Tag: Jim Ryan

Categories
News

Out and in: A turnover of top local leaders

Former Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas and current Chief RaShall Brackney. Former Virginia State Police Superintendent Steve Flaherty and current Superintendent Gary Settle. Former UVA President Teresa Sullivan and current President Jim Ryan. Former UVA Police Department Chief Michael Gibson and new Chief Tommye Sutton. Former Mayor Mike Signer and current Mayor Nikuyah Walker. Former City Manager Maurice Jones and current Interim City Manager Mike Murphy.

It was an unprecedented year for the city, but also one in which we saw a major shift among people in positions of power. Some heads rolled, some quietly retired, and the list of local leaders is almost unrecognizable from this time last summer.

Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas abruptly resigned in December, making way for Chief RaShall Brackney, who took her oath in June. Thomas wasn’t the most popular guy in town after Tim Heaphy released his independent review of the summer of hate, which alleged that Thomas deleted texts, used a personal email to skirt FOIA, and told law enforcement when white supremacists and counterprotesters went to war in the streets to “let them fight a little,” because it would make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly.

That wasn’t the only law enforcement shake-up. After nearly 15 years as Virginia State Police superintendent, Colonel Steve Flaherty retired in December, and was succeeded by Lieutenant Colonel Gary Settle. At the University of Virginia, Police Chief Michael Gibson also retired this summer, and new Chief Tommye Sutton was sworn in August 1, the same day as new UVA President Jim Ryan.

Ryan took the reins from Teresa Sullivan, who was highly criticized for having prior knowledge that white supremacists planned to march across Grounds last August 11, not warning students, and initially denying that she was privy to any of it. She had plans to leave before last summer, and on her way out, Ryan said he admires that she stayed focused on what really mattered to the university. “These were turbulent times and I think she demonstrated remarkable courage,” he said. Nevertheless, the Beta Bridge was decorated with the words, “Nazis love T. Sully” as she left.

The university also appointed Gloria Graham as its first-ever vice president of safety and security after emboldened neo-Nazis in white polos and khakis encircled and beat several students with their torches.

Poor planning for the weekend of the Unite the Right rally also fell on the head of City Manager Maurice Jones, and City Council decided not to renew his contract on May 25. Jones took a job as town manager for Chapel Hill, and in came former assistant city manager Mike Murphy, who will serve in the interim—but not without a fight from Mayor Nikuyah Walker, who challenged the first person offered the job.

Walker wasn’t mayor, or even on City Council, last summer. She replaced then-mayor Mike Signer, whose leadership came under fire when it emerged that he threatened to fire Jones and Thomas during the height of the August 12 violence. He was also suspected of leaking emails and was publicly reprimanded by his fellow councilors. Vice-Mayor Heather Hill also joined the ranks in the November council election—Kristin Szakos did not run for re-election and Bob Fenwick got the boot in the June primary.

City Attorney Craig Brown said goodbye, and was replaced by John Blair, who most recently served as deputy county attorney in Albemarle.

And last but not least, city spokesperson Miriam Dickler stepped down as Charlottesville’s director of communications in January, and former Charlottesville Tomorrow executive director Brian Wheeler filled her shoes.

Categories
News

Hope and an apology

At a university-sponsored event this morning called The Hope That Summons Us, President Jim Ryan had a message for the victims of the white supremacist attack on Grounds exactly one year ago: "I am sorry. We are sorry." Photo courtesy of UVA Office of Communications

About 200 people gathered in the Old Cabell Hall auditorium at the University of Virginia on the anniversary of last summer’s August 11 white supremacist tiki-torch march across Grounds, where a small number of students and faculty were encircled and beaten by angry men in white polos and khakis.

The ticketed event was called The Hope That Summons Us: A Morning of Reflection and Renewal, and it began with words from John Charles Thomas, a retired Virginia Supreme Court justice who now teaches appellate practice at the university’s law school.

“Hope gives us the courage to stand up against evil,” said Thomas, who reminded the audience that “light will conquer darkness” and “love is stronger than hate.”

Attendees honored the lives of Heather Heyer, Lieutenant Jay Cullen and Trooper Pilot Berke Bates, who died in Charlottesville last August 12, with a moment of silence. The university’s carillon bells tolled in their honor.

A few sniffles could be heard in the auditorium as most attendees bowed their heads. Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, sat in the front row.

After songs, a poem and a multilingual reading, UVA President Jim Ryan shared a few words on his 11th day on the job.

“I cannot truly know the pain of others, but I can recognize it and stand with them,” he said, noting that he was not in Charlottesville during the violent events of last summer, though he watched them play out online. “In the face of tragedy, we can still find the strength to move forward, and we must.”

Ryan said one must have the “courage to be candid and open to self-examination,” and with that, he noted that two of the organizers of last year’s Unite the Right rally were, in fact, UVA graduates.

He said it’s easy to side against white supremacists and neo-Nazis, but harder to close the gap between aspirations and realities.

“How do we live our values?” he asked.

To start, he said UVA must acknowledge that gap still exists and admit to the mistakes it made last summer. The university must pledge to learn from its mistakes, and not be afraid to apologize.

Ryan had a message for the victims of the attack at the foot of the Thomas Jefferson statue on this day last year: “I am sorry. We are sorry.”

And with that, the president earned himself a standing ovation.

Categories
News

No. 9: New UVA president ready to question and listen

New UVA President Jim Ryan fields questions from the press on his first day on the job. staff photo

 

Jim Ryan, the University of Virginia’s ninth president, took office August 1 and immediately began to re-introduce himself to the university where he was both a graduate of the School of Law and served on the law school’s faculty.

Ryan, 51, became a YouTube sensation when a commencement speech he gave at Harvard School of Education in 2016 went viral. The book he wrote based on that, Wait, What? And Life’s Other Essential Questions, became as a bestseller, and the asking of questions seems inherent to Ryan’s style. He’s already launched a website called Ours to Shape that solicits ideas and comments from the UVA community.

At a press conference in the Rotunda, Ryan stressed that listening was at the top of his agenda before he attempted to craft the university’s vision for the next 10 years. “Some encouraged me to come in and announce a grand scheme,” he says, but it’s “much better” to listen to people about what matters to them first.

However, with Ours to Shape, Ryan already has laid out areas upon which he wants to focus: How to strengthen the community, support the discoveries going on at the university and better serve the commonwealth and beyond.

“How can we maximize our ability to do good in the world?” asks Ryan, which he says will be a university goal under his presidency.

The first-generation college grad took the job as dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2013 and he acknowledged the difficulty higher education faces, particularly with “the loss of faith among some” of its value.

“I also know first-hand the transformative power of higher education,” he says.

Ryan says he was not here, but watched online live the events of August 11 on Grounds. “I was horrified by scenes of neo-Nazis and white supremacists marching with torches. It was as alarming as it was appalling.”

He adds, “I do think events like that often open conversations that weren’t happening.”

The Miller Center’s hiring of former Trump legislative affairs director Marc Short prompted more than 3,400 faculty and students to sign a petition against hiring him and two prominent faculty members to quit. “I have friends on both sides of this issue,” says Ryan, and his support of the appointment has already sparked controversy.

Short’s hiring is “consistent” with the Miller Center’s mission to study the presidency, Ryan says. “We should be willing to engage with those with whom we disagree.”

Ryan notes his admiration of his predecessor Teresa Sullivan: “She stays focused on what matters to the university.” That included attracting faculty and having a top-notch hospital. “These were turbulent times and I think she demonstrated remarkable courage,” he says.

The new president will live in Pavilion VIII while Carr’s Hill undergoes a long-planned renovation. His youngest son is a high school senior in Boston and his wife will remain there while he finishes his final year. “I’ll have an awful lot of time” to meet students, says Ryan, through living on the Lawn and at sports events.

As a former law school student and faculty, Ryan recognizes how vast that two-mile distance from Grounds can be. “You can feel like you’re not connected to the university,” he says, and he’s spent the past eight months becoming more closely acquainted with parts of his alma mater he didn’t know before.

One thing Ryan had well in hand before taking the UVA presidency: Ties in the school’s colors, of which he’s had to purchase “not a single one, but I’ve been given many. I never knew you could arrange orange and blue in so many different ways, even in just stripes alone.”

 

Categories
News

In brief: Interim imbroglio, Miller Center imbroglio, gunman imbroglio and more

Mayor Nikuyah Walker takes it to social media.

Infighting implodes council

The hiring of an interim city manager, an event that usually takes place behind closed doors, has become heated and public, with reports of shouting at a July 20 closed City Council session. Mayor Nikuyah Walker has gone on Facebook Live twice to express her concerns that the process is part of the old boys’ network because someone suggested a candidate for the position to Vice Mayor Heather Hill, which she calls a “white supremist practice.”

On July 23, councilors Hill, Mike Signer and Kathy Galvin issued a five-page response to Walker’s Facebook Live video. “We regret that our rules requiring confidentiality about closed session discussions for personnel choices—which are in place under Virginia law, to protect local elected officials’ ability to discuss and negotiate employment agreements—were broken by the mayor.”

The search for an interim city manager became more urgent when Maurice Jones took a town manager job in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, leaving the city without a chief executive as the anniversary of August 12 looms.

Chris Suarez at the Daily Progress reports that three sources have confirmed U.S. Army Human Resources Command Chief of Staff Sidney C. Zemp has been offered the job.

In the councilors’ response, all three say they’ve never met the candidate, and that review panels are not used when filling interim positions.

In her July 20 video, Walker walked back a comment she made on Facebook and Twitter July 19: “We might have to protest a City Council decision. Are y’all with me?” She said she didn’t want supporters to shut down a council meeting, but did want them to pay attention to the process.

Walker was back on Facebook Live July 23, blasting her fellow councilors for their “very privileged” backgrounds and questioning their integrity.

She says she favors an internal candidate—the two assistant city managers and a department head have been floated—which councilors Wes Bellamy and Signer initially favored.

Bellamy issued his own statement: “Elected bodies agree and disagree all of the time” and that can lead to “healthy debate.”

Will council actually vote for an interim city manager at its August 6 meeting? Stay tuned.

Mayor Nikuyah Walker expressed concern in a July 20 Facebook Live video about the hiring process for an interim city manager.

In brief

Too much heritage

The Louisa County Board of Zoning Appeals said the giant Confederate battle flag on I-64 must come down because its 120-foot pole is double the county’s maximum allowable height. Virginia Flaggers erected the “Charlottesville I-64 Spirit of Defiance Battle Flag” in March and argued that after putting up 27 flags across the state, they wouldn’t have spent $14,000 on this one without confirming county code.

Controversial hire

A petition with more than 2,000 signatures of UVA faculty and students objects to the Miller Center’s hiring of Trump legislative affairs director Marc Short as a senior fellow. The petitioners are opposed to Trump administrators using “our university to clean up their tarnished reputations.”

Presidential paychecks

New UVA president Jim Ryan commands a higher salary than his predecessor, but can’t touch Brono Mendenhall’s paycheck. Photo UVA

Outgoing UVA prez Teresa Sullivan’s base pay of $580,000 and total compensation of $607,502 last year makes her one of the higher paid university chiefs, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Her successor, Jim Ryan, starts with a $750,000 base pay, but to put those numbers in perspective, remember that UVA football coach Bronco Mendenhall makes $3.4 million—with a possible $2 million-plus bonus. At this week’s ACC Kickoff event, media members predicted—for the fifth straight year—that UVA will finish last in the conference’s Coastal Division.

New tourism director

Adam Healy, the former CEO of online wedding marketplace Borrowed and Blue, which closed abruptly last October, will now serve as the interim executive director of the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Standoff on Lankford

A state police vehicle on the outskirts of the standoff.

About 50 city, county and state police and SWAT team members were on the scene of a four-hour standoff with 29-year-old Alexander Rodgers, who had barricaded himself inside a Lankford Avenue home on July 19. Someone called police around 8am and reported shots fired. Rodgers, who has a history of domestic violence and was wanted on six outstanding warrants, eventually surrendered and was charged with three felonies and a misdemeanor.

Quote of the week:

“The fish rots from the head.”—Senator Tim Kaine, after U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security and UVA alum Kirstjen Nielsen said about last summer’s violence in Charlottesville at a July 19 press briefing, “It’s not that one side was right and one side was wrong.”

County crime report

The Albemarle County Police Department released its annual crime report for 2017 last month. Here are a few things that caught our eye.

-Police misconduct has been reframed in a new “cheers and jeers” section, where police complaints are compared side-by-side with commendations.

  • Complaints: 57
  • Commendations: 69

-The award section may come as a surprise, because Detective Andrew Holmes, who faces five lawsuits for racial profiling, was granted a community service award.

-Albemarle County had the second-lowest crime rate in the state while Charlottesville had the highest. Crime rate is measured by tallying the number of crimes committed per 100,000 people.

  •   Fairfax: 1,273
  •   Albemarle: 1,286
  •   Prince George: 1,334
  •   Arlington: 1,355
  •   Prince William: 1,370
  •   Chesterfield: 1,450
  •   James City: 1,611
  •   Roanoke: 1,638
  •   Henrico: 2,548
  •   Charlottesville: 2,631

-County police officers made 2,296 arrests and used force “to overcome resistance or threat” on 14 occasions.

-Assaults on police officers have gone up and down.

  • 2015: 3
  • 2016: 10
  • 2017: 7
Categories
News

Hitting the books with incoming UVA President Jim Ryan

You can tell a lot about a man from the books he reads. C-VILLE checked in with UVA’s President-elect Jim Ryan to get a peek at his bookshelf ahead of his sold-out Virginia Festival of the Book talk on Saturday, “Life’s Essential Questions: A Conversation with Jim Ryan.” Let’s just say that Thomas Jefferson figured prominently way before Ryan was named to head his university.

C-VILLE: What non-work-related book are you reading now?

Jim Ryan: I’m currently reading Jon Meacham’s biography of Jefferson, which is somewhat work-related but nonetheless fascinating. I wrote a report in second grade about “Tall Tom Jefferson” and was obsessed with him at that age, to the point that I persuaded my parents to take me to the Jefferson Memorial in D.C. Turns out a lot has been written about him since. Meacham’s biography is a good place to start.

What book changed your life?

Three books, actually. First, Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which captured a perspective in a beautiful and haunting way that I had only dimly perceived, namely that our lives are a product of chance encounters and ad hoc decisions that ultimately have profound consequences. Second, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which is the only book (other than Goodnight Moon) that I have read twice. I have always been fascinated by the intersection of art and science, and this book sparked my thinking about that intersection more than any other. The third is Born to Run, which is a book about long-distance running that both changed my perception about what constitutes a “long” run and made me a huge devotee of chia seeds.

What writer (living or not) would you most like to meet?

Robert Frost. There is a wealth of wisdom in every poem he wrote, and I am enamored of his voice. I would be thrilled to spend time with him, though I realize it’s not possible at this point, given my current location (and his).

What did you learn from writing a book?

Honesty works. I’ve written two books, the first an academic one and the second one [Wait, What?] decidedly not academic. But in both instances, I tried as hard as I could to be honest. Many more people read my second book than my first, but I like to believe that in both instances, those who read my books appreciated that I was doing my best to be honest.

Will your book be required reading at UVA?

Ha! Though my publisher would love this idea, I would never be that presumptuous. When I finished writing my books, I  was so tired of them that I couldn’t imagine that anyone would actually want to read them, much less be required to do so.—Lisa Provence