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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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‘A good deal of trust’: UVA wants students to come back to Charlottesville. What will happen once they get here?

UVA students could quickly spread the coronavirus if they return to Charlottesville. Photo: Rammelkamp Photo

By Sydney Halleman

Amy has a lot of school spirit. A third-year at the University of Virginia, she’s been active in the UVA community since her first year. She holds leadership positions in multiple clubs. “I go to all the football games,” Amy says. “And I love wearing my UVA gear.”

But her sentiment toward her university started to shift as the novel coronavirus swept through Virginia. Amy, who is immunocompromised due to asthma and chronic sinusitis, is concerned for her club members and her own health as the University of Virginia moves closer to opening Grounds to students on August 25. She has been given no specific guidelines on how to hold meetings or host club activities safely. 

“This is not a time for self-governance,” Amy says.

Students like Amy—and Charlottesville residents—have become increasingly concerned with the university’s guidelines for reopening, and its lack of enforcement of mask wearing and social distancing, which are crucial to preventing the spread of COVID-19.

“This is the first time I’ve felt disappointed with UVA,” she says. “I love UVA, I truly love it. And this is the first time where I feel like I’ve been cheated…The lack of communication and lack of transparency is very, very frustrating.”

 

Preventative measures

The coronavirus has killed 141,000 people in the United States since March. Charlottesville, thus far, has been relatively spared in comparison to other cities, due to non-essential businesses closing early and limits on gatherings.

However, as national COVID-19 rates spike for a second time, Charlottesville’s rate of infections has been steadily rising. City leaders and community members are concerned that the return of students could mark a deadly rise in coronavirus cases. In a July 13 virtual press conference, Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah Walker called UVA’s plans to reopen Grounds to students a “recipe for disaster.”

“I, for one, don’t understand why the students are coming back into the community, from all over the globe, and why we’re taking that chance,” she said.

During a recent city schools school board meeting, Chairwoman Jennifer McKeever said, “In any given moment, after the students come back into our town, the local numbers are going to be really different than they are right now.”

Early in March, the university outlined plans to reopen, and opted to hold classes, excluding large lecture hall courses, in person. In this hybrid model, most students can choose to attend classes online, if they wish, with the exception of some practicum courses. Classes will be held through fall break, and in-person teaching will end by Thanksgiving. The university will quarantine those who test positive for coronavirus, and provide personal protective equipment. Additionally, students are required to submit a negative COVID-19 test before returning to school.

In a May 28 email, the university wrote that “In some ways, it would be easier simply to be online all fall,” but mentioned the “obvious financial risks” to that course of action. Like many schools around the country, UVA has been clear about its fears that an all-virtual semester would destroy tuition revenue.

 So UVA’s administration has decided to forge ahead. “There inevitably will be greater risk in having students return,” the email reads, “and we will be 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.”

 

Party on

Mounting evidence suggests that these steps—and this trust—won’t be enough to prevent students from spreading the virus among themselves and to the rest of the city. Although 92 percent of undergrads responded in a university survey that they would practice social distancing, mask wearing, and hand-washing, flocks of maskless students crowded corner bars and fraternity houses to celebrate during the weekend of July 11-12, the traditional party weekend called Midsummers. 

Tyler Lee, a rising second-year, was one of those who took part in the Midsummers festivities. Over Instagram direct message, Lee recognized that “partying in the midst of a pandemic is not the best idea,” but said he expects students to continue partying once classes resume. 

“I do not expect to see bars empty or a lack of people at parties in the fall,” Lee said. “I had my fun, even if it was for a short weekend.”

Following Midsummers, Dean of Students Allen Groves sent a scathing email to students, calling the partying “selfish and ignorant,” but failing to explain how the school would enforce safety at future large, student-held gatherings. 

Ryan McKay, a senior policy analyst for the Thomas Jefferson Health District, says the state health apparatus is scaling up contact tracing and educational messaging, but noted that, ultimately, “there’s a concern if students aren’t wearing face coverings and not social distancing.”

“Even if we did say that restaurants needed to close,” McKay says, “we need to be concerned about social gatherings where we don’t have authority.”

Around 40 percent of UVA upperclassmen live in off-campus housing, which further complicates the picture because the university has very little control over what happens in those houses and apartments. Harvard University made headlines recently for its COVID prevention plan, which allows only 40 percent of students to return to campus, something it can more easily do because 97 percent of its undergraduates live in university housing. At UVA, students can decide to return to Charlottesville even if classes are held completely virtually. 

UVA English professor Herbert Tucker recognizes that students behave much differently outside the classroom than in it.

“I’ve been in the business long enough to know that no matter how much homework-doing students are on the ball…they behave very differently with each other when they’re out of class,” he says. “The students infect each other…these are not fantasies, these things are certainly going to happen more frequently. This isn’t rocket science here.” 

“The extreme that everyone should imagine is a fraternity party,” Tucker says. “Those events are going to happen.”

And while Tucker says the faculty can “take care of themselves,” citing UVA’s flexibility in allowing faculty to teach remotely, he worries about the staff and community members that students could infect with COVID-19. 

“They won’t enter the students’ minds,” he says.

 

Risk factor

Residents in neighborhoods surrounding UVA, like 10th and Page, are particularly at risk of serious health complications stemming from coronavirus. The virus disproportionately affects Black Americans and those with underlying health conditions.

Dr. Taison Bell, an infectious disease, critical care physician, and the director of UVA’s medical intensive care unit, recognizes that risk, and says Charlottesville has to develop a safety plan that “has to be, more so than we’ve done in the past, integrated into the whole plan for the city and the region.”

As for making students practice social distancing, Bell says it’s “a little unclear” what can and cannot be enforced. 

“One variable, or a big part that the community is concerned about, is how younger people will behave during their free time,” Bell says. “Will they behave in a responsible way…Or will they be potential drivers of infection?”

For decades, area residents have watched UVA students party their way across town. Now, the university has put forward a coronavirus containment plan that relies in large part on students choosing to act conscientiously. 

“If we’re going to have a substantial amount of students,” Bell says, “then there needs to be a collective understanding that [they] have to behave differently than they have before.”

 

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Defense strategy: UVA prof fends off white supremacy invasion

Curry School professor and community activist Walt Heinecke, who helped protect his students in front of the Jefferson statue Friday, August 11, is a former member of the Dialogue on Race Steering Committee. John Robinson

Walt Heinecke had planned to hold nonviolent direct action training the night before the August 12 Unite the Right rally. Instead, he ended up doing nonviolent intervention and defending UVA students from torch-carrying white nationalists in front of the Rotunda Friday night, running two counterprotests at McGuffey and Justice parks on Saturday, and contradicting in the Washington Post President Donald Trump’s assertions that those opposed to Nazis didn’t have a permit, which they did, but in any case, didn’t need.

The Curry School professor and community activist was scheduled to do the training at 9:30pm August 11 at St. Paul’s Memorial Church. He’d parked at the architecture school a couple of blocks away, and on his way to St. Paul’s, ran into some legal observers who had seen Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler and headlining alt-righter Richard Spencer go by—with unlit tiki torches.

The church was on lockdown because of reports of white supremacists in the area, says Heinecke. “Someone screamed, ‘Your students are surrounded by Nazis in front of the Rotunda!’” Heinecke recounts by phone from Northern California, where he was regrouping under the redwoods.

“I was shocked by the number of neo-Nazis,” he says. “And I couldn’t believe the police presence—I couldn’t see any.”

Heinecke says he asked Dean of Students Allen Groves where the University Police were, and Groves said he didn’t know, that maybe they were patrolling with Charlottesville police.

“The violence and the temperature kept going up,” says Heinecke. “Some of my students were there.”

They had taken the nonviolent training and stood with their backs to the Thomas Jefferson statue and their arms locked together, which meant they couldn’t throw punches and couldn’t reach for pepper spray, he explains.

He started going around the circle of what he estimates were 15 to 20 students, asking them if they wanted to leave. “They were following the rules [of nonviolent direct action].” He adds, “They were scared.”

The scene was “horrendous,” he says. “I saw a neo-Nazi throw a torch at Allen and then they started macing. I got hit with that.”

He was aware Tyler Magill, who served the next day as one of Heinecke’s marshals to keep order at Justice Park, was there. “I didn’t see him, but understand he got hit in the throat.” Magill, who also chased Kessler August 13 when he tried to have a press conference in front of City Hall, had a stroke August 15.

Heinecke says he and Groves dragged students out of the fray and over to the side. “At 10:17, I called 911.”

After his call and many of the “fascists” had dispersed, says Heinecke, “police came and threatened to arrest us all—Dean Groves and the students and me.”

University Police arrested Ian Hoffmann, of Palmyra, Pennsylvania, at the Rotunda, and he was charged with assault.

Heinecke says he’s disappointed by the lack of police presence for something that was “common knowledge,” and he doesn’t understand why the UVA community wasn’t alerted. 

“Last week we got a text there was a bear cub wandering around,” he says. “Why not text that there are neo-Nazis wandering around? What about the people of color on staff who were working? What about the faculty of color working in their offices getting ready for students?” [See UVA President Teresa Sullivan’s response to a student here.]

Heinecke is on the UVA Faculty Senate, and he says he’s called for an investigation into why there was no police response sooner and why there wasn’t an alert to what he calls a “credible threat.”

That was the first day of the Unite the Right infestation.

As hellish as August 12 was for much of Charlottesville, Heinecke says the counterdemonstrations in McGuffey and Justice parks “were very successful. There was no violence in either of our parks.” His team provided food and water to counterprotesters, as well as first aid for tear gassing and contusions, including to one white nationalist “who was pretty beat up,” says Heinecke.

“We provided a respite for counterdemonstrators before they went out to defend their community,” says Heinecke.

Which brings him to his feud with President Trump, who blamed anti-fascists for the violence against the peaceful, permitted white supremacists.

“Those were people from our community who went out,” says Heinecke. “Without those people the damages would have been so much worse.”

And Heinecke does credit a heavily armed out-of-town militia: the John Brown Brigade, which stood on a corner outside Justice Park all day. “As the level of violence by Nazis and white supremacists grew, I was comforted by their presence,” he says.

Heinecke says his mission was accomplished, but as the permit holder in the parks, “It was stressful having all those people under my care.” And he says he was disappointed by police “allowing beatings to go on around town without intervention.”

But he was also heartened throughout the day when the clergy, students from around the commonwealth and the Democratic Socialists of America marched in.

Says Heinecke, “There were really a lot of positive community endeavors in the midst of all that violence.”

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Day 9: UVA believed Jackie, too, say witnesses

Attorneys for plaintiff Nicole Eramo called her former boss, Dean of Students Allen Groves, to the stand October 26 to bolster her claims that she was unfairly portrayed as a callous administrator to victims of sexual assault in Rolling Stone’s article, “A Rape on Campus.”

“My first impression, and it remains my impression, it painted a picture of Nicole as someone who was cavalier, no pun intended,” as someone who suppressed statistics and who was not advocating for students, Groves said of the November 2014 article.

Student trust of administrators is “hugely important,” said Groves, and that was why Eramo was removed from her position as sexual assault intake counselor after the article was published. “Not because I did not believe she was anything but capable,” said Groves. “My fear was the perception of the student body was that she was not.”

Groves was aware that Jackie had reported her alleged September 2012 assault to Eramo months later on May 20, 2013.

And in April 2014, after she’d allegedly been beaned by a bottle thrown in retaliation for her advocacy work among assault survivors, Jackie came back to Eramo and reported two other women had similar experiences at Phi Kappa Psi, he testified.

On April 22, 2014, “Jackie said she was willing to talk to police,” said Groves. “I was ecstatic.” That euphoria quickly waned when Jackie said the detective she talked to was “aggressive” and she refused to name her assailant.

“I was angry that Jackie would not tell us this guy’s name,” said Groves. “I couldn’t understand how you could have that violent an act and not take action.”

Under cross-examination, when Groves was questioned about a September 17, 2014, text Eramo sent to Jackie and Alex Pinkleton that said the university was “flat-out fucked” because of Hannah Graham and the upcoming Rolling Stone article, Groves paused for an emotional moment.

“That was a very difficult fall for us, the most difficult I’ve encountered,” he said. “Sorry.”

He said if he’d known about that text and another in which Eramo referred to some of her survivor students as her “awesome bitches,” he would have advised her, “I’d prefer you don’t use that language in talking with students.”

Groves acknowledged that the university was already under fire for its handling of sexual assault cases, and the Office of Civil Rights had begun an investigation in April 2011.

When reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely e-mailed Eramo for an interview, Groves wrote, “I’d prefer not to do it at all. In my opinion, Rolling Stone has not been objective in recent years. The description of hypotheticals, OCR, specific cases, etc., leads me to believe this is a hatchet job.”

That same fall, UVA’s alumni magazine also was working on a story about how UVA handles sexual assault, and Groves was sent a draft to edit, he said.

The article began with Emily Renda’s assault as a first-year after getting drunk. “My case is a fairly typical campus sexual assault story,” she’s quoted as saying. “How can this be a ‘typical’ experience at our nation’s institutions for higher education,” questioned the piece, which noted that no one has ever been expelled for rape at the university, a fact also included in the Rolling Stone article.

The alumni magazine story was killed.

Groves said he believed Jackie until the Rolling Stone article came out. So did associate dean Laurie Casteen. And so did Alex Pinkleton, according to their testimony.

Pinkleton, a sexual assault advocate active in One Less and a 2016 UVA grad, was a close friend to Jackie—at least before the article. Initially, she said, she was excited about the story because she wanted to draw attention to rape culture on campus and raise awareness. She said 90 percent of her comments to Erdely were about that, but she was quoted in the article as talking about how “hot girls” can get into fraternities.

“Obviously I was offended,” said Pinkleton.

“I”m very critical of UVA, but Dean Eramo is not part of that,” said Pinkleton, who said she respected Eramo and babysat for her. And she said she was concerned about how Erdely would portray Eramo.

Pinkleton said she encouraged Jackie to stay involved in the story “because it’s important to control your story.” And she said she’d never questioned Jackie’s story. “I just validated what she said. That’s what advocates do.”

During cross-examination, when describing her reaction to the article and how it portrayed Eramo, Pinkleton began crying. The judge ordered a short break.

When she came back, she said she was critical of how UVA handled sexual assault after Jackie’s tale of being raped by seven men at Phi Psi, and wrote in a 2014 e-mail, “They can investigate and notify students. That’s inexcusable.”

Pinkleton said she is represented by the same firm representing Eramo, Clare Locke, which helped her prepare for testimony for several hours. “The reason I did was because Rolling Stone subpoenaed my e-mails for two years,” she said.

Courtesy Rolling Stone Illustrator John Ritter, who did the now-notorious illustration that Eramo said made her “look like the devil,” testified that he had altered her eyes because they were downcast and not looking at the student figure he’d photoshopped into his illustration.

Jurors got to see other illustrations he’s done, including one of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, whose eyes are altered, as well.

Rolling Stone deputy managing editor Sean Woods was the last witness of the day, and attorney Libby Locke grilled him on the decisions he made in editing Erdely’s story, including cutting out a section about Eramo taking Jackie to the police.

“You didn’t see that as relevant?” asked Locke.

“I disagree with that characterization,” said Woods.

Eramo’s team expects to finish with its witnesses tomorrow.

Outside the federal courthouse, Locke said it was another good day in court with Groves and Pinkleton testifying about how they read the article “as a negative portrayal” of Eramo.

Rolling Stone’s attorney David Paxton seemed equally pleased. “Through this part of the trial, we’ve heard no evidence there was any actual malice.”

Clarification 10:26 am October 27: Alex Pinkleton’s criticism of UVA’s handling of Jackie’s alleged rape was from a 2014 e-mail, about which she testified in court.