from the rally, as reported by the Daily Progress

Citizen oversight

City Council gave the go-ahead November 20 for a civilian review board to look at complaints against the Charlottesville Police Department or its officers.

City and county oversight

The Albemarle Board of Supervisors and City Council seek seats on the board of the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau, to which they contribute more than $1.7 million in tax dollars. The current bureau hired Clean, a Raleigh, North Carolina, advertising agency, according to the Progress. Previously, the now-defunct Payne Ross handled advertising.

Tired of vigils

Martyn Kyle

Five years ago, just before Thanksgiving, Sage Smith headed to West Main to meet Erik McFadden and was never seen again. Earlier this year, Charlottesville police declared the case a homicide and named McFadden a person of interest. Smith’s grandmother, Cookie Smith, told the Daily Progress she’s tired of candlelight vigils and was organizing a sock drive for the homeless.

Categories
News

Different story: UVA Law alum re-emerges to explain that racial profiling recant

UVA Law alum Johnathan Perkins now says the FBI made him recant his claim of being racially profiled by UVA police in 2011. Contributed photo

By Natalie Jacobsen

When we last heard from Johnathan Perkins, it was 2011. In the six years since, the University of Virginia School of Law alumnus has reached milestones in his career, and currently works as an associate attorney in Harvard’s Office of the General Counsel. But today he also struggles with personal conflicts that haunt him.

April 1, 2011: Perkins says he was confronted by UVA police officers on Wertland Street around 2am, and he asserted in a Virginia Law Weekly letter to the editor, published April 22, 2011, that the two officers racially profiled him.

May 2011: Perkins recanted his claim and redacted his letter. Almost everyone around him, from peers to professors, saw him as a “liar.”

Today: Perkins is coming forward with an allegation—that it was the FBI who pressured him to recant his story and to deny the ordeal happened.

“I have been living with this for six years,” says Perkins. “I was told to not speak of this for forever, if possible, but at the minimum for five years [due to] a statute of limitations.” He says his lawyer at the time, Lloyd Snook, emphasized this. Despite never filing a formal complaint against the UVA Police Department, Perkins alleges the U.S. attorney took his letter seriously enough to “threaten charges…and a devastating investigation.”

Former U.S. attorney Tim Heaphy declined to comment on the case.

On May 5, 2011, Perkins says he received a phone call. FBI Special Agent Robert Hilland left a voicemail, requesting he call back to “speak soon.” Perkins left his study room and found the agent in the law school parking lot, near Perkins’ vehicle, he says. Hilland allegedly led Perkins back into the school, where they entered one of the law school meeting rooms, and shut the door. According to Perkins, two UVA police lieutenants were there: Melissa Fielding, now a captain, and Lieutenant Michael Blakey.

Laurel Sakai, a classmate and friend of Perkins, had been studying with him and was there during his first phone call. “I recognized the caller ID as a D.C. number and told him to answer it,” she says. “When I heard he had to go meet the agent, I said he shouldn’t go alone. I saw the officers in the hallway waiting for the meeting to start.”

For the following two hours, Perkins says Hilland interrogated him. “They never asked for my side of the story. They never questioned me about the police officers who searched me. I was the subject of the interrogation, not the officers.”

Perkins says Hilland slid him a blank piece of paper and had him write his own recantation. “I wrote the first sentence and Hilland chuckled. Then he dictated the rest to me.”

Perkins provides a document he says is his recantation that’s signed by Hilland and Blakey as witnesses, but not by Fielding.

Hilland did not respond to a request for comment, and the FBI did not confirm his involvement. UVA declined to comment.

“When [I finally] talked to him, he said he ‘just signed a letter saying none of it happened,’” says Sakai. “His demeanor seemed strange, and I don’t think he comprehended the extent of what had happened.”

“I feel…foolish now, [because] I know this is a pretty common practice; he executed a textbook interrogation,” says Perkins, who was a third-year law student at the time.

Hilland had “implied that telling him what he wanted to hear was the easiest way to ‘make it all go away.’ He laid out a series of consequences, mentioned charges,” says Perkins. He says the charges were never made explicitly clear.

“As a practicing attorney now, I can imagine or assume what charges they had in mind, but at the time, the agent…threatened to interrogate my mother, sisters, classmates, professors, future employers, neighbors—and I imagined them going through all of this and agreed to sign the recantation instead, to stop it from happening,” he says.

UVA released a press statement the following day, revealing the university police had closed its investigation.

“What I noticed later was, the statement even says they relied on outside agencies. They never directly say ‘the FBI.’ Almost nobody knows they are the reason for my recantation,” says Perkins.

The statement also noted that police reviewed dispatch records, personnel rosters, police radio tapes, interview and surveillance videos from university cameras as well as privately owned businesses.

“The student cooperated with the investigation,” Chief Michael Gibson said in the statement, “but details and facts of his story came into question as the investigation unfolded. Yesterday, he told us that the incident had never occurred.”

After facing backlash from the university and classmates, and garnering negative attention in the media nationwide, Perkins says he felt isolated, but determined to complete his final year of law school.

Because he faced charges from the UVA Honor Committee, Perkins’ degree was withheld until after his July 17 trial, which lasted from 9am until nearly 11pm. He says all 12 jurors grilled him and the witnesses, including Lieutenant Blakey.

Blakey talked about “how bad my letter made them look,” says Perkins. “They wanted…that bad press to end.”

Perkins provides a document he says is a May 17, 2011, statement Blakey made as an Honor Committee witness that says Perkins’ description of one of the officers who stopped him kept changing and was inconsistent with the officers who were on duty that night.

Jurors were made aware of the FBI interrogation, and Perkins was ultimately acquitted and granted his degree.

The experience, Perkins says, inspired him to go into law surrounding higher education, “after being shepherded through the system…this process, and student issues…became important to me.”

The recantation “has been my life’s biggest regret,” he says. “It almost ruined my whole life. Knowing what I know now, I would’ve left, and not gone in that room.”

Perkins’ emotions catch up to him. “I just hope now that people will see the full story and understand the FBI’s involvement in this,” he says. “I feel horrible that the public nature of my story led people to think that people of color fabricate tales of police conduct. People of color suffered because of this, and I want people to believe in us when we say we experience these issues. It happens every day. This has changed the whole trajectory of my life.”

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Arts

ARTS Pick: Kamasi Washington

Tenor sax player Kamasi Washington pushes genre boundaries with his Epic jazz set on Thursday. Publicity photo

Kamasi Washington has played alongside some of the biggest names in hip-hop, funk, jazz and soul—Lauryn Hill, Nas, Chaka Khan, Herbie Hancock, Thundercat and Raphael Saadiq among them. But after turning heads with his playing and arrangements on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly in 2015, and releasing his three-disc, three-hour debut album (aptly titled The Epic) that same year, the tenor saxophonist emerged as a big name in his own right. Washington’s “music is very much of jazz, but the context he and his collaborators have created sits slightly outside of it,” says Pitchfork.

Thursday, November 30. $27.50-30, 8:30pm. The Jefferson Theater, 110 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 245-4980.

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News

Radical care: Doctors ditch health insurance

Dr. Maura McLaughlin believes that by not taking health insurance, she’s found a better way to practice medicine. EZE AMOS

Maura McLaughlin still remembers the day in January 2015 she heard about a revolutionary way to practice medicine—like doctors used to do decades ago. Now she spends as much time as she needs with patients, who can come see her as often as they like at a reasonable cost.

A key component: She doesn’t take health insurance at her two-year-old medical practice in Crozet. The model is called direct primary care, and it’s spreading across the country, with four such practices now in Charlottesville and Albemarle, where, incidentally, people who don’t qualify for Affordable Care Act subsidies are facing the highest premiums in the country.

McLaughlin compares it to a gym membership. Patients sign up and pay between $15 and $60 a month, and use it as often as they like.

What it’s not, she stresses, is health insurance. “We don’t consider ourselves substitutes for insurance,” she says. But for those who have high-deductible health insurance that makes them balk at doctors’ visits they’ll have to pay for out-of-pocket, direct primary care can be a more affordable alternative, she says.

And by not having to spend 40 cents of every dollar she takes in to cover overhead for dealing with health insurance companies, “I’m able to keep costs low,” she says. “From a physician standpoint, it allows doctors to be doctors and focus on patients.”

Her Blue Ridge Family Medical Practice offers lower rates for lab tests, and “I can help people navigate the [prescription drug] system” to find generics or the best local pharmacy prices, she says.

One of her patients has diabetes and comes in every three months for a follow-up visit. Young families like the convenience of being able to come in without a long wait, she says, and some employers and school systems add direct primary care as part of employee benefits.

“Even if you don’t have insurance, it’s a way to get health care,” says Delegate Steve Landes, who carried a bill the past two years in the General Assembly that specifies direct primary care is not insurance—after insurers complained the doctor-patient agreements should be regulated like insurance.

Carolyn Engelhard is a health policy expert at UVA, and she has a few concerns about the direct primary care model. “I worry that people think it’s insurance and it isn’t,” she says. “If they end up in the hospital with a major illness, they wouldn’t be covered.”

She also worries about accountability for solo practices not connected to a larger health care system. Doctors within a system must show they’re meeting quality-care metrics and best practices, and insurers attach payment to guidelines being followed, she says.

“Dr. McLaughlin is a wonderful doctor,” says Engelhard. “She’s connected to other doctors in the community.” But for other standalone direct primary care practices, there’s “no oversight,” she says.

And when it’s necessary to refer a patient to a specialist, a doctor who is affiliated with Sentara or UVA talks to the specialist, she says. Direct primary care “fragments an already fragmented health care system.”

McLaughlin, who worked for UVA for nine years before venturing on to her own practice, says making referrals works much the same as it did when she worked in a traditional practice, only now she has more time to research specialists and costs, and to discuss patients with the specialists.

For the solo practitioner, there’s been no looking back. “This model of care,” she says, “allows me to be the kind of family doctor I always wanted to be.”

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: John Doyle

After leaving the popular Celtic folk band Solas, John Doyle was in high demand on the music scene. Publicity photo

After leaving the popular Celtic folk band Solas, John Doyle was in high demand on the music scene. Brought up in a musical family, Doyle gained prominence through his signature sound on guitar as well as his heartfelt vocals and commanding performances. His Irish heritage is evident in his writing, which focuses on the stories of immigrants through the last century.

Friday, December 1. $20-25, 8pm. The Front Porch, 221 E. Water St. 242-7012.

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Every Christmas Story Ever Told (And Then Some!)

Benjamin Reed, Chris Johnston and René Thornton Jr. pull off a zany run through Every Christmas Story Ever Told (And Then Some!). Photo by Michael Bailey

Everyone loves the classic holiday stories, but, let’s be honest, we’ve seen it all—Christmas past, present and future. Instead of choosing one, the creators of Every Christmas Story Ever Told (And Then Some!) perform every yuletide tale they can muster, flying through costumes and carols, while managing to mix in international holiday traditions and seasonal icons from various eras.

Through December 26. $21-44, times vary. American Shakespeare Center, 10 S. Market St., Staunton. (540) 851-1733.

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Robert Earl Keen

Returning for the sixth installment of his annual Christmas tour, Robert Earl Keen has always had a special place for the holidays in his Americana-infused heart. Publicity photo

Returning for the sixth installment of his annual Christmas tour, Robert Earl Keen has always had a special place for the holidays in his Americana-infused heart. Since 1984, Keen has crafted 19 albums, among them his holiday fan-favorite, Merry Christmas from the Family. He pours his energy, hilarious anecdotes and incredible music into a magical merry performance full of elves, sugarplums and maybe a cow or two. The result is the alt-country equivalent of eggnog: a concoction full of smooth Christmas cheer, with a honky-tonk kick.

Monday, December 4. $28.50-43.50, 8pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 979-1333.

Categories
Arts

The Ghostlight Project inspires Live Arts’ discussions on diversity, inclusivity and community

Leslie Scott-Jones and Brad Stoller joined Bree Luck (center) in October for the first in a season- long series of discussions on diversity, inclusivity and community as part of the theater’s participation in The Ghostlight Project. Staff photo

The next time you use the Water Street and Second Street crosswalk, look in the Live Arts window. There’s a light on in the lobby—the theater’s ghost light. It’s small and casts yellow light from a transparent glass shade, and, according to superstition, keeps ghosts from haunting the theater after everyone leaves. Ever concerned with actors breaking legs, theaters have historically left ghost lights on for practical reasons, too. Live Arts’ Producing Artistic Director Bree Luck says empty theaters can be “treacherous,” and she’s seen more than one person fall off a darkened stage.

This ghost light also serves a more contemporary function. It illuminates Live Arts’ participation in The Ghostlight Project—a national network of individuals in the theater community who came together on January 19, 2017, the night before the presidential inauguration, to pledge their commitment to support and advocate for vulnerable communities. Live Arts was invited to join The Ghostlight Project by Moisés Kaufman, founder of Tectonic Theater Project, National Medal of Arts recipient and co-writer of The Laramie Project.

“Lighting our ghost light was just the first step in our process of being truly inclusive. It isn’t enough to say people are safe here,” Luck says. “It isn’t enough to make gender-sensitive bathroom signs. …We needed to look at the work we were doing from a broader perspective.”

Joining the project inspired Luck and the Live Arts team to begin a season-long series of roundtable discussions on diversity, inclusivity and community.

“Our discussions may be uncomfortable, or difficult to grasp,” says Luck. “We may struggle through anger, and brush up against bruises that we didn’t even know existed. But in the end, we want to make our corner of the world stronger, to give our community members a greater voice, and to help us all feel a little less alone in this day and age.”

Last year, Luck approached local activist, writer and theater professional Leslie Scott-Jones for help in initiating the conversations on diversity. Scott-Jones says this summer’s white supremacist rallies—which occurred a month before Jitney, an all-black play Scott-Jones directed at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center—added urgency to the first discussion, held at Live Arts on October 15.

“If you’re not going to have black directors and producers involved in the process of creating these stories, then you shouldn’t do black theater,” Scott-Jones says. “You don’t understand the story. People in community theater get stymied when talking about inclusion because they think it has to be on the stage. The way to be more inclusive is to attack it from behind the stage first, and to build a group of artists that sees the world differently.”

Like Scott-Jones, Brad Stoller attended the first roundtable discussion and has a long history with Live Arts. Thirty years ago, Stoller participated in the production of Sam Shephard’s A Lie of the Mind at Charlottesville High School’s black box theater—the production that led to the creation of Live Arts. He remembers one rehearsal where John D’earth introduced 19-year-old Dave Matthews, who was so nervous he clung to nearby stage equipment. Stoller agrees with Scott-Jones that change begins behind the curtain.

“We need to include people of color in aspects of direction and design,” says Stoller, who teaches theater arts at PVCC. “We can do plays where people of color act, but that’s a one-off thing. We have to really commit to having people of color be in leadership roles.”

In Live Arts’ next roundtable discussion in mid-January, Stoller wants his fellow theater professionals to make a public commitment to diversity. He and Luck think an interesting challenge would be to have all Charlottesville theaters refuse to present any piece written by a white man.

“It would force us to find the plenty of other material out there, rather than falling back on people who are well-known—who are white men,” says Stoller. “And the fear of not selling tickets, or this isn’t my audience? I don’t have the patience for it anymore.”

On Friday, Live Arts presents Sweet Charity, a musical that features a strong female protagonist. After several recent musicals with male leads, Luck says the Live Arts team was ready for a change.

“Charity embodies a pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality that feels pretty familiar to our community right now,” Luck says. “We may get knocked down, but we’ll keep forging ahead, we’ll keep dancing, and even when the odds are against us, we will still fight for love.”

Categories
News

STARS saga: Occupancy request receives a unanimous “no”

The owner of the STARS group home on Park Street is requesting a special use permit to increase the number of girls allowed to live in the home from eight to 12. Neighbors say it's not a good idea, and so does the planning commission. Staff photo

When the owner of a Park Street group home for at-risk adolescents went before the Board of Architectural Review November 21 to request permission to increase the number of teens allowed to live in the house, the board opted not to make a recommendation.

“It was out of our purview,” says BAR member Carl Schwarz. “There’s no negative effect on the historic district, but it’s not something we could recommend for or against.”

Twenty years ago, Kara Gloeckner started the Structured Therapeutic Adolescent Residential Service program in Charlottesville. Five years in, she moved some of the STARS operation into its current location at 517 Park St., where the organization’s administrative offices are housed and eight girls rest their heads each night.

The home, built in 1984, was originally designed to house 16 mentally disabled adults, says Gloeckner, who interned there at that time. Allowing that many girls to live there would be fulfilling its intended use, she says, and replacing the offices with bedrooms would make for a more home-like environment and alleviate parking stress.

Gloeckner’s original special use permit request doubled the number of girls living there, but after a community meeting at which most residents were adamantly opposed to having 16 troubled teenagers living in the same home in their neighborhood, she asked the City Planning Commission November 14 for permission to house 12.

“With more girls, there is more negative energy for them to feed off of,” local teacher Jennifer Ferguson said before the planning commission. “The proposed expansion is harmful to a group of girls who need undivided, individualized and committed attention even more than the average teenage girl.”

Gloeckner says she’s aware of community concern. When she first asked for the permit in 2001, because neighbors were worried about increasing the number of girls in the home, she says she withdrew the application. “We just felt like time would help them understand what the experience of being our neighbor would be like. Fifteen years later, I feel like we’ve been a really great neighbor.”

Regardless, the planning commission unanimously voted to recommend that City Council deny Gloeckner’s permit.

“I don’t question the intent or the goodwill of the program,” said planning commissioner Corey Clayborne at the meeting. “The part that I’m struggling with is when we’re assessing the impacts, whether it’s parking or whether it’s noise, we’ve heard the public testimonies that have come before us and have read multiple emails and documents, and I’m really struggling to see how this benefits the public necessity.”

Gloeckner will go before City Council with her request later this year.

Categories
Opinion

Letters to the editor: Week of November 15-21

Letters to the editor

Childish board behavior to blame

The article “Secret history: Is the Charlottesville historical society a thing of the past?” [October 25-31] by John Last should have been on the opinion(ated) page as it does not qualify as a news article.

Starting off the article by referring to Steven Meeks as an “amateur historian” immediately reveals that Mr. Last has an ax to grind. Calling someone an amateur who has spent his life researching local history and doing a darned good job of sharing his knowledge with the public is simply a tactic to try to demean the person’s accomplishments.

If Steven is paid to run the ACHS, then he is definitely not an amateur (someone who engages in a pursuit on an unpaid basis). If he isn’t paid, he is still not an amateur as he has written and sold books about local history. The fact is that Steven Meeks has worked as a local-history expert for decades now, which means he IS a professional historian.

As someone who has personally witnessed the shameful and undignified behavior of a board member who commandeered a public meeting to complain about Steven Meeks—preventing the invited speaker from giving his presentation on time and thus causing some audience members to miss part of it—I have to say that childish board members seem more likely to be the cause of ACHS problems than Steven.

And isn’t it equally childish for a UVA prof to make a stink about KKK robes when the historical society had made an agreement with the owner of the robes not to disclose the person’s name? How ridiculous! And why on earth should anyone expect the historical society to comment on the events of August 12?!

Marlene Condon

Crozet