Author: Maryann Xue

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‘We’re still going’

Lee statue being removed
The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center shared updates on the Swords Into Plowshares project during an October 30 community engagement session. Photo: Eze Amos

Community members gathered at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center on October 30 to hear the latest on the Swords Into Plowshares project, which seeks to melt down Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee statue and repurpose its bronze into a new public artwork.

In December, the Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation and the Ratcliffe Foundation filed a lawsuit against the City of Charlottesville, claiming the city violated state code, the Virginia Public Procurement Act, and the Freedom of Information Act when it donated the statue to the Jefferson School. (The school was initially named as a second defendant, but was removed, and is now a party to the suit.) On October 10, Charlottesville Circuit Court ruled that the lawsuit had grounds to move forward, with a trial date set for February.

While the Jefferson School initially planned a six-month community engagement process, during which Charlottesville residents would discuss ways to represent inclusion through art and public space, the lawsuit has delayed it. But Jefferson School Executive Director Andrea Douglas remains hopeful about where the project currently stands.

“We’re still going. We’re still raising money. We’re still asking the questions,” said Douglas. “We’re still a united front against this court case.”

During the October 10 hearing, the plaintiffs pushed the Jefferson School to disclose the Lee statue’s location to the public, but the two parties later agreed to a protective order allowing only an expert and lawyers from each side to know the statue’s location, marking a victory for Swords Into Plowshares.

UVA professor Frank Dukes, who is leading the community engagement phase of the project, presented the results of a survey that asked community members for input on what should happen to the Lee statue, including the stories the resulting artwork should tell. Respondents were primarily from Charlottesville and Albemarle County, and came from various age groups, including young children.

Stories that respondents thought needed to be told included information about Vinegar Hill, the Jefferson School, McKee Row, and the lives of enslaved and Indigenous people.

Respondents also voiced fears for the project—some felt that art might be too abstract or figurative, or represent an oversimplification of a complex issue. Among those who liked the art idea, common desired themes included incorporating touch or sound, serving a function, and not honoring a single person.

Community engagement meetings have also served as a forum for residents to voice their thoughts. “We’re gonna continue to do this until there’s an opportunity for us to say, ‘Okay, we’ve heard enough from people—we can start creating,’” said Dukes.

Zyahna Bryant, a student activist who first petitioned for the removal of the Lee statue in high school, emphasized that the final product should be treated with the same degree of esteem that had been given to the Lee statue.

“I don’t think it needs to be sad or somber, but I definitely think that it should have some level of respect and honor,” Bryant said.

Other community members hoped the new artwork would provoke dialogue while reflecting a historical consciousness. One suggested incorporating some kind of theatrical form, creating a lively interactive space.

Charlottesville resident Peter Kleeman, who has frequently attended SIP’s community engagement events, said he finds the project to be the only one of its kind he has come across.

“This whole project is such a fabulous idea,” said Kleeman. “The idea of taking a Civil War memorial and making it into something new, taking something that shouldn’t be part of our memorial collection and thinking, let’s transform it into something that meets our ideas for today.”

With the trial set for February 1, the Jefferson School has no plans to slow down.

“We’re deliberately moving forward with a kind of consistency of message that says to the larger world that Charlottesville will make its own decisions about its public spaces,” said Douglas.

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Black in business

Ravella Warega, owner of Revella Consulting Group, is a panelist and a judge for the Business Pitch Contest at this year’s Black Business Expo. Supplied photo.

A plethora of products and services will be exhibited in 40 booths at this year’s Black Business Expo, the annual event that celebrates local Black-owned businesses. In addition to vendors, the day-long affair will feature DJ sets, live music, panel discussions, and a competition with cash prizes totaling $1,500 for the two best business pitches. 

The Expo began in September 2017, a month after the deadly Unite the Right rally. Ty Cooper, a filmmaker and director of the Expo, teamed up with WTJU to bring the event to fruition in hopes of unifying the community during a divisive time.  

“We just wanted to do something, and felt as though trying to lift up Black businesses in this community, particularly in a community with a checkered past, would be ideal,” says Cooper of the event, which takes place on Saturday, September 24, at Ix Art Park from 10am to 7pm. “We wanted to be … not a beacon of hate because of what happened, and … more of a beacon of hope, more of a beacon of support.”

Exhibitors include insurance companies, accountants, real estate agents, clothing and accessory vendors, nonprofit organizations, and more. Booths will advertise their respective businesses and services, but Cooper says he doesn’t want the Expo to feel like a “flea market.” 

“We really want to highlight that Black businesses are in various spaces, and a lot of people just do not know that they exist,” he says. “The idea of the Black Business Expo is to give them that platform, so that they can gain exposure and be introduced to more people.”

This year’s three panels will last an hour each, and cover business financing, marketing strategies, and emergent industries. The Business Pitch Contest is intended to support the visions of people who otherwise may not have the money to start their own companies. Previous winners have gone on to do exciting things, says Cooper. Cassandra Rodriguez founded the restaurant Vegan Comforts Soul Food in 2021, and is planning to purchase a food truck. 

Revella Warega, president of Revella Consulting Group, which specializes in the rail construction industry, is a panelist, as well as a judge for the Business Pitch Contest. A first generation immigrant, Warega came to the U.S. to get a college degree, but began working toward the dream of owning her own business. 

After being laid off from her administrative job during the Great Recession, Warega started her own company in an industry that lacked minority women-owned businesses. While the journey was difficult, she says in the long run, it was worth it. 

“It was tough, I can tell you that, but it never ends because business is always an ebb and flow,” Warega says. “There’s highs and lows no matter which year it is.” 

After 12 years and the corresponding amount of gray hairs, Warega is finally exactly where she wants to be. 

“Now I have clients that call and say, ‘Hey, we’re pursuing this, are you interested?’ Or, ‘We have this coming up, we want to include your team,’” she says. “And as a small business, that’s what you want to aim for—where you don’t need them, they need you.” 

Cooper emphasizes that the Expo is open to everyone, and encourages folks of all backgrounds to attend. 

“When people hear Black Business Expo, they may think it’s [only] for Black people. That’s not the case,” says Cooper. “It’s open to anyone, to everyone. The whole idea is to bring people together to support and celebrate these Black businesses.” 

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Returning to service

Dhanya Babu delayed graduate school to become one of the first Peace Corps volunteers to return to service. Photo: Courtesy Peace Corps.

Charlottesville resident Dhanya Babu moved to the city from India when she was 8 years old. Unable to speak English well, she enrolled in the ESOL program at Albemarle County Public Schools—and came full circle last year when she returned to work for the school division. Now, she is headed to West Africa to teach English to students in Benin, as one of the first Peace Corps volunteers to resume service overseas in over two years. 

“It’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I feel like I’m in a good place in my life to go and explore that,” says Babu. “I believe in the mission of the Peace Corps to go and do something, to serve internationally, and I feel like I can truly make a difference.”

The Peace Corps, a federal program that sends volunteers around the world to provide humanitarian aid, evacuated nearly 7,000 volunteers from over 60 countries at the start of the pandemic. Both first-time and evacuated volunteers are part of the cohorts going into service. The first group of volunteers to return to service since 2020 arrived in Zambia on March 15. Babu left for Benin, a country in West Africa, this week.

Babu studied human development and communication at Virginia Tech and applied for the Peace Corps one month after graduating in May 2021. 

“I just wanted to broaden my horizons and see if I really want to do social work and what kind of social work I wanted to do,” says Babu. “I’ve always wanted to do the Peace Corps, so I figured I should just apply.” 

After not hearing back for a while, she decided to apply to graduate school—but in February, she finally received notification of her acceptance into the Peace Corps. She rejected all of her graduate school acceptances, and will reapply after returning from service.

Peace Corps volunteers can apply for a specific position in a specific country related to one of the organization’s six sectors—agriculture, community economic development, education, environment, health, and youth in development. Babu, however, chose to go wherever volunteers are most needed, and was assigned to Benin to teach English as a foreign language. 

Volunteers will undergo a 10-week training before beginning a two-year period of service, in which they will be trained in the culture and language of the host country. Prior to the pandemic, volunteers would stay with host families in order to integrate into the local culture, but now, as a safety precaution, volunteers will live together during the training period. 

“I feel like I can get to know the community that I’m working with and get to know their needs, not just go in with my mission and what I want to achieve, but it’s about what they want to achieve,” says Babu. 

The national language of Benin is French, so Babu will undertake extensive French-language training, while volunteers who already speak it will learn one of the local languages. One of the things Babu is most nervous about is not being able to speak French well enough to hold a good conversation. 

“I think I’m just nervous about that hindering that relationship-making process,” she says. “But I think with time that will be something that I can overcome, and it will be a good learning process. If I’m teaching English, then I think the process of me learning French and that being hard for me can be a good common point between me and my students.” 

Beyond their individual local projects, all volunteers will assist community members with COVID-19 recovery and development efforts.

“The largest global vaccination effort in history is underway while other widespread health, social, political, and environmental issues continue to erode the foundation of our global society,” says Peace Corps CEO Carol Spahn. “Actions taken in the next few years have the potential to fundamentally impact development trajectories for decades to come.”

In addition to teaching, Babu can pursue a secondary project. She wants to really get to know the community she is working with and find out what their needs are in order to best provide help. 

“I’m just really curious to learn all the things that made the people who they are,” Babu says. “I know my culture and my schooling and being an immigrant, all those things impacted who I am.”

“Getting to know all the things that influenced the people in Benin—or the students in Benin—I feel like that’ll give me a really good perspective,” she adds. 

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Opening up

Soccer player Cam Lexow shares her passion for American Sign Language, deaf culture, and inclusivity in her UNCUT at UVA story. Photo: Courtesy UNCUT at UVA.

It seems that student-athletes have always been placed in a separate sphere from the rest of the UVA community. To non-student-athletes, they are the basketball players, the football players, the NCAA champions—defined by their wins and losses. A project brought to the University of Virginia by three members of the women’s soccer team—Rebecca Jarrett, Lacey McCormack, and Laughlin Ryan—hopes to change that and shape a new narrative for student-athletes. 

Founded last year, UNCUT at UVA is a storytelling platform that seeks to highlight the humanity of student-athletes—beyond their jerseys and competition statistics. 

“When you’re an athlete, you’re solely known for your sport, and people identify you from your sport, and you even put pressure on yourself based on your sport,” says Philip Horton, marketing and outreach coordinator for UNCUT at UVA and a men’s soccer player. “It’s a chance for athletes to share their stories and talk about their journeys, whatever they might be.” UNCUT currently has six stories on its website surrounding mental health, identity, and injury.  

The project isn’t the only one of its kind. Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill already have their own versions of UNCUT, and the community continues to grow. 

The process for a story from start to finish takes time—it involves initially reaching out to athletes who may be interested in sharing their stories, conducting a short interview, and then engaging in an extensive writing and editing process. 

In January, Anna Sumpter—who, before entering UVA, had already had five orthopedic surgeries—detailed her substantial injuries in UNCUT’s first story. A former member of the women’s soccer team, she had a career-ending injury a year ago that led to her fourth ACL tear, resulting in a total of seven orthopedic surgeries before she turned 23.  

“Especially in college sports, it’s very easy to get consumed by your identity as an athlete above all else,” says Sumpter. “So transitioning into being a normal participant in society and finding a job and getting out of college…it was really, really difficult. But there was also so much appreciation that I had for my time as an athlete.”

Sumpter’s injury history led to her becoming a clinical research coordinator in the department of orthopedic surgery at UVA, with plans to go to medical school. Her story is an example of “finding light out of really difficult things that athletes face and turning it into something really good,” which she says is what UNCUT is all about. 

Multiple stories center around mental health, with several student-athletes discussing their journeys. The topic has become especially important with the recent uptick in suicides among college athletes—at least five NCAA athletes died by suicide this year.

Emma Bradish, a member of the women’s rowing team, shared her experience with anxiety, something she says is not discussed enough. Student-athletes, she says, are often expected to always be “at the top of our game,” but she wants athletes to know they are not alone in wanting to ask for help—and that it’s okay to do so. 

“When we fall to physical injuries, every resource that the athletic program at any university has, is thrown at helping that individual feel better,” says Bradish. “Asking for help or needing to talk to someone because your mental health isn’t where it should be…shouldn’t be thought of as any different than when you need to go in and see an athletic trainer.” 

Alexander Cruz, a men’s wrestler, opened up about his struggles with his sexuality and how it has affected his wrestling career. He wants people to know that sexuality doesn’t have anything to do with the sport a person plays, and he hopes that his story can inspire other people and help them find a sense of connection. 

“Growing up for me, I didn’t really have a role model to look up to who was a queer athlete, so I kind of went through my life and experiences just kind of on my own, and it was really hard,” says Cruz. “There’s not a lot of people who are out who are athletes, especially in wrestling, so I wanted to share my story…I would hate for somebody to feel like they had to hide a part of themselves to fit into society.”

The UNCUT team of 14 hopes to release a new story every other week. Over the summer, however, they’ll take a break, but a couple of stories will be released once the semester begins in the fall. 

“I hope that the athletes that write these stories can be relieved by sharing them, and I hope that other athletes can see that the ones that do write them are pretty brave, and that there’s value to it, and that people aren’t by themselves,” says Horton. “Athletes are bigger than the sport they play.”

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Riding green

Within the next three to five years, Charlottesville’s climate action team hopes to create neighborhoods that are bikeable, walkable, and served by public transportation. File photo.

In a virtual meeting last week, the Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee discussed how Charlottesville and Albemarle County are working to drastically slash their carbon emissions, particularly in the context of transportation.

Susan Elliott, Charlottesville’s climate protection program manager, explained that 95 percent of the city’s emissions come from the community. Residential, commercial, and transportation each make up 30 percent, while 5 percent stems from waste. The remaining 5 percent comes from municipal operations. 

The city has already begun to see progress in its fight against climate change—its emissions in 2019 were 30 percent less than 2011 levels. Still, within the next three to five years, the city’s climate action team plans to implement key mitigation strategies, including creating neighborhoods that are walkable, bikeable, and served by public transit. The team also wants to increase the use of green transportation—including e-bikes, scooters, and electric vehicles—among residents, and develop a network of electric vehicle charging stations across the community, among other big goals. 

Elliott urged the city’s urban designers to prioritize travel conservation, and design more spaces that allow people to travel to important destinations within a five-minute walk radius. 

Gabe Dayley, Albemarle’s climate protection program manager, provided a similar overview of the county’s status on climate action. In a 2018 report, the county’s emissions were about 10 percent less than its 2008 levels. Thirty-nine percent of the county’s emissions come from buildings, while 52 percent stem from transportation—a much larger share than the city due to the county’s larger size.

According to a 2015 to 2019 report on work commutes, only around 16 percent of county residents take a bus, carpool, walk, bike, or use another environmentally-friendly form of transportation—the majority drive alone to get to work.

The county is considering reducing the amount of space allocated to on-street parking, and shifting it over to accommodate public transit, walking, and biking. However, “with a large rural area, it’s unlikely that we would ever have a transit service that could serve all areas of the county, so we may need to rely more on the transition to personal electric vehicles than the city might have to,” Dayley said. Over the past few years, there has been a growth in the usage of electric vehicle charging infrastructure across the county.

Though Albemarle does not have its own transit service, both city and county leadership want Charlottesville Area Transit to work toward electrifying its fleet—the University of Virginia, which has its own lofty climate goals, has already purchased four electric buses. The county is also looking into transitioning to electric school buses. 

Following the presentations, members of the committee raised questions regarding the feasibility of increasing public transit, walkability, and bikeability in areas where driving seems to be the most accessible option. Dayley and Elliott explained that the city and county’s focus is on maximizing greener transportation options—but one trip does not have to be limited to a single mode of transportation.

“It’s not just the walkability, it’s not just the bikeability, it’s not just the transit access,” said Elliott. “It’s how those pieces intersect together.” 

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Farewell

After a long career in public service, politics, and academia, UVA history professor George Gilliam is retiring. Photo: Dan Addison/UVA

In the nearly 60 years that he has lived in Charlottesville, University of Virginia history professor George Gilliam has had a long career spanning multiple areas of public service and politics. Now, he is retiring after giving his final lecture last week. 

From 1972 to 1976, Gilliam served on the Charlottesville City Council, helping to pass monumental legislation. During his tenure, councilors approved the creation of the Downtown Mall and McGuffey Art Center, as well as the city’s public and school bus systems. In 1974, Gilliam also ran as the Democratic candidate for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District. 

After being active in local politics and working as a lawyer in Charlottesville for 25 years, Gilliam—who received his law degree from UVA in 1968, after graduating from Columbia University in 1965—decided in his late 50s that he wanted to return to academia, heading back to UVA to earn his master’s degree in history. He taught classes at Piedmont Virginia Community College and Washington and Lee University, before joining UVA’s history department in 1999. 

The longtime professor often tells his students how much more rewarding teaching is than practicing law. 

“The feeling that I developed of lawyering was that every single day when I would get up, I knew I was going to be angry,” says Gilliam. “I was gonna be fighting over something with somebody. I just finally got to the point where I said, ‘I just don’t find this any fun.’ And that’s when I decided to start exploring seriously what I would need to do in order to go back to school.”

While earning his Ph.D. in history from UVA, Gilliam ran the Miller Center Forum—a public affairs program inviting world-class speakers for a one-hour conversation—and worked to get the program on PBS stations, hosting 400 guests over eight years. He’s also served as the center’s senior fellow for national engagement, and assistant director for public programs.

At the age of 71, Gilliam finally received his Ph.D. in 2013—he says that it is one of the most difficult things he has ever done, but that he loved every minute of it. 

Gilliam’s own family history coincided with the major historical events he teaches in class. He was born around the time the U.S. entered into World War II. All of his grandparents were born in the 1880s in Petersburg, Virginia, while his great-grandparents fought in the Civil War. Although Gilliam stands on a different side of the Civil War from them, he grew up with a respect for history, and wanted to tell the truth about what happened in the past. 

“One of the things that I find the most interesting and challenging about history is that so much of what I learned growing up is wrong,” says Gilliam. ”Textbooks were wrong. The people who were teaching, they weren’t particularly well prepared [so] I’ve tried to spend time sort of untangling things.” 

After retiring, Gilliam will continue working on a project examining Virginia’s response to massive resistance, when white schools across the state, including Venable Elementary and Lane High schools, closed to prevent desegregation in the 1950s. He is in the process of interviewing around 60 people who were students during that turbulent era.

He also plans to travel around the country for a few years with his wife, but has no plans to move away from Charlottesville. He says he loves the city mainly for the students, some of whom he has remained in touch with over the past two decades. He also enjoys watching UVA basketball and football games—he taught all but one member of the school’s basketball team that won the national championship in 2019. 

“Charlottesville is just a wonderful place to live. The longer we’re here, the more we like it,” says Gilliam. “It would take something very, very powerful to get us to leave Charlottesville.”

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Healing together

Friends and family of Otto Warmbier gathered at Nau Hall to honor the former UVA student’s life. Staff photo

For the first time since the death of their son Otto, Cindy and Fred Warmbier returned to the University of Virginia last week, as the fifth anniversary of his passing nears. While touring North Korea, the then-third-year UVA commerce student was accused of attempting to steal a political banner, and sentenced to 15 years in prison. After being imprisoned for 17 months, the 22-year-old was released back to the U.S. in a state of “unresponsive wakefulness” in June 2017. He died a week later.

Around 100 community members gathered in Nau Hall for the event, during which Warmbier’s parents and friends honored his life and impact. Think Again, a faculty-led initiative promoting free speech at UVA, hosted the gathering. 

Warmbier’s parents called on their son’s friends in attendance to describe his character, and detailed what they have done to achieve justice for their son, including successfully suing North Korea and passing legislation against the country’s regime. 

Class of 2017 alumnus Billy Burgess, Warmbier’s close friend and fraternity brother, described him as intelligent and loving. He described Warmbier’s support for his friends and affectionately called him “pretty weird” for his thrifted collection of Gucci sweaters and his love of ’80s and ’90s hip-hop culture.

Despite what happened to Warmbier in North Korea, Burgess encouraged the audience not to shy away from engaging in new experiences. “I think Otto would want you to go experience those cultures, to learn something new, to talk to somebody that you might not want to talk to initially, to reach out to a stranger,” he said.

North Korean defector and human rights advocate Yeonmi Park gave an emotional account of life under a dictator and her eventual escape. After leaving North Korea, Park struggled to find the words to explain the oppression she faced—she had never been given the vocabulary to describe it. 

“In North Korea, we do not have the word stress, because how can you be stressed in a socialist paradise? We don’t have a word for depression. We do not even have a word for love,” she said.

UVA law professor Sai Prakash called into question the authenticity of Warmbier’s confession and said he was used to send a message to the United States and the world. Fred Warmbier later called the confession “a completely made up farce.” 

While acknowledging the imperfections of the American justice system, Prakash placed it in direct contrast with the North Korean dictatorship. 

“We have a system of rights, a system of checks and balances, a system of separated powers,” said Prakash. “Although we don’t always perfectly follow these rules, we try to do so, and our attempts, however imperfect, matter.”

The Warmbiers urged the audience not to walk away from the event with a sense of despair, but a desire to spread positivity. 

“Otto was about positivity,” said Fred Warmbier. “If we don’t live a life of positivity, then what message does that send to our children and the rest of the world that [North Korea is] allowed to do this?”

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Art for good

Local Ukrainian egg-decorating parties have raised more than $16,000 (and counting) for several humanitarian aid organizations. Photo courtesy Val Goodman

For almost a decade, Charlottesville resident Valerie Goodman has created Ukrainian eggs for fun—but when Russia invaded Ukraine, she saw the eggs as a way to raise money and awareness.

Since March, Goodman has hosted egg-decorating parties for up to a dozen people. At the events, the minimum donation is $25 per egg, but Goodman says attendees have been averaging about $50 per egg, or about $500 per party. So far, over $16,000 has been raised for Ukraine.  

Egg decorating in Ukraine is traditionally a springtime activity, but has associations with Easter. Decorations can have both religious and symbolic meanings: Spirals catch evil. Hollow eggs capture bad energy. Others represent love, prosperity, and wealth. These eggs, known as pysanky, derived from the Ukrainian verb meaning “to inscribe,” have inscriptions made with beeswax, rather than paint. 

Before each party, Goodman washes and prepares the eggs, donated by neighbors, and brings kistka and Ukrainian dyes, which she purchased from the Ukrainian Gift Shop in Minneapolis.

The kistka, a special writing implement used to decorate the eggs, looks like a copper funnel attached to a wooden stick. Beeswax is melted into the funnel by holding it over a flame, and at the opposite end is an opening the size of a ballpoint pen from which the wax can emerge in fine detail. The eggs are then dipped in watercolor Ukrainian dyes. Once the wax gets stripped off, the design remains etched on the surface, and the eggs are shellacked. The whole process takes roughly two hours. 

When Goodman announced that she would be hosting egg-decorating parties, she received an overwhelming amount of support—she scheduled 30 parties right away.

“The only thing I want to get out of this is that we come together and give to Ukraine, to people who need it right now during this horrific time,” says Goodman. 

Each individual party decides together where the money will go, and it’s up to the host to collect what’s been raised, and make the donation on everyone’s behalf. GlobalGiving, Heart to Heart, World Central Kitchen, International Rescue Committee, UNICEF Ukraine, Red Cross Ukraine, and Doctors Without Borders are among the humanitarian aid organizations that have benefited from the egg-decorating events.  

The parties have primarily been attended by middle-aged women and their friends, but attendees come from everywhere. Malati Mari Kurashvili, a yoga instructor from the country of Georgia who has lived in Charlottesville for seven months, compared Ukrainian egg decorating to that of Georgians. In Georgia, eggs are primarily decorated with religious symbols and dyed red, while Ukrainian egg decorating includes a variety of symbolic meanings.

Being right on the border with Russia, Georgians have also been significantly affected by the war, and Kurashvili wanted to find a way to offer support to Ukrainians. She says the situation has been hard for Georgians, who have faced conflict with Russia for years. 

“It’s just very triggering, this situation, because we’re scared that we’re going to be next,” says Kurashvili. “The Georgian government right now really took a very neutral position so we wouldn’t get affected as Ukraine, because we can’t resist like Ukraine’s doing right now.” 

“We have Russian ties, and their armies are halfway into the capital,” she adds. “We will be destroyed in a heartbeat. So I tell you the truth, everybody’s very scared.” 

Kurashvili has been moved by the support that Charlottesville has shown for Ukraine.  

“I was very, very grateful at how kind and really caring people are here, because they really don’t have anybody out there,” says Kurashvili. “They have no connection to Eastern Europe, but they still care to do all this.”

While Goodman initially planned to host the egg-decorating parties until Easter, she says they’ll continue as long as people show up for them. Her next steps include looking for a matching grant for the funds that have been raised, and recruiting local artists to make eggs that can be auctioned off. And when the war ends, she wants to host the parties again to raise money to help rebuild Ukraine. 

“As [people] finish the process and start to reveal their egg by melting off the wax, they love it, ” says Goodman. “And then I say, okay, now let’s give some money to Ukraine. Because that’s what these families would be doing if they weren’t running for their lives.” 

“Look at us, we’re safe and we’re lucky enough that we can help,” she adds. “So dig into your pocket, let’s go, let’s help.” 

To sign up to participate in an egg-decorating party, visit https://life12.schedulista.com.

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Not enough

During a rally last winter, UVA students demanded the university withdraw its investments in the fossil fuel industry. Photo: Eze Amos

A student-led campaign to pressure the University of Virginia to fully withdraw its investments in the fossil fuel industry has gained momentum in recent years with petitions and public protests. Last month, the University of Virginia Investment Management Company finally addressed some of these concerns by publishing a framework that lays out principles the school will follow for investing in fossil fuel companies.

Students and sustainability advocates, however, say that this isn’t enough. 

The move “feels like it’s divestment,” but will not constitute full divestment in practice, says UVA Student Council Sustainability Co-director Aayusha Khanal.

“I would like to see full, complete divestment from the fossil fuel industry because I just don’t understand how it is an ethical, or moral, or political, or social, or economically viable thing to do,” she says. 

UVIMCO’s framework creates criteria that fossil fuel producers receiving UVA funds are expected to follow. But DivestUVA, a student organization that has advocated for fossil fuel divestment since it was founded in 2015, sees responsible fossil fuel divestment as an oxymoron.

“I think that responsible investment in fossil fuels is an antithetical statement,” says Khanal, who is also a member of DivestUVA. “Fossil fuel industries, especially the big ones, have these climate change goals where they’re trying to be more sustainable, but if you just look at the fine print for just a second longer, you’ll realize that they’re still operating under the same dirty tactics they did a decade ago.” 

In the coalition’s first public statement this semester, DivestUVA acknowledged that these new changes are an improvement but questioned the details of the framework and whether responsible fossil fuel investment is even possible. The group last hosted a rally in December during which they pinned their demands on UVA President Jim Ryan’s door. 

The statement examined each of four proposed principles UVIMCO laid out for fossil fuel companies: to be transparent, adopt best practices, safeguard the environment, and act with integrity. Each was challenged for being vague and or not plausible. 

“Fossil fuel companies, by virtue of their existence, are harmful to the environment,” reads DivestUVA’s statement. “There is no amount of responsible operation that can reverse this fact.” 

Maille Bowerman, Student Council sustainability co-director and member of DivestUVA, condemned the ongoing lack of transparency in UVIMCO’s policies, which fail to address important questions such as who stakeholders are and the metrics used to distinguish a good fossil fuel company from a bad one. 

“There’s only so much activism that can happen when you don’t even know what’s going on behind closed doors,” she says.

According to UVIMCO’s statement, the company has no direct investments in thermal coal or tar/oil sands and only .05 percent in fossil fuels. Less than 6 percent of indirect investments, funds that hold shares in fossil fuels companies, go toward natural resources. 

At UVA, fossil fuels are primarily for heating, with the vast majority of UVA’s fossil fuels used to heat buildings. The rest goes toward smaller things like cooking, dryers, and Bunsen burners in laboratories. 

Paul Zmick, director of energy and utilities at UVA, says that in order for the university to get off fossil fuels, it has to change the infrastructure of its buildings and rely on new technologies for heating. 

Options currently in the works include increasing building efficiency through installing low-temperature hot water systems, using heat recovery chillers, eliminating coal, and using geoexchange, which involves storing excess heat during the summer underground for use in the winter. Whereas the heat production efficiency of natural gas, a primary fossil fuel, ranges from 80 to 85 percent, these new technologies are far more efficient. 

The first step will be getting off coal, and then it will be continuing to expand heat recovery chillers and geoexchange before ultimately connecting these heating and cooling loops together to reduce fossil fuel use, a process that Zmick says can mostly be accomplished in 10 years. 

The biggest obstacle, however, is the UVA Medical Center—it relies on steam, which is largely made through the combustion of fossil fuels. 

“If we were able to get the Medical Center off steam in the next decade, certainly, within 15 to 20 years, we could be fossil fuel free…I think in that 2040 timeframe is realistic,” Zmick says. 

UVA has publicly announced a commitment to becoming fossil fuel free by 2050. UVIMCO, however, has not made a similar statement and did not respond by press time to C-VILLE’s request for information on a divestment goal.

“UVIMCO should be aligning itself more with UVA’s commitment to be fossil fuel free by 2050 to keep the consistency in messaging,” says Bowerman. 

UVA’s status as the flagship university in Virginia means it has a responsibility to set an example for other universities to divest, she says, since those schools often model their policies on UVA’s. Columbia University, Boston University, Harvard University, and the University of Southern California announced divestments from the fossil fuel industry last year, and many other colleges have since followed suit. 

UVIMCO’s new statement won’t slow DivestUVA’s efforts. On April 22, the coalition will hold an Earth Day climate action march to elicit input from students and community members on ways in which the university can be more environmentally just. 

A big concern is the apparent mismatch between UVA’s stated values and its ongoing investment in fossil fuels, but according to Khanal, the solution is easy. 

“By a university investing in fossil fuels, it cannot truly say that it cares about students and cares about creating a future generation of leaders, because if it truly wanted to do that, then it would create a future that is not going to be ravaged by climate change,” says Khanal. “And one way to ensure that—not the only way, but one way to do that—is to divest from the leading cause of the climate crisis, which is the fossil fuel industry.”

Categories
Arts Culture

Unfair advantage

Justene Hill Edwards details the economic interdependency between slaves and slaveholders in her book. Photo courtesy of VA Festival of the Book

After reading a book in graduate school that discussed how enslaved women sold goods in South Carolina and Barbados, Justene Hill Edwards became fascinated by the economy of the enslaved. In the American South, slaves engaged in their own economic enterprises, buying and selling goods and earning wages for their work. What started off as Hill Edwards’ dissertation evolved over the next 12 years into her first book, Unfree Markets: The Slaves’ Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina. 

“As I transitioned out of grad school into being a professor, the question of capitalism kept coming up, especially among historians of slavery, and I saw that there was a way for me to speak to this literature on the rise of American capitalism perhaps in a different way, focusing on the experiences of the enslaved,” says Hill Edwards, a UVA assistant professor and scholar of African American history. 

Records of enslaved men and women participating in the market appeared in legal and legislative documents, account books of slaveholders, and first-person narratives from runaway slaves. Based on this archival research, Unfree Markets examines the ways in which enslaved people engaged with the economy—and how slaveholders were able to capitalize on these ventures by allowing them to happen. 

Hill Edwards’ book focuses on South Carolina, but she says there is evidence that Virginia’s enslaved men and women also took part in the same kinds of economic enterprises. Between 1820 and 1860, enslaved laborers traded with students at UVA and made money doing “odd jobs” for students and faculty, Hill Edwards says. 

Hill Edwards hopes to challenge readers’ understanding of the relationship between freedom and capitalism, and make them think about how capitalism affects their own lives and society. 

“Especially in the American context, we often think that democracy and capitalism and freedom kind of go together necessarily, but if we look at those topics through the lens, through the experiences of the enslaved, I think that we get a different understanding of what that relationship was,” she says. 

Justene Hill Edwards discusses her work at Lives of the Unfree: Activism and Survival, along with Vanessa M. Holden (Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner’s Community) at UVA Bookstore on March 16 at 4pm.