Month: September 2020

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News

Working it out: Charlottesville goes back to the gym

Though smaller fitness studios have been able to reopen, large facilities like Memorial Gymnasium remain closed. Photo: Sanjay Suchak

By Emily Hamilton

Heavy breathing, lots of sweating, and plenty of people nearby—gyms and workout studios seem like a perfect place for COVID transmission. Though some industries have been slow to recover during Virginia’s phased reopening, gyms have seen customers eager to return. Workout spots around town have adopted stringent safety protocols—and benefited from customers who are desperate to get out of the house and move around.

After at least three months of closure, gyms and fitness facilities in Virginia were given the green light to reopen when Virginia entered Phase 2 on June 12. 

Michael Towne, owner of Solidarity CrossFit, adapted to COVID by installing an elaborate new fan system to redirect the airflow in the gym. “We have redesigned our gym airflow extensively in response to the growing science related to airborne transmission,” Towne says. “While we can service less clients than before, we are actually working more and upping our offerings, which is I think a trend for many businesses due to the nature of running a facility during a pandemic.”

Purvelo, the popular Charlottesville-based cycling studio, reopened a few weeks ago. Ian Dillard, a seasoned instructor at Purvelo, says the early days of the shutdown were hard for the studio. “Like all small businesses, COVID has definitely had a huge impact on Purvelo,” he says. “Financially, we have definitely taken a hit.”

But in recent weeks, the studio has enjoyed full classes, and even had potential pedalers on their waitlist. “We are seeing demand for classes and we have been able to meet that demand while also using safe practices,” Dillard says.

Erica Perkins, executive director of intramural-recreational sports at UVA, oversees operations of the university’s four recreation and fitness centers. UVA closed its facilities on March 18. The Aquatic & Fitness Center reopened on August 3, and the North Grounds pool reopened by reservation only on August 10.

Perkins says she has received an abundance of positive feedback from patrons who have decided to return. “People are exercising and have been both compliant with policies and appreciative of our services and safety procedures,” she  says. “We have been very impressed with the positive response to our operations.”

Like the smaller studios, Perkins says the UVA gyms suffered financially. “The Intramural-Recreational Sports Department has not been able to host or offer the range of activities and events that typically generate revenue and has suffered membership losses while we were closed,” she explains. Memorial Gymnasium, where basketballs and volleyballs normally bounce incessantly, remains closed and empty.

While the revenue lost from months of in-person classes was substantial, many gyms stayed afloat by offering virtual fitness classes to their members. “We responded early at the start of the pandemic and pivoted to virtual classes and run and strength coaching services to maintain many of our members,” says Ann Dunn, owner and founder of Formula Complete Fitness. Now some customers are coming back in person, too.

The gym industry finds itself at the center of a paradox: Months of quarantine and isolation have left people antsy and eager to get out and exercise, but going to the gym also means risking exposure to COVID. It seems, though, that this is a risk that many Charlottesville gym-goers are willing to take.

 

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News

All talk: UVA students frustrated by administration’s communication

Dean Allen Groves addresses UVA students in a video posted on August 22.

By Amelia Delphos

For as long as communications departments have existed, big institutions have dumped their controversial news on Friday afternoon. Sure enough, UVA’s decision to move ahead as planned—with students living on Grounds and attending in-person classes—was announced via email after 4pm last Friday.

The announcement—its timing, its style, let alone its content—was the latest university communication in a summer full of emails and videos that have left a bad taste in many students’ mouths.

Since classes transitioned online in March, UVA students have been inundated with plans and promises from the administration, regarding a safe return to Grounds this fall in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Subject lines such as “Updates to our Fall 2020 Plan” or “COVID Resources, Move-In Dates, Employee Testing” can be found in every UVA inbox. On August 22, students received a message with a subject line reading “Important Message from Dean Allen Groves.” 

This “Important Message” was a link to an eight-minute video where Groves, the university’s dean of students, addressed the undergraduate student body in a nondescript room in front of an out-of-focus backdrop with the UVA logo.

In the video, Groves detailed the new COVID-19 policies for students, and laid out the repercussions for disobeying these policies—most likely suspension for a semester or more.

“We want you to be here, if your own health and safety permit,” said Groves. “But I need every one of you to do your part to make that happen.”

Trinity Moore, a second-year from Raleigh, North Carolina, is scheduled to move into Bice House with her sister on August 31. She did not watch Groves’ address.

“I didn’t watch it because I knew it was going to be saying the same things like all the other emails, ‘the students are going to have to work together to make sure that COVID doesn’t impact our campus hard’ and all of that stuff, blah blah blah,” Moore says. “…There’s no new reactions from me.”

Heather Thomas, a fourth-year from Fairfax, Virginia, watched the video. She didn’t like the format because, to her, it felt like Groves was on the offensive: “It seemed like he was attacking us for doing nothing wrong. It was a little bit premature.” 

Additionally, the video undermined previous attempts to rally the community together, says third-year Sarandon Elliott. “I feel like that video was almost to divide us. It almost felt like you were in a dystopia. Every man for himself.”

In Friday’s final, decisive email, UVA President Jim Ryan writes, “This semester will not be easy, as we have said, but the UVA community has faced challenges before. Let’s meet this moment, and this extraordinary challenge, together.”

Some say all the self-congratulation and thinly-veiled elitism has made the actual decision-making process more obscure. 

“Instead of being honest and upfront with students, they’re trying to make it seem like they have things under control, which of course no university can since we’re in the middle of a pandemic,” Moore says. 

In May, the university wrote that reopening plans meant “placing a good deal of trust in our students to look out for the safety and well-being not just of each other, but of our faculty, staff, and community members.”  Now, with first-years arriving in a few days, students feel wary and mistrustful. “They don’t really care if we’re on Grounds,” Thomas says. “I think they care that they can collect full tuition.”

 

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News

You’re kidding: Despite objections from all corners, UVA is bringing students back

UVA's coronavirus dashboard shows that, as of Wednesday morning, 155 students, faculty, staff, and contract workers have tested positive for the virus.

 

Against the advice of pretty much any person, group, or institution that’s decided to weigh in on the topic, UVA is sticking to its plan to hold in-person classes, the school confirmed on Friday. 

Though many upperclassmen have already settled in to their off-campus apartments, the decision means that hordes of first-years will move in to their dorm rooms this coming weekend. 

“We know people will contract the virus and some will get sick,” the administration wrote on Friday. “There will likely be outbreaks that we will have to work to contain…You can do everything in your power to plan and prepare, but it still might not be enough, as things can change rapidly.”

Indeed, things are already changing rapidly, and not for the better. As of Wednesday, 117 students and 38 faculty, staff, or contract employees had tested positive for the virus. Of those positives, 129 have been confirmed since August 24. Two new people were hospitalized on Tuesday, and 18 people have been hospitalized since the beginning of last week. 

In the Thomas Jefferson Health District, the count of those infected continues to rise. From August 21 to 28, the week prior to UVA’s decision to return, 155 new cases were confirmed in the area.

Statewide, hospital ICUs are currently at 77 percent capacity, a 10 percent increase from last year’s average.

UVA has decided to plow forward despite evidence from college towns across the country that doing so will result in a dramatic increase in infections. At the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill—a large, selective, southeastern state university—the return of students heralded an immediate outbreak. One thousand, forty-four students and 56 employees at Chapel Hill have tested positive as of Monday.

And though UVA can’t control whether or not students return to their off-campus apartments, the school could have kept students out of university-run residence halls—the very locations that have been most severely affected at UNC. One Chapel Hill residence hall, Granville Towers, has seen 188 cases so far.

UVA instructors have the option to conduct their classes entirely online, and most of them have exercised that option. Students will move back to dorms, but many will sit in their rooms for days of online-only classes that could have just as easily been completed in more well-ventilated spaces.

The COVID response from the administration has been so poor that it galvanized students and staff to begin efforts to unionize. Two weeks ago, The United Campus Workers of Virginia announced that it had come in to being in part because of dissatisfaction with the administration’s actions. 

Charlottesville residents have been just as vocal about their concerns about the return of students. The Charlottesville Human Rights Commission, a city advisory panel, called on the school to hold solely virtual classes. City Council has been equally clear: In July, Mayor Nikuyah Walker called the plan “a recipe for disaster.” 

If anyone would be excited for the return of students, you’d think it would be the students themselves. But even UVA’s own student council has called for the suspension of in-person classes, and in doing so, the council has exhibited a moral clarity the administration has lacked. “The University cannot, in good conscience, resume in-person instruction,” the council writes. “COVID-19 will spread, the Charlottesville community will suffer, and students, faculty, staff, and community members will die.”

 

Categories
Coronavirus News

In brief: Activist fined, white supremacist jailed, and more

Organizers could be fined for events that happened weeks or months ago, according to City Manager Tarron Richardson. PC: Zack Wajsgras

Cracking down

Just days after a Kenosha police officer shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back, sparking national outrage and protests, City Manager Tarron Richardson decided to crack down on gatherings in Charlottesville—targeting those organized by Black residents.

While Richardson supports the right to “peaceably assemble” amidst the pandemic, he explained in a press release Thursday evening that “obstructing city streets and using parks without the proper permits will no longer be allowed.”

The city also will begin fining organizers for events that happened weeks or months ago. Rob Gray, who helped plan a Juneteenth celebration in Washington Park, received a $500 fine, and the Black Joy Fest and the Reclaim the Park celebration held last month at city parks are currently under review.

In a letter sent to Gray last week, Richardson claimed he had discussed the city’s ordinance on COVID-19 restrictions with him the day before Juneteenth, explaining that the city was not issuing special use permits for events held in public parks, and that gatherings of 50 or more were banned. But Gray refused to cancel his event, and agreed in advance to pay the civil penalty.

Though Richardson didn’t name names, it sure seems like the warning was meant for Black activists Rosia Parker and Katrina Turner, who planned a Friday night march from the city police department to Tonsler Park in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. He threatened to issue them citations for not having a special event permit, but the pair took to the streets anyway, along with 30 or so other protesters.

“They won’t shut me up,” Parker tweeted shortly after the press release came out.

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Quote of the week

“Today, we are marching for criminal justice reform. Today, we are marching to end police brutality. Today, we are marching for the right to be seen as human.”

—Richmond activist Tavorise Marks at the August 28 Commitment March on Washington, held in honor of the 57th anniversary of the original march.

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In brief

FourFiveSignatures

After gathering the required 5,000 signatures, Kanye West has qualified for the November ballot as an independent presidential candidate in Virginia. But the Washington Post reports that some of those signers felt they were hoodwinked into signing in favor of West, and that representatives from the campaign misrepresented how their signatures would be used. It’s unclear how the controversy might affect West’s floundering run.

Tech check

Senator Mark Warner stopped by the new WillowTree offices in Woolen Mills last week to celebrate the completion of the 80,000 square-foot office renovation. Meanwhile, downtown, construction of the CODE building chugs along, with some new COVID-friendly tweaks—to keep ventilation going, the building’s windows will now actually open, a feature that wasn’t initially planned.

Jail cases

Seven inmates total have now tested positive for COVID-19 at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Pointing to severe outbreaks in nearby correctional facilities, Defund Cville Police sent a letter to the ACRJ demanding the jail ramp up its testing procedures, distribute more hygiene products to inmates, and halt all new admissions to the facility.

Harassment sentence

Daniel McMahon, whose online harassment and racist threats caused activist Don Gathers to suspend his 2019 City Council campaign, has been sentenced for his crimes. The Florida-based man will spend 41 months in federal prison and, upon release, serve a three-year probation during which he won’t be allowed to use the internet without court supervision.