A matter of degrees
In reviewing the National Research Council’s rankings, I would like to clarify a statement I made in response to a question during the Board of Visitors meeting on Friday, June 9, and that you included in your recent article on graduate student funding [“Grad student funding not up to snuff,” UVA News, June 13].
In the article, you noted, “While 35 of approximately 100 graduate departments at University of California-Berkeley rank in the National Research Council’s Top 10, UVA scored only five out of 50, a measly 10 percent.” A more pertinent statistic relates to the number of Ph.D. programs ranked by the NRC. In 1995 the NRC ranked 41 different programs. Of those 41 programs, UC-Berkeley offered degrees in 36 of the areas. Of those 36 programs, 35 (97 percent) were ranked in the Top 10 of the NRC rankings.
The University offered degrees in 32 of the NRC areas. Of those 32 programs, five (16 percent) were ranked in the Top 10 of the NRC rankings.
Thus, while both the University and Berkeley offered far more degree programs than those above, not all were included in the NRC rankings.
Roseanne Ford
Associate VP for Research &
Graduate Studies, UVA
Charlottesville
Information overload
I had to laugh when I read Region Ten’s explanation of why they had failed to respond to our neighborhood association’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, as reported by Meg McEvoy [“Neighbors sue Region Ten for documents,” Courts & Crime News, June 20]. While our neighborhood was able to submit the request, petition the court when we received no response, take the case to court and finally have Region Ten judged in violation, all without an attorney, Region Ten claims that it simply did not understand how to respond to a FOIA, even with the assistance of an attorney paid with taxpayer dollars. Really? The truth is, as documents now obtained show, Region Ten specifically wishes to avoid questions being raised about their plans and does not want a public hearing or Planning Commission review to take place. They prefer to act behind closed doors. And they wonder why they have lost the trust and confidence of the Little High Area neighborhood?
Mark Haskins
President, Little High Area Neighborhood Association
Charlottesville
Grapes of wrath
The fatuous ex-Mrs. Kluge is so transparent in her self-serving schemes [“Where the wealthy things are,” June 13]. Her goal is to have a free source of labor from PVCC toiling in her vineyards. How pathetic. My grandmother always said that you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. That best sums up her and her desperate attempts for validation and respectability.
Betsy M. Watson
Charlottesville
Consumer nation
I’ve been waiting to write about trash and recycling for the right moment, and it finally arrived in the last issue. The Ask Ace column [June 13] about those omnipresent plastic bags (decorating our trees, roads and landfills) provided the perfect forum to bring these matters to light. While it is commendable that people want to recycle their bags, I find it agonizing that the otherwise intelligent Ace overlooked two important matters.
Ace never mentions the most obvious solution, which is for folks to bring their own grocery bags. I guess he (or she) is ignorant of the first two words in the mantra “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” In the interest of reducing waste, and providing an example for other unaware shoppers like Ace, canvas and mesh (or other material) bags are widely available. Of course people can fill backpacks and old store bags as well.
If the venerable Ace is indeed “an avid recycler” as proclaimed in the article, then the author may have noticed how popular the McIntire Road facility is among the well-to-do consumers of everything in
the area. Has it ever crossed the all-knowing mind of Ace that the easiest solution
to the mass of recycling that is drown-
ing the hard-working folks on McIntire Road would be to implore all of our friends and family to simply stop consuming so much?
Seems like a simple solution, rather than massaging the collective conscience by recycling, to just reduce the amount we consume. Is it that hard to refuse a plastic bag next time you go get one or two small items? Or can folks try to drink water from a filter rather than wasting resources, energy and money by buying bottled water, soda and juice? When will the community realize the solution is always as easy as we make it?
I know that is a tall order in this wealthy area, where people judge one another’s status by how much they have and spend, but after reading Ace’s column, I felt strongly moved to write. Think of all you recycle, and then about 10 thousand times that much going to the landfills (for the people who still throw everything out), and perhaps we can begin to imagine the sea of trash just in this community alone. No one ever thinks about the world drowning in our waste, but it is happening now, and only our children and theirs will be left to deal with the situation.
Kai Safran
Charlottesville
The editor replies: Ace is on your side, Kai. His answer on June 13 began, “First off, Ace reminds you that you can always reuse your bags.”
CORRECTIONS
Due to an editing error, the Get Out Now listings in our June 13 issue omitted the June 14-16 run of All My Sons at Live Arts. We sincerely regret the oversight.
Last week’s profile of Sean Tubbs, the podcaster who was profiled among the 2006
C-VILLE 20, misstated his relationship to Charlottesville Tomorrow, a local website dedicated to development issues. Though Tubbs and Charlottesville Tomorrow often collaborate, Charlottesville Tomorrow is “responsible for its own podcasting,” in the words of Executive Director Brian Wheeler. C-VILLE regrets the error.
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