With schools closed since March due to the ongoing pandemic, Charlottesville-area teens have had to finish their high school careers with makeshift versions of the events they had looked forward to for years. PC: Eze Amos
By Claudia Gohn
Senior year traditions—from proms and sports banquets to senior nights and graduation ceremonies—have long been a way to commemorate the end of high school, giving students the chance to celebrate and say goodbye to one chapter of life before beginning a new one. But with schools closed since March and social-distancing regulations still in place, Charlottesville-area teens have had to finish their high school careers with makeshift versions of the events they had looked forward to for years.
Although many seniors are disappointed, some have found these celebratory moments special. Covenant School senior Madi Alley remembers when she was in ninth grade, watching the seniors in a capella perform their traditional spring concert. Now she’s a member of the a capella group herself, but this year’s concert looked much different. It took place at a family friend’s barn, with only four people in the audience, and the singers stood six feet apart, wearing masks. Still, Alley is grateful to her teacher for organizing a concert at all. “It felt like we were being seen and still cared for,” she says.
At Saint Anne’s-Belfield, it’s a tradition for seniors to break the dress code one day in the spring and paint their school uniform skirts with the logos of the colleges they will attend in the fall. Senior Miguel Rivera Young, who’s going to Brown University, says he and some friends found a modified way to take part in the tradition (which isn’t limited to girls): They spread tarps across a street, and painted the skirts while physically distancing from each other. Then they took photos, standing six feet apart.
But there was no substitute for some once-in-a-lifetime events, like prom. For Monticello High senior Catherine Taylor, prom was one of the main things she was looking forward to, and she had begun making plans for the night. “We all already had our dresses because it was so close.”
Having these memorable events within arm’s reach, only to be snatched away, has devastated many seniors. “At first it was really, really heartbreaking,” says Albemarle High senior Cora Schiavone. “I was just
really upset because there was so much I was looking forward to.”
Swimmers Charlie Cross, a senior at AHS, and Noah Hargrove, from Western, are mourning the cancellation of their summer league, where they would have had senior night and a last chance to swim on the teams they grew up competing with. While Hargrove’s year-round swim team coach put together a virtual form of senior night, “it wasn’t even close” to the real thing, he says.
Like everything this spring, many long-anticipated events weren’t typical of senior year, but they were better than nothing. “I would rather have the big graduation with everybody,” says Ally Schoolcraft, a senior at CHS, which held a “victory lap” and photo op for graduates last week. “But for the time being, I think they did good with the resources that they had.”
Virginia Film Festival host's Beyond the Screen: A Virtual Conversation about Beastie Boys Movie on Wednesday at 3pm. Publicity photo.
Beastie bests: In 1986, the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill became the first rap record to top the Billboard chart, and the trio from New York City went on to sell over 20 million albums. Filmmaker Spike Jonze shot the Beasties to new heights with his video for Ill Communication’s “Sabotage,” an homage to 1970s crime dramas that dominated MTV’s airwaves and its awards show in 1994. Still a friend and a collaborator, Jonze’s latest, Beastie Boys Story, is a reflection on the band’s formation and propulsive musical journey that features narration by Michael “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz. Virginia Film Festival adds to the discussion with Beyond the Screen: A Virtual Conversation between Cullen Wade, director of the Nine Pillars Hip Hop Cultural Fest, A.D. Carson, assistant professor of hip hop and the global South, and Jack Hamilton, assistant professor of American studies and media studies and the pop critic for Slate.
Wednesday 6/3. 3pm. Film streaming details and discussion registration at virginiafilmfestival.org.
Nearly a thousand protesters took to the streets of downtown Charlottesville May 30, demanding an end to police brutality and justice for the murders of black people across the country. PC: Eze Amos
Nearly a thousand protesters took to the streets of downtown Charlottesville May 30, demanding an end to police brutality and justice for the murders of black people acrossthe country, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade.
In solidarity with the dozens of other Black Lives Matter demonstrations around the nation, people of all races and ages carried homemade signs and chanted statements like “Cops and Klan go hand in hand,” “White silence is violence,” and “No justice, no peace.” Others joined in by car, blowing their horns and waving signs as they drove along Market Street.
“I was extremely pleased both with the turnout and the resiliency of the participants to remain peaceful…I am certain we got our message across,” says community activist and former Blue Ribbon Commission member Don Gathers, who spoke at the march.
But he believes there should have been “tens of hundreds more” at the event. “Anyone with a pulse and a moral compass should have been out there protesting the disgusting murder and ongoing brutalization of blacks across this country,” he says.
Don Gathers PC: Eze Amos
The march was initiated by local resident Ang Conn, who, after seeing the murder of Floyd on video, felt “just completely distraught with what to actually do.” Floyd died after white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into the black man’s neck for nearly nine minutes, despite Floyd’s pleas that he could not breathe. (Three other police officers on the scene, who failed to intervene, were fired along with Chauvin, but only Chavin has been arrested.)
Conn reached out to multiple racial justice groups and put a local team together to plan the Charlottesville protest, and get the word out.
The event started at 3pm in front of the city’s police department, where activists, including Zyahna Bryant and Rosia Parker, led chants, gave speeches, and invited the crowd to take a knee. Demonstrators later marched down the mall to City Hall, then through Market Street Park, along Preston Avenue, and into Washington Park, chanting and listening to speeches from area activists and residents. Nearly all wore masks, bandanas, and other facial coverings.
While police in other cities have responded violently to protesters (including in Richmond, where peaceful demonstrators were tear-gassed Monday evening), cops did not confront the crowd in Charlottesville, and the event remained nonviolent. CPD, which has been criticized in the past for heavy-handed treatment of protesters, chose to have “officers remain at a respectful distance, so that people attending could engage in civil discourse peacefully,” says spokesman Tyler Hawn.
City Councilor Sena Magill was thankful that CPD took a hands-off approach to the protest, instead of “trying to stop it.” She says she’s also “proud of our community in general for coming out and saying enough is enough, and doing it in a way that was peaceful.”
As for Conn, she says she hasn’t thought much about how it was peaceful, or how many supporters came out. “We’re protesting black people getting murdered. That’s not fun. It wasn’t a party [or] a get together. We’re in the middle of a pandemic and there are millions of black and brown people locked up in jail cells…which was also what this protest was about.”
On Sunday, the Albemarle High School Black Student Union hosted a demonstration in front of the Albemarle County Office Building. Joined by community members, students of all races stood on the sidewalk in masks, chanting and holding signs with phrases like “Justice for George.”
“We wanted to continue the momentum. It’s important for us to keep protesting peacefully and raising awareness,” says BSU president Faith Holmes. “We’re actually really happy with the way it turned out…we weren’t expecting the numbers that we had. It was fulfilling to see people from [the community] come out and support Black Lives Matter.”
Moving forward, Gathers says he and other local activists will “continue to monitor the situation across the country,” and “should there be a situation that comes to light, God-forbid, here in Charlottesville, we certainly will be at the ready and quick to respond.”
Charlottesville residents of all ages and races attended Saturday’s protest. PC: Eze Amos
Charlottesville has its own fraught relationship with the police. Following community anger over the tear-gassing of counterprotesters during the July 2017 KKK rally, and CPD’s failure to protect residents during the violent Unite the Right rally later that summer, City Council created the Police Civilian Review Board to enhance transparency and trust. After years of controversy and disagreement over the board’s bylaws, City Council appointed seven members to the board in February, but the board has not yet met—an eighth, non-voting member, who was required to have prior law-enforcement experience, was appointed at Monday’s City Council meeting. Councilor Lloyd Snook, however, announced during the city’s Cville360 broadcast on Tuesday that the board could begin virtual meetings.
Before Saturday’s protest, organizers also released a list of demands for the city, county, and state, which Conn read to the crowd on Saturday. It included an end to pretrial detention and home monitoring fees; the demilitarization and defunding of CPD; and the release of more people from jail and prison, especially given the current high risk of death from COVID-19.
Several Charlottesville officials offered statements condemning Floyd’s death and police violence against the black community. And while Magill did not comment on the specific demands, she says the recent incidents of police brutality around the country “have been weighing heavy on all of council” and, from what she’s seen, council is “committed to true change.”
“So many things are hard to get moving quickly, but we all know that we have to do something real,” she adds. “The time for thoughts and prayers is done—it’s been done.”
Updated 6/3 to reflect the recent appointment of a new CRB member and the board’s ability to have virtual meetings
UVA student Merritt Gibson’s new single “Breaking Down” ruminates on loss, isolation, and fear amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Publicity image
When rising fourth-year and singer-songwriter Merritt Gibson heard the news that the University of Virginia would be moving classes online for the rest of the academic year, she was devastated. She missed her friends—an integral part of her UVA experience, Gibson says. Then she began to mourn the abrupt disappearance of her daily routine, the activities that grounded her whenever she felt overwhelmed. Gibson craved a smoothie from the Corner and a visit to Clemons Library.
During this sudden life change, she turned to her guitar for comfort. Out of sadness and isolation, the history and public policy student wrote her latest single, “Breaking Down.” Gibson gained accolades for a facility with “contagious pop” on her 2018 debut album Eyes On Us, and the new single is a continuation of that songwriting dexterity. It’s a pop-inspired, vocals-heavy ballad in which she meditates on unexpected loss—the kind that takes your breath away, fills you with regret, and keeps you up at night.
“This song was my anchor during [the onset of] quarantine,” Gibson says. The writing and recording process gave her the “gift” of something to look forward to, as each day blended into the next. “In writing the song, I was able to pinpoint exactly how I was feeling and why I was feeling that way. It allowed me to understand myself in a time of confusion and uncertainty.”
She recorded the single remotely with the help of New Orleans-based, Grammy-winning producer Bob Brockmann, who’s worked with artists and groups such as Mary J. Blige, Biggie Smalls, and TLC. As Gibson sang into her home microphone, Zoom and Pro-Tools plugins allowed a high-quality copy of her recording to stream instantly into Brockmann’s computer.
Joining Gibson (from her home outside of Boston) on the single is a group of musicians that recorded accompaniments from across the country—keyboardist Andrew Yanovski from New Orleans, guitar by Naren Rauch in Los Angeles, cellist Dave Eggar in New York, and background vocals by Maya Solovey from Massachusetts.
Though she still hasn’t met the musicians or her producer in person, Gibson says the process allowed her to connect with new people and develop real relationships despite being in quarantine.
Recording the song, however, wasn’t always easy. Gibson and Brockmann had to spend hours troubleshooting with technical support. And recording sessions were often cut short because two members of their team (including Brockmann) contracted the coronavirus.
Seeing fellow artists struggle and watching health care employees’ tireless work inspired another collaboration: Gibson is working with Massachusetts General Hospital to donate money from each listener’s stream of “Breaking Down.” (Massachusetts ranks fourth in the nation in COVID-19 cases, behind New York, New Jersey, and Illinois.)
“This song is for everyone living in this moment,” Gibson says—the college students who lost a sense of independence and time alone, or the high schoolers who lost rites of passage like graduation. “It’s for medical workers who go into the hospitals day after day to face more heartbreak and devastation, shouldering the burden that they are the last person to see a family’s loved one alive.”
Though UVA hasn’t announced its plans for fall semester, Gibson knows she’ll return to Charlottesville. And that’s given her peace of mind amidst the uncertainty and fear. Even if she still has to quarantine in her apartment here, at least she’ll be virtually closer to her best friends.
