Tag: PVCC

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Arts Culture

Pick: Chocolate Chowdown

PVCC hosts its Annual Student Exhibition and Eighth Annual Chocolate Chowdown on April 15. File photo.

Sweet tooth: A sweet evening awaits at PVCC’s Annual Student Exhibition and Eighth Annual Chocolate Chowdown. Sample from a lavish spread of decadent chocolate treats as you peruse a diverse display of student art, including paintings, drawings, ceramics, graphic design pieces, sculptures, and other digital media. Stop by the “color-in” tables to add your own work to the art club’s first collaborative coloring book, and stick around for the Free Movie Friday screening of Dune.

Friday 4/15. Free, 5pm. PVCC Gallery, V. Earl Dickinson Building, 501 College Dr. pvcc.edu

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Arts Culture

Pick: Richmond Ballet

The Richmond Ballet performs four short works at PVCC's V. Earl Dickinson Theater. Supplied photo

Splendor on stage: In four distinctive works, the Richmond Ballet showcases what ballet can be in the 21st century. The State Ballet of Virginia executes classical choreographies alongside new works beginning with George Balanchine’s joyous and sprightly Allegro Brillante, followed by Ben Stevenson’s intimate Three Preludes and Colin Connor’s romantic Vestiges. The company finishes with Glare, an uplifting original from Richmond Ballet Associate Artistic Director Ma Cong.

Wednesday 3/9. $17-23, 7:30pm. PVCC’s V. Earl Dickinson Theater, 501 College Dr. pvcc.edu

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Arts Culture

Believing in ‘yes’

Image: Ashtin Bowman

Attempting to sum up a person’s life in a few words is often an unreasonable, almost futile, effort. But James Yates has a word for his wife, artist Beryl Solla, who died February 19 after a 13-year battle against cancer: Yes.

At some point during their 43-year marriage, Solla made a wooden folk-art inspired sculpture for Yates, a cutout wood angel holding a banner that says “yes.”

“It was mainly in response to my tendency to focus on what was wrong with the world, to focus on the negative,” says Yates, also an artist. “She really encouraged me to focus on what I could say ‘yes’ to in the world. I said ‘yes’ to summer, said ‘yes’ to flowers. I said ‘yes’ to spring, said ‘yes’ to a garden.”

Best known for her large mosaic murals (including one at McGuffey Park), often made in collaboration with people of all ages, Solla taught at Piedmont Virginia Community College for 15 years. As chair of PVCC’s visual and performing arts department, she advocated relentlessly on behalf of students and faculty to ensure that they had what they needed—a flat space for officeless adjunct professors to grade portfolios, a cup of tea and an ottoman for a pregnant student, a “yes” to a fantastical idea—to make and teach art.

She went out of her way to believe in people, says Lou Haney, a multimedia artist who Solla brought into the teaching fold at PVCC. “She had a way of lifting you up, and you wanted to prove her right,” she says, adding that people often went beyond the boundaries of what they thought they could do, because Solla believed they could.

Solla always spoke her mind, and her honesty was sometimes intimidating, particularly during portfolio critiques, says her longtime friend, colleague, and fellow artist Fenella Belle. “She always found something nice to say about even the most unimpressive piece…unless you hadn’t worked on it. …She did not have time for people who are full of shit.” But even that came from nurturing kindness, from knowing that everyone has something to offer the world. It was “remarkable mentoring,” says Belle.

Solla believed that art was play. She made art accessible and she made art fun. She painted the walls of PVCC’s basement-level art department in bright colors and peppered the walls of other campus buildings with student artwork. For 14 years, she made heaps of banana bread and hot chocolate for visitors to the popular “Let There Be Light” winter solstice outdoor light art show that she and Yates founded. She started a free community film series at the school. She held tile art workshops throughout the state via the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. She was funny. She paired the annual PVCC student art show with a “chocolate chow-down” to get more people in the room. Her favorite band was Talking Heads. Her students and colleagues adored her, and she adored them right back. She loved her husband, their two children, and three grandchildren deeply.

Solla “was an amazing gardener,” says Yates, who plans to continue tending to her patch. But Solla planted more than flowers, says photographer Stacey Evans, another longtime friend and colleague of Solla’s, and “although she has passed, what she has planted in Charlottesville will continue to grow.” It will. Yes.

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Arts Culture

Light in the distance: ‘Let There Be Light’ adapts to the pandemic

The exhibit takes place in front yards and businesses throughout Charlottesville Friday, December 4 and Saturday, December 5 from 6-9pm.

A few months ago, James Yates awoke from a nightmare.  He was hosting “Let There Be Light”—the same luminesce-focused art exhibit he has helmed for the past 13 years at Piedmont Virginia Community College—but there was a problem. “Nobody was wearing masks, and everybody was crowding together,” he says. “I woke up in a panic and realized we can’t do ‘Let There Be Light’ at PVCC this year.”

Yates arranged a meeting with Beryl Solla, PVCC’s chair of performing and visual arts and curator of “Let There Be Light,” to weigh their options. They agreed immediately that the program shouldn’t be canceled outright—for a number of reasons, Solla says, “we need it more than we’ve ever needed it before.”

In years past, “Let There Be Light’’ was headquartered at PVCC. The programming—which consists of several Charlottesville artists’ effulgent creations—took place outside on the college campus with refreshments, conversation, and a chance to warm up inside.

But the exhibition couldn’t exist in its typical form, which necessitated creative problem-solving. Yates thought of “Yard Dreams,” a 2016 project he had organized where installations were set up on various Belmont lawns. After some discussion, he and Solla decided to adopt the same structure for the winter solstice event.

This year, 23 “Let There Be Light” exhibits will be scattered across the city. Maps will guide people from location to location, and everyone will be asked to follow standard safety procedures, like staying in their cars when possible and wearing a mask when outside.

The curators are excited to see what might result from the restrained event, and Solla wonders how the pieces might transform it. “Drive-by art…art that’s meant to be seen at 40 miles an hour, is just so odd and surprising,” she says.

The foundational aspects of “Let There Be Light” remain unchanged. For example, the program’s emphasis on the secular will be preserved. “Separating it from Christmas,” Yates says, was a priority since its creation. The seeds for an illuminated art event were planted in his head when he was a “wee child,” and he and his family would drive around town to see neighbors’ light displays. “I wanted to replicate that magical feeling,” he says, while providing an alternative to the “hyper-commercialization of the holidays.”

This year’s program features many familiar artists, including PVCC professor Fenella Belle whose latest creation, “Border Lines,” enigmatically promises an “exploration of the role lines play in dividing and connecting us.”

Choreographer and filmmaker Shandoah Goldman returns to present two short, COVID-related films in a drive-in format at the Woolen Mills Chapel, and C. James Cunningham’s piece, “SOS,” will “be floating in the sky above the Downtown Mall,” says Yates.

Yates and Solla say that even when the arts world returns to normal, they’ll consider keeping the multiple locations as a new level of interactivity. Solla doesn’t anticipate pushback from the artists, who are a “peculiar breed…ready to try anything.”

They were, after all, amenable to this year’s changes, and willing to adapt so that a program intended to combat darkness could continue to do so in a particularly dim year. Solla says they all agreed: “We need the light, we need the love, we need the vision for the future.”

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News

In brief: Biden defeats Trump, ’Hoos rank high, and more

In Washington, D.C., thousands flocked to Black Lives Matter Plaza—close to where federal agents teargassed protesters over the summer so Trump could take pictures holding a Bible—to celebrate Joe Biden's electoral victory. PC: Eze Amos

Bye-bye, Trump!

A quiet fall day on the Downtown Mall quickly turned into a party on Saturday morning as word spread that Joe Biden had won Pennsylvania, giving him enough electoral votes to win the presidential race.

People cheered and clapped in celebration of the Democrat’s long-awaited victory, while cars sporting Biden-Harris flags honked as they passed the mall.

Several hours later, community organizers Don Gathers and Katrina Turner led a last-minute victory rally at the free speech wall. Following several speeches from activists and community members, the crowd sang and danced, overjoyed at Donald Trump’s defeat.

“It is a historic moment. We now have a woman going into the executive office, and to put the cherry on that sundae, a Black woman,” said Gathers.

Celebrations erupted across the country as Biden’s win dominated headlines, sparking fireworks, parades, and other festivities.

In nearby Washington, D.C., thousands flocked to Black Lives Matter Plaza—close to where federal agents teargassed protesters over the summer so Trump could take pictures holding a Bible—waving flags, banging pots and pans, dancing, and popping champagne bottles amidst whoops and hollers. Others reveled in front of the fenced-off White House, later booing and flicking off Trump’s motorcade when he arrived back from hours on the golf course.

“Sha na na, hey hey, goodbye!” shouted the crowd at the White House.

Confederate time capsule

In September, Albemarle County removed the Confederate statue from in front of the courthouse, and in the process revealed a dented, waterlogged time capsule that had been filled with mementos and buried below the monument more than a century before.

Archivists at UVA library have now sifted through the time capsule’s contents. Most of the documents are unreadable, the paper not having survived “a century of immersion in dirty, acidic water,” the librarians wrote in a blog post. Other things did last, however, including three bullets that had been collected from a local battlefield. The capsule’s creators must have thought they were burying Confederate bullets, but modern historical analysis reveals that the bullets were in fact fired by Union guns.

                                                      PC: Eze Amos

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Quote of the week

“That man is gone! That’s it. Trump is gone.”

—community activist Katrina Turner, speaking to NBC29 during an impromptu Downtown Mall rally on Saturday

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In brief

Hopeful ’Hoos

UVA men’s basketball clocked in at No. 4 in the nation in the first AP preseason poll of the 2020-21 season. The Cavs are still, technically speaking, defending national champions. The team will look to build on a strong finish in last spring’s COVID-shortened season. UVA opens on November 25 with a neutral-site game against St. Peter’s.

Tragedy on 29

After being struck by a car on U.S. 29 last Tuesday evening, 23-year-old Marcos E. Arroyo died of his injuries at UVA hospital on Monday. He had been trying to cross the highway near the intersection of 29 and Twentyninth Place, close to Fashion Square Mall. Last year, 41-year-old Bradley Shaun Dorman also died after trying to cross 29 North near Gander Drive, highlighting the need for improved pedestrian infrastructure on the busy highway.

Free college

Piedmont Virginia Community College will use CARES Act funding to offer free spring tuition to those who’ve received unemployment benefits since August 1—or who’ve taken on a new part-time job that pays less than $15 per hour. The no-cost classes will apply to high-demand career areas, including early childhood education, health care, IT, and skilled trades. Students must enroll by December 14.

Military surveillance

Just days after The Washington Post published a scathing report last month on the “relentless racism” Black students and alumni faced at Virginia Military Institute, Governor Ralph Northam ordered a third-party investigation into the state-funded school. Last week, Northam pushed forward with the plan, adding $1 million to the proposed state budget for the probe. Lawmakers will review and approve budget revisions during this week’s special session.

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Culture Living

Zest for life: PVCC culinary director leaves behind a legacy of passion

Known as joyful, kind, and generous with his time, chef Eric Breckoff touched a lot of lives through his contributions to the local culinary community. Supplied Photo

Patient and fair. Loved teaching. Passion for life. Joyful partner. These virtues are extolled again and again as the Charlottesville food community mourns the passing of chef and food educator Eric Breckoff, who died unexpectedly on August 16 at age 60.

Breckoff was the much-beloved inaugural director of the culinary arts program at Piedmont Virginia Community College. John Donnelly, vice president of instruction and student services at PVCC, says Breckoff was an exceptional choice to run the program.

“He loved teaching and loved what he did and was a great program head and he was so passionate about the program, the students, and teaching,” says Donnelly, who also notes how far-reaching Breckoff’s efforts into the community were. The chef connected his PVCC culinary arts program students to the Monticello Harvest Days and CATEC, through cooking demos and helping place students in jobs in their area of interest. “It’s a significant loss for the college, for the program, and the culinary arts community,” says Donnelly. “He was well known and well respected, and we’ll miss him tremendously.”

Another PVCC colleague, Ridge Schuyler, worked alongside Breckoff at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, where the culinary arts program is located.

“He was larger than life with huge passions: a passion for food, a passion for politics, and a passion for people, especially those who saw food as a way of improving their lot in life,” Schuyler says. He jokes that his proximity to Breckoff also meant the threat of an expanding waistline.

“His students would produce meals, desserts, entrées, and appetizers, and he would bring [them] to our office and stand over us till we tried everything,” says Schuyler. “He was exuberant about both the food and the people who produced it.”

And his students carried his passion forward as they began their own careers. Alicia Simmons and Vinnie Falcone learned through Breckoff’s program before taking jobs at Belmont’s Tavola restaurant, where they each rose quickly through the kitchen ranks to become sous chefs (at different times). “They arrived well-prepared for the job, and became indispensable,” says Tavola chef/owner Michael Keaveny, who says Breckoff was his first call when staffing needs arose.

Simmons, now at Restoration in Crozet, mourns the treasured instructor. “He was such an inspiring instructor,” she says. “I always looked forward to cooking beside him in the kitchen…being able to create delicious dishes every day, and experimenting with flavor combinations, while also seeing the delight on customers’ faces, [something] many young chefs dream of achieving.”

Falcone, now at Michelin-starred Rose’s Luxury in Washington, D.C., says Breckoff “couldn’t have been more fair and accommodating to everyone around him. He had the patience of a saint. He knew when he could push people. His instruction absolutely helped me get to where I am today.”

Breckoff’s wife, Patty Carrubba, remembers her husband’s zest for living life large, which included extensive traveling overseas to visit friends and family.

“We laughed every single day and I could’ve spent the next hundred years with him and never grown tired of him,” she says. “We knew that every day is a gift and that’s totally how he lived his life—he didn’t count calories, but he did take care of himself, and he loved his family, his students.”

Breckoff worked as a commercial photographer for years, and decided in his mid-30s to attend Johnson & Wales’ culinary school in Charleston, South Carolina, and then in Rhode Island, earning an MBA. Prior to working at PVCC he taught culinary arts at Reynolds Community College in Richmond.

Carrubba was recently divorced and had four children when she met Breckoff at the Foods of All Nations cheese counter. “He was buying one slice of every piece of cheese for his students. I said ‘That’s a lot of cheese.’ He said he was a chef and I said ‘I love to cook! How lucky your wife must be!’ He said he’d never been married, and I said I wasn’t married, and within two weeks we were engaged.”

Breckoff had always wanted a big family and stepped in joyfully, doing Boy Scout camping trips and putting the kids through college, pampering Carrubba throughout their marriage, and bringing her coffee in bed every day.

“He’d been focusing on work his whole life and decided he was going to find a family and we just hit it off,” she says. “At first, I thought there was something terribly wrong with some guy willing to marry me with four kids. I made him go through counseling and I asked the counselor what was wrong, and she said ‘He just totally loves you and he is wonderful!’”

Carrubba says she has been overwhelmed by the tributes and messages she’s received, some from students who graduated 10 and 15 years ago. “Eric kept tabs on everyone from his childhood on, and he valued friendships and cherished and fostered them.” Breckoff was laid to rest on his 61st birthday.

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Coronavirus News

Lending a hand: Black-owned businesses get some relief

Lawrence Johnson, owner of Larry’s Barber Shop, plans to use his loan from the Virginia 30 Day Fund to purchase additional sanitation supplies for his business. PC: Marley Nichelle

When the pandemic struck, “it was like somebody just snatched a chair from under us,” says Jeanetha Brown-Douglas, owner of JBD Event Catering & Soul Food. “It was like having a business one day, and having no business the next day.”

Inspired by her grandmother, Brown-Douglas first got into the food industry nearly 30 years ago, when she began working with UVA Dining. She later opened up a fried chicken stand in front of the Sunshine Mini Mart on Cherry Avenue, and it was a hit.

This led her to sign up for business classes at Piedmont Virginia Community College and for a program at the Community Investment Collaborative, which helped her to launch her own catering business.

“We did a lot of catered events and had a lot of contracts with various places in Charlottesville,” such as the University of Virginia, she says. “We got our name out there…and got really known.”

In 2018, Brown-Douglas was finally able to open her own eatery in Belmont, where customers no longer had to wait for a catered event to enjoy her home-cooked meals. But when COVID rendered large events impossible and forced everyone to stay inside, the shop went quiet.

The pandemic has hammered the economy, and local Black business owners like Brown-Douglas have felt the effects. Not only have many struggled to receive government assistance, but “being a Black-owned business is a challenge in itself,” she says.

Thankfully, some relief has arrived. JBD Catering is one of six minority-owned businesses in the Charlottesville area to receive a $3,000 fully forgivable loan from the Virginia 30 Day Fund’s new partnership with the United Way of Greater Charlottesville. These loans are being dispensed after previous government initiatives to keep small businesses afloat have failed—this is the first financial assistance JBD has received.

While the loans don’t have to be repaid, awardees are encouraged to “pay it forward,” and donate money to the fund when they’re back on their feet. That money will be distributed to another struggling small business in Virginia, according to entrepreneur Pete Snyder, who co-founded the Charlottesville-based fund with his wife.

After learning he’d been awarded a loan, Lawrence Johnson, owner of Larry’s Barber Shop, breathed a huge sigh of relief. He hadn’t received unemployment benefits, or any other sort of financial relief since shuttering his shop. Instead, he had to use money from his savings to cover his expenses.

Since reopening during the second week of June, business has been “slow but steady,” says Johnson. “Some people are still afraid to come out, [especially] the older customers.”

Johnson has owned his business, now located on Goodman Street, for the past 10 years.

He plans to use the $3,000 to pay his bills, and purchase additional sanitation supplies. He’d also like to do more advertising, and hopefully bring in new customers.

“I am very thankful for this opportunity,” he says.

Brown-Douglas has also had trouble keeping things going over the past few months. All of her catering gigs were canceled as soon as the pandemic hit, and because her eatery planned on moving, it was difficult to remain open for takeout.

“We had to literally shut down and start from scratch,” she says. “But I’m glad for that time, because it gave us a chance to really think about what direction we were going to take our business in.”

To help keep the lights on, Brown-Douglas and her daughter, Dejua, who helps run JBD, provided dinners to guests at a Salvation Army shelter, which were paid for by St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

Meanwhile, she applied for a range of grants, but did not have any luck until she received a phone call from Snyder last week.

“It’s been a really trying time for us,” says Brown-Douglas. “A lot of times, they don’t turn you down. They just say they’re out of money, or they’ve had so many applications they had to cut it off at a certain point. With the amount of people, It’s just like playing the lottery.”

“It really can break your spirit,” she adds. “[So] it was just a blessing to have that phone call, and actually feel like somebody cares.”

She plans to use the loan to “expand our inventory and safety equipment,” which she will need to reopen this month at her new location on Second Street, for both dine-in and takeout.

When it becomes safe to do so, Brown-Douglas will also open up the space for events, such as parties and meetings, which will include on-site catering.

“We do have the ability to do outside seating, and we also have a lot of space [inside] to spread our customers out, so they’ll be comfortable and safe at the same time,” she says.

Through its partnership with the United Way, the Virginia 30 Day Fund plans to distribute at least $76,000 more in forgivable loans to minority-owned businesses and early education centers in Charlottesville and Albemarle.

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Coronavirus News

Celebrating Juneteenth: The Jefferson School takes its annual event digital

Andrea Douglas, executive director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, thinks Juneteenth should be a national holiday. PC: Eze Amos

Since press time, Governor Ralph Northam has proposed legislation to make Juneteenth a paid state holiday. If it passes, all state employees would get the day off.

With additional reporting by Erin O’Hare

Every July 4, people across the country don their red, white, and blue; pull out their grills; and watch fireworks with family and friends, in celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But there is another independence day that’s often overlooked: Juneteenth.

Also known as Freedom Day or Jubilee Day, Juneteenth commemorates the day—June 19, 1865—that Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, to inform enslaved people there that the Emancipation Proclamation had freed them, and the Civil War was over. Though President Abraham Lincoln signed the document two and a half years earlier, slave owners had to free their slaves themselves, and some did not until Union troops forced them to. Union troops in Texas, the most remote slave state, were not strong enough to enforce the order until Granger’s arrival—marking an effective end to slavery in the United States.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Charlottesville’s first known public Juneteenth celebration, which was held in a recreation center on Ninth Street, and hosted by Tamyra Turner, a professor at Piedmont Virginia Community College, and Maxine Holland.

PVCC hosted Juneteenth celebrations for 15 years, but in 2016, in an effort to boost waning attendance, the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center took over, and brought the events to a more central location in town.

Bringing the holiday to downtown Charlottesville “has really revitalized it,” with attendance in the hundreds year after year, says the school’s Executive Director Andrea Douglas.

For the past few years, the JSAAHC’s Juneteenth party has included a ceremony honoring black community elders, music and dance from black artists, and educational programming. Douglas hoped to have a parade this year as well. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there won’t be “the kinds of events that we have had in the past,” says Douglas, who refused to “waste this anniversary.”

The Emancipation Proclamation was informed by the ideas of black people, especially Frederick Douglass. PC: File photo

Friday evening, in lieu of its in-person celebrations, the JSAAHC will host an online lecture centered around the Emancipation Proclamation. Holland, with assistance from C.R. Gibbs, Richelle Claiborne, and Ti Ames, will explore the document and the history of Juneteenth, as well as its various components and deeper meaning.

“We had always wanted to focus on the Emancipation Proclamation, because [it] is such an important document,” says Douglas. “In some ways, we think about it as Lincoln’s document, but it was a document that was worked on, and informed, by the ideas of black people—Frederick Douglass in particular.”

And in light of the ongoing protests demanding an end to police brutality and justice for the murders of black people across the country, Douglas says there will be opportunity to discuss “the nuances of what it means to be free,” including the concept of freedom for black people in America today, and how, in many ways, they are still fighting for it.

Historian Hari Jones, former assistant director and curator at the African American Civil War Freedom Foundation and Museum, will also give a video presentation that dives into the history of Juneteenth and how the Lost Cause myth has impacted how it’s celebrated today.

Though Juneteenth at the JSAAHC will look a bit different this year, the spirit remains the same. And Douglas and others will continue to advocate for Juneteenth to become a national holiday.

Douglas wonders why, as a country, we celebrate July 4, one of the first big moments in American history, but we skip over Juneteenth, the “next main event.” It’s “the very thing that suggests that America made a huge shift…the shift that says that the confederacy, the secession, the papers of secession, those states that seceded, now lost the war,” she says.

While Charlottesville has taken steps towards acknowledging its troubled past by creating Liberation and Freedom Day, the U.S. cannot “fully engage in the truth of our history” until it officially recognizes Juneteenth, she adds. “It should be equally a national holiday as July 4—because it’s the same thing. It’s just how you want to see it.”

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News

Credit check: UVA students protest new grading policy

Rachel Hightman worries that graduate schools will assume UVA students did poorly in a class if they chose to not receive a letter grade PC: Eze Amos

With courses moved online for a significant portion of the spring semester, colleges across the country have had to decide on the fairest way to grade students in the midst of the ongoing pandemic. While some institutions, like Yale and Columbia, have opted for mandatory pass/fail policies, others, like the University of Virginia, have implemented a credit/general credit/no credit system, with the option to receive a letter grade. However, students had to choose between the credit and letter grade for each course by the last day of classes, April 28—before most final exams.

Since UVA Provost Liz Magill sent out a university-wide email announcing the policy on March 18, hundreds of students have protested against it on a variety of platforms, from Twitter to The Cavalier Daily, citing the numerous ways in which it puts certain students—particularly those of low socioeconomic status—at a disadvantage.

After reading about the challenges some students have experienced taking online classes, second-year Zaki Panjsheeri wrote an article for the Virginia Review of Politics advocating for a universal credit/no credit policy.

“There are some privileged students who can go home to a very safe living environment—like my own—who don’t have to work, are more or less safe financially, and can comfortably sit in their childhood bedroom and get a GPA boost…while there are other students who are fighting for their financial lives,” he says. It’s also important to consider “students’ mental health…lots of them are going into unstable family environments [and] abusive households.”

And on April 28, “many professors didn’t have grades updated at all,” he adds. “So you had no idea what kind of grade you were going to get.”

Second-year Tatiana Kennedy, who created a petition advocating for a universal credit/no credit policy, has many friends who are first-generation, low-income students on the pre-med track, some currently working as EMTs. Choosing between the credit and letter grade option was very stressful for them, she says, as “medical schools require you to have grades for all of your classes, if your school permits you to have [them].”

Even if a graduate school accepts courses receiving a credit versus a letter grade, “they are going to automatically assume that you did worse in those classes,” adds second-year Rachel Hightman, who identifies as a first-generation low-income student.

Third-year Summer Stewart, a first-generation and transfer student from a lower-middle class background, ultimately felt that she had no choice but to opt in to letter grades, because she intends to go to grad school, and is unable to take any more extra credits at community college.

“I definitely am jealous of other schools that are letting students make the decision after getting their final grades,” says Stewart, who has had to deal with spotty WiFi in her rural home, as well as other issues that impacted her learning experience. “I understand they are trying to put emphasis on how well you did amidst the pandemic…[but] it’s really making us all take a gamble.”

UVA is not the only school in Charlottesville that’s implemented such a policy. Piedmont Virginia Community College gave students until May 4, the last day of classes, to choose between receiving a pass/fail/incomplete or a letter grade for each of their courses. Sophomore Tyler Tinsley, who plans to transfer to a four-year university, believes the deadline was “kind of unfair,” as many students still have to take their final exams, which usually make up a significant portion of their grade.

“My worry is that if I take a P…maybe universities don’t want to see [that],”he adds. “It’s transferable, but it’s still up to the [university] whether they do or do not accept you.”

In response to student backlash, Magill released a statement April 25 explaining UVA’s rationale for the new grading policy. The university decided to have students choose their grading option before final exams because it did not want the credit option to be “understood as shorthand for receiving an undesirable grade.” However, it would include on all students’ transcripts that CR/GC/NC was the default grading option for the semester.

Before making this decision, “school deans and other academic leaders sought the input of faculty, students, and staff at the university and at peer institutions,” she added. “I heard from dozens of students advocating passionately for mandatory CR/NC, and dozens of students advocating just as passionately for their desire to have the ability to choose a grade for a course.”

But to Panjsheeri, the “dozens of students” Magill heard from do not compare to the hundreds who’ve signed Kennedy’s petition, as well as the nearly 1,400 students who’ve responded to UVA Student Council’s survey on the grading policy.

According to the survey’s preliminary data, about 50 percent of respondents preferred the current CR/GC/NC grading system with the option to receive a letter grade, while about 30 percent preferred it without any letter grades. However, 90 percent disagreed with the university’s deadline to opt in to letter grades, believing that students should have been able to see their final grades first. And 45 percent felt that the university did not adequately consult with students before making grading policy changes.

Per Magill’s latest statement, UVA will not make any more changes to its grading policy. In that case, the university has “a responsibility to collaborate with other universities, graduate programs, and medical programs,” Kennedy says. It “needs to insure that if a student decided to take [credit], it won’t impact their future.”

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News

In brief: People power, tech takeover, bye-bye bikes, and more

The old Monticello Dairy building will house at least two big tech companies. PC: Skyclad Aerial

People power

Opponents of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline scored a huge victory last week when the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals repealed Dominion Energy’s permit to build an invasive compressor station in Buckingham County’s historic Union Hill neighborhood.

“Today we showed that our community, our community’s history, and our community’s future matters more than a pipeline,” said Buckingham activist Chad Oba.

Union Hill became a flashpoint for the pipeline fight when activists began emphasizing the area’s long history. Free black people and former enslaved people founded the neighborhood just after the Civil War. The story of a historic community threatened by an energy monopoly attracted

Al Gore to speak in Buckingham last February. The former vice president called the pipeline a “reckless, racist rip-off.” 

“Environmental justice is not merely a box to be checked,” the court wrote in its decision. “The [Air Pollution Control] Board’s failure to consider the disproportionate impact on those closest to the Compressor Station resulted in a flawed analysis.”

Anti-pipeline groups have sought to slow down Dominion by tying up the project in litigation. The compressor station permit is one of many that pipeline opponents have contested. In the fall, the Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments about whether or not the pipeline could bisect the federally protected Appalachian Trail.

The strategy to slow the project seems to be working—Dominion’s initial estimates said the pipeline would be completed in 2019, but according to the Southern Environmental Law Center, less than 6 percent of the pipe has been laid in the ground so far.

Anti-pipeline protesters gathered in rural Buckingham County last year. PC: Friends of Buckingham County

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Quote of the Week

“This is my life, history. I returned to this area to make sure this story gets told correctly.”

—Calvin Jefferson, archivist and descendant of enslaved people at Monticello, speaking about his family at a panel event this week

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In Brief

You never forget how to ride a scooter

UBike, UVA’s languishing bike-sharing program, has been killed off by the e-scooter boom. The bikes have to be retrieved from and parked in specific docks, making them less convenient than the popular scooters. (Also less convenient: UBikes, unlike e-scooters, don’t have motors.)  

Moving in

PVCC, like other community colleges, is a commuter school—but that could change. As reported in The Daily Progress, plans to sell 17 acres the college owns off Avon Street Extended have been put on hold, as the Virginia Community College System State Board studies whether student housing could be a viable option for some of its community colleges.

Milking it

This town’s tech takeover continues: Two big companies recently signed leases in the Dairy Central office building/retail space currently under construction on Preston Avenue. CoStar, the world’s largest digital real estate company, and Dexcom, which makes diabetes monitoring systems, will together occupy 17,000 feet of office space at the intersection of Rose Hill and 10th and Page, two of Charlottesville’s historically black neighborhoods.

(More) statue drama

With the General Assembly potentially passing a law this year granting localities control over war memorials and monuments on their property, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors is seeking public feedback on the future of the county’s Court Square, including its “Johnny Reb” statue. For the next six months, county staff will hold community conversations and “listening sessions” about the space, as well as conduct public tours, reports The Daily Progress. The Office of Equity and Inclusion’s equity working group will draft options for the future of the property, which the BOS will consider in June.