Tag: Matthew Gillikin

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(Don’t) take a seat: Downtown Mall still lacks public benches

The Downtown Mall has hundreds of private seats owned by restaurants and cafés, but only 37 public seats. PC: John Robinson

Last year, the Seattle Department of Transportation installed 18 new bike racks on a stretch of pavement underneath Highway 99. However, the racks were not meant to provide more resources for cyclists—but to prevent the homeless people who had been camping there from coming back.

Seattle is just one of many cities known to use hostile, or “defensive,” architecture to deter “unwanted behavior,” such as loitering or sleeping in public spaces. Curved and slanted benches, street spikes and dividers, boulders and spikes under bridges, and benches with armrests—among other examples—have been spotted and posted on social media in cities across the country.

While city governments claim that such architecture is needed to maintain order and public safety, critics say it unfairly targets the homeless, preventing them from having places to rest.

In Charlottesville, this debate has lasted for years, specifically surrounding public seating on the Downtown Mall. In 2012, the North Downtown Residents Association released a report (endorsed by downtown businesses) claiming that the increasing amount of panhandlers and loiterers on the mall “yelling obscenities, verbally assaulting passersby, fighting, and engaging in other disturbing behavior” made mall employees and patrons feel unsafe and uncomfortable, The Daily Progress reported. The report recommended, among other things, that sitting and lying down be banned on the mall.

The same year, the city removed the fountain-side chairs in Central Place near Second Street, and replaced the seating in front of City Hall with backless benches, in an effort to prevent “disorderly conduct” on the mall. 

However, no bans on sitting or lying down were passed, and, as of today, “individuals who are residentially challenged or unsheltered” on the mall are not breaking the law, but “can be arrested for trespassing…if [they] are blocking entryways to businesses, or for aggressive soliciting, just to name a few examples,” says Charlottesville Police Department Public Information Officer Tyler Hawn.

Controversy arose again in 2016 when the Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review unanimously denied the Parks & Recreation Department’s request to replace all of the mall’s wooden chairs with backless metal benches to discourage loitering. BAR members believed the benches would be uncomfortable, and they’d prevent those who did not want—or have the means—to spend money at a business from fully enjoying the mall, dishonoring architect Lawrence Halprin’s intentions and design (which included 150 public chairs).

The city has since listened to mall patrons’ complaints that the backless benches in front of City Hall were not “human-friendly,” replacing them with the originally designed wooden chairs, says city Communications Director Brian Wheeler. But it has not added any more public seating to the mall, which, according to Wheeler, currently has 37 wooden chairs 

Stephen Hitchcock, executive director of The Haven, says the issue doesn’t feel as loaded as it did a few years ago.

“Obviously, you’re going to have people who have pretty strong opinions about folks who are holding signs on the mall, or asking for money, or sitting in front of the landmarks,” says Hitchcock. “But, I feel slightly encouraged, at least in contrast with what I hear happening around the country [with hostile architecture]…something that I feel is really important about the Downtown Mall is that it is one of the only places where the city sees itself, across race, class, gender, sexual orientation, you name it.” 

However, on January 4, Charlottesville resident and activist Matthew Gillikin revived the discussion surrounding mall seating on Twitter, pointing out the very few public chairs available, compared to the hundreds of private chairs owned by restaurants and cafés.

In response, someone else listed the fees the city charges each downtown business with outdoor seating: $125 annually, plus $5 per square foot—revenue generated from what is ostensibly public space.

The Center of Developing Entrepreneurs, currently under construction on the west end of the mall, could add more public space–plans call for an exterior courtyard and outdoor amphitheater for public and private events.

According to Wheeler, if the community wanted to add more wooden chairs to the mall, or even “a different type of bench that was much longer, [that] you could lay down on,” the proposal would have to approved by the BAR. 

The city would also have to allocate a significant amount of funding for the seating, says Wheeler. He estimates the wooden chairs on the mall cost $1,200 to $1,500 each, and says they are expensive to maintain.

And while the city wants to be “good stewards of the mall…the number one architectural change we can make for our homeless population is to give them an affordable home and economic opportunities,” says Wheeler. “We want to get people out of homelessness.”

 

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Curriculum crusade: Spanish as elective perturbs parents

Exterior photo of Walker Upper Elementary School
If city school reconfiguration moves forward, Walker Upper Elementary would be converted to a preschool, with the building also housing a health clinic and counseling services. PC: Staff photo

Come this fall, Walker Upper Elementary, which serves the city’s fifth and sixth graders, will drop its Spanish language requirement for a focus on math and science instruction.

During a January school board meeting, Principal Adam Hastings said the change, which the school board approved in February, was prompted by “a need for students to receive focused math and science instruction.” But when reached for comment, Hastings focused on the fact that the school is also adding a second elective, and said “having kids find joy and love learning” helps make them successful.

Still, the move to make Spanish an elective has recently raised alarm among parents, some of whom showed up at an April 11 school board meeting to express their discontent.

“I wish I wouldn’t have thoughts of taking my kid out of Walker, but I do have them,” says Minou Beling, whose 11-year-old is a fifth grader there.

Many of the area’s private schools have foreign-language requirements through middle school, including the Waldorf School, St. Anne’s-Belfield, Village School, and the Field School.

“So the rich will continue to get this,” says Tony Lin, whose son is a sixth grader at Walker. “The wealthy will put their kids there. …They’re going to have a leg up on everybody else.”

School officials say some misinformation has been circulating among parents about the upcoming changes, and that they will be adding a second elective to next school year’s course load to give students more options. All students will be required to take a fine arts elective, and they will choose from a second fine arts class, Spanish, or STEM as the additional elective. STEM content is also already wrapped into the core curriculum.

Beling says she doesn’t want her son to have to choose between those offerings.

“Making my son decide between STEM or Spanish is putting him on a track,” she says. While she wants her children to have specialized education in STEM, she also thinks they’ll be most successful if they start learning a language in elementary school and continue until graduation.

Currently, city schools provide mandatory Spanish language instruction starting in first grade.

Amy Ogden, a French professor at UVA with a sixth grader at Walker, has been encouraging parents to write letters to the school board, Hastings, and Superintendent Rosa Atkins, in opposition to the changes.

“It might seem that we shouldn’t worry if Spanish becomes an elective—offering more choices and looking for new ways to engage students sounds like a good thing,” she wrote to parents. “The core of the problem is that making Spanish optional rather than required shows that the community does not consider foreign-language learning as important as physical education, English, math, science, social studies, or fine arts, all of which are required.”

And making Spanish and STEM mutually exclusive choices could further undermine the language program, she says, because STEM has become so popular across the country, and parents will likely steer their kids toward it instead of Spanish.

“Reduced enrollments means reduced resources, and rather than strengthening the program, the change really risks killing it,” says Ogden.

Lin says he’s in favor of reevaluating the curricula, but he doesn’t think it will solve the achievement gap, which was spotlighted last fall when The New York Times and ProPublica published a story on Charlottesville City Schools’ racial inequities. And as someone from Argentina, he says the school sends a good message by requiring that students learn Spanish.

“To know that all my classmates have to learn the language of my parents and my family, it does something for the immigrant students,” says Lin, who works as a research scholar at UVA’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. “It creates a different kind of culture for the school.”

The more practical reason to require students to learn the language, he says, is because the United States is the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world—second only to Mexico.

School Board Chair Jennifer McKeever says students who opt to take Spanish instead of STEM will still receive the project-based learning that STEM promotes in their core science classes.

“Dr. Hastings is trying to meet the needs of all of our children,” she says, and encourages parents to talk to the principal before pulling their kids out of Walker.

Matthew Gillikin, whose elementary schooler goes to Jackson-Via, has been following the debate at Walker, and says, “It just seems so reactionary.”

Because so many folks have been reeling over information that later changed, he says, “If parents are going to try to advocate, they need to have their facts straight. Ask questions first and then make demands second.”

Corrected April 18 at 9am. We incorrectly reported that parents were incorrect in thinking their students would be required to choose between a Spanish and fine arts elective. Amy Ogden says a March 11 email from the school’s principal said students would only be able to choose one elective—a decision that was later changed to allow for two.

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Windfall blowback: UVA donation spurs backlash

Despite glowing coverage, many locals bristled at Jaffray Woodriff’s $120 million donation for a new School of Data Science at UVA. Photo by Eze Amos

UVA announced the biggest donation in its history, from hedge fund quant Jaffray Woodriff, with much pomp and circumstance, including an appearance by Governor Ralph Northam. But not everyone was happy with the McIntire alum’s decision to spend $120 million on a School of Data Science.

Some feel Woodriff’s donation could have served better causes. “One of the most important steps that @UVA can take to repair its relationship with black Charlottesville is to pay everyone who works for the university a living wage,” John Edwin Mason, associate professor of history at UVA, wrote on Twitter.

“There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with a $120 million gift or school for data science,” Mason says in a follow-up conversation. “But UVA has been one of primary drivers of racial inequality, prospering off the impoverishment and displacement of African Americans. And here comes a new school of data science announced as if it’s oblivious to this much more urgent conversation.”

When asked about the criticism, William Foshay, executive director of the private foundation through which Woodriff and his wife made the donation, said Woodriff “is a domain expert of data science, and he pursues philanthropy in the area he knows the most about.”

Michael Payne, a Democratic candidate for City Council, says the donation “should start a conversation about the role UVA plays in the community.” And he’s critical of Woodriff’s plans to remake the western end of the Downtown Mall. “He purchased the Main Street Arena, which had an ice rink, and Escafe, which was a big space for LGBTQ community for many years, so he could make room for office space for startups he’s invested in,” Payne says.

Some UVA students expressed frustration as well.

Veena Ramesh, a second-year computer science student, worries the school could overwhelm existing programs. “The [new data science] school will have to heavily rely on the statistics and computer science departments,” she says in an email. Since “these two departments are underfunded and stretched too thin, having an entire school rely on the expertise these professors have is an insane request.”

Other critics have framed Woodriff’s donation as the latest in a series of contributions that ultimately benefit him or people of similar status. Referring to tax filings from the Quantitative Foundation, Matthew Gillikin points out on Twitter that most of Woodriff’s charitable giving has gone towards private schools, squash facilities, and UVA.

“All educational organizations the foundation has contributed to have personal connections with the family,” says Foshay. “Merrill is an educator, so she focuses on educational philanthropy.”

Woodriff previously attracted controversy in 2013 after donating $12.4 million to UVA to build a squash center at the Boar’s Head Sports Club. Although the resort is owned by UVA and grants students open access, its three-mile distance from Grounds has effectively limited the court to UVA’s official squash team, which is almost entirely composed of white students from affluent areas of the Northeast.

Cory Runkel, a third-year economics student, confronted then-UVA executive VP and chief operating officer Pat Hogan about the squash donation in a private meeting held by the Living Wage Campaign at UVA on April 16, 2018. “Hogan said the university had asked if the $12 million grant could be used for another purpose, but the donor was adamant that it be used for the squash center,” says Runkel.

“Squash is Woodriff’s avocation,” says Foshay.

Runkel, the current treasurer of the Living Wage Campaign at UVA, says, “If you have $120 million, it’s up to you to spend it. I would hope you don’t spend it making new consultants.”