UCW UVA member Olivia Paschal has been working on the Cut the Checks campaign since January 2023. Supplied photo.
The local chapter of United Campus Workers of Virginia met with University of Virginia President Jim Ryan and other leaders on April 4 to discuss issues related to graduate student wages. The meeting was prompted by the union’s attendance at the March 1 Board of Visitors meeting.
Delegations from both UCW UVA and the university sat down at 1:30pm in Madison Hall.
Prior to the meeting’s start, negotiations were already underway over the meeting agenda, according to UCW UVA.
On April 2, organizer Olivia Paschal says she sent university representatives a proposed agenda, which allotted time for introductions, a presentation from the union, questions, potential solutions, and discussion. In an email shared with C-VILLE by UCW UVA, a representative of Ryan and Provost Ian Baucom sent a resequenced agenda at 11:35am on April 4—two hours before the meeting start time—which substantially reduced the union’s presentation time and discussion time in favor of a presentation on progress made by the university. Further, the email stated that the room would be used for another event at 2:30pm, and the meeting needed to adjourn by 2:25pm.
UCW UVA responded with a compromise agenda at 12:02pm, giving time for both delegations’ presentations and discussion time.
During the meeting, attendees reviewed progress made on stipend task-force recommendations by the university, and examples of graduate student workers’ concerns with ongoing payment issues. University officials did not agree to all of the proposed solutions from UCW UVA, but did agree to hold a follow-up meeting with the union.
“We’re disappointed that administrators failed to commit to solving late payments in our meeting,” the union posted on Instagram. The group emphasized the need for raising wages and benefits for Graduate School of Arts and Sciences departmental employees, and said late payment fees should be instituted.
After the meeting, UVA Deputy Spokesperson Bethanie Glover shared meeting notes with C-VILLE, saying the newspaper had previously written about “concerns related to the timely delivery of graduate student aid.” According to Glover, GSAS has processed graduate student payment with a 99.7 percent accuracy in the last year. “The 99.7% accuracy rate that we shared factors in all delivery errors in stipend and wage payments, including incorrect values, delivery delays, student errors such as incorrectly reported account/personal information, and more,” she wrote in an email.
But organizers with UCW UVA claim different accuracy estimates were provided by the university during the meeting. According to a quote from the meeting shared by Paschal in an email, attendees were told by a university official that “our estimation is that about 98% of students are experiencing no problems at all in GSAS. In terms of individual payments, that number is about 99.8%.”
Additionally, an organizer with the union argued that the characterization of graduate student wages as “aid” was misleading. “Some of the issues have been wage issues,” said union member Lucas Martínez. “When you run a business … you [don’t] call what you pay your workers aid.”
While UCW UVA acknowledges the progress made since issues with payments to graduate workers arose in December of 2022, members say current solutions to payment issues are not sustainable and require additional labor from the graduate student worker.
“All of the onus of this problem being solved relies on extra labor being done by the graduate worker, to let them know that they’ve been paid incorrectly,” said Martínez.
At press time, a follow-up meeting between UCW UVA and university leadership had not been scheduled.
The Class of 2020 sits in Scott Stadium during Sunday’s ceremony. Photo: Sanjay Suchak
My redo graduation got off to a less-than-graceful start.
The day before walking, I found my black gown not in my closet, but crumpled in the trunk of my car, where I dumped it a year ago after declaring my 2020 graduation a total loss. My cap was nowhere to be found, and I ran to the bookstore 10 minutes before the ceremony began. My student identity, like the gown, didn’t fit quite as well as it had a year ago.
I never left Charlottesville, even after “officially” graduating as part of the Class of 2020. In March of last year, after UVA moved all classes online, my friends left their apartments for hometowns across the country. It was a slow trickle of loss, a kind of bizarre un-reality that would come to characterize the entire pandemic. The brain, being the amazing adaptive muscle that it is, weaved different stories for me. My friends weren’t gone, they were just leaving for a few weeks. Classes weren’t stalled, it was just a nice spring break extension.
This surreal feeling persisted through my class’ virtual graduation last May, when Yo-Yo Ma played the cello and Jim Ryan congratulated some 4,000 of us undergraduates for finishing college. The feeling lasted through the winter, when the U.S. announced 500,000 deaths from COVID-19. This new world, steeped in a pervading feeling of existential loss and crushing anxiety, could not have been the same world where I was once a carefree college undergraduate.
This spring, UVA announced it would hold a distanced graduation for us in May, a year after I had officially graduated from college. (The Class of 2021 will have its regularly scheduled ceremony this weekend.)
I wasn’t sure about returning. I felt too old now to walk the Lawn, too jaded to buy balloons. I had, after all, started a full-time reporting job, survived a round of harrowing job cuts, watched rioters besiege the U.S. Capitol, and saw a virus rip through the world. My entire graduating class had witnessed these things too, while also being expected to put on its new adult shoes, abandon the naiveté of young adulthood, and face the grim facts. What would we say to each other when we finally came face to face?
The year in near-isolation left me unprepared for the shock of friendship and love that I felt when I saw old friends emerge from the crowd of students in Mad Bowl last Sunday morning. The shared grief and responsibility that I feared would divide us, instead brought us nearer to each other. We joked about virtual work, the pressures of graduate school, this bizarre late graduation.
The empty Lawn, which in a normal year would have been packed full on all sides, was funnier with my friends there. Had we ever really aspired to that suffocating old graduation ritual? Instead of desperately looking over the lines to spot familiar faces, we turned to each other and laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. When it started to rain, we noted that the rotten weather was appropriate for our class’ luck, and we smiled.
If friends made the more-lonely walk from the Lawn to Scott Stadium fun, the parents and loved ones waiting in the stadium made our day. Each student was allowed two guests. Parents waved from around the stadium, desperate to get a look at their children. Students surreptitiously nudged socially distanced chairs closer to their friends. My friend Tori spotted her dad, whose grin threatened to split his face as he raised his camera to get a picture of her. Though everyone sat far apart, the quiet of the sparsely populated space gave the ceremony a certain intimacy. Families didn’t scream. There was no need. They leaned over banister railings, and waved from their seats.
“I’m so proud of you,” I overheard one parent say to a passing graduate. I spotted my own parents on the upper level. They jumped up and down.
The collected speakers were reluctant to address the full seriousness of the pandemic and what it had done to us. We were sitting here, after all, because of an unprecedented worldwide tragedy, and I couldn’t help thinking of patients dying alone on ventilators in hospital rooms, and dead bodies piled in refrigerator trucks in New York as Jim Ryan joked about apocalyptic cicadas and gas shortages. Some of the usual graduation clichés predictably rang hollow.
Unexpectedly, the most resonant speech came from Rector James Murray Jr., who graduated from college in 1968 during the peak of the Vietnam War and the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. “Life throws many curves,” he said. “Time goes quick, quicker than ever.”
When the ceremony ended and we streamed out of the stadium, it felt like a chapter had finally been closed. Not because I got to put on my gown, or because I walked down the Rotunda steps, but because I had a chance to say goodbye to my friends on my terms—and because we cared enough to come back together, and try again.
Fourth-year Savannah Page founded The College Scoop to ease the transition between high school and college for incoming first-gen UVA students. PC: Courtesy subject
When Andjelika Milicic began looking at colleges, she felt like a lab rat. Her parents, originally from Serbia and Bosnia, did not go to college, and she was the oldest of her siblings, leaving her with no one to guide her through the application process.
“I did not know what I was doing whatsoever,” says Milicic, who is from Milwaukee. “I watched YouTube videos on how to do everything…All the [help] I had from my guidance counselor was very general.”
Milicic’s struggles as a first-generation, low-income student continued well into her first year at the University of Virginia, and beyond. She not only had to adjust to a new environment, but she had to figure out how to navigate the different facets of college, from courses to internships.
“I didn’t really have a set schedule for everything. I had to figure it out as I went, whereas other people knew what they needed to [do]…based off of what experiences their parents or siblings have had,” she says. “It was difficult to find the right people to contact for all my questions.”
So when Milicic, now a fourth-year, first learned about The College Scoop, she knew she wanted to get involved.
The College Scoop is a new student-led initiative—founded this March—that offers mentorship and resources to incoming first-years during the transition from high school to college, with a specific focus on FGLI students.
Throughout the spring semester, the group connected with more than 200 admitted students over social media, leading around 150 of them to enroll at UVA.
“We wanted to provide them with a sense of understanding about what the UVA community is like—without having to come here and visit,” says founder and president Savannah Page, now a fourth-year.
To reach more of the FGLI community, the group has begun building partnerships with the university administration, as well as student groups like the First Generation/Low Income Partnership and Rise Together.
“We want to provide a place for these students to come to with all of their questions,” says Milicic, vice president of the group. “All of the partnerships we’re forming will help create a strong resource for these students, so we can connect them with people who may specialize in whatever question they have.”
When third-year Alessia Randazzo arrived at UVA, she also felt very lost and out of place—until she found a mentor. Now she hopes to prevent other FGLI students from going through the same struggles she did.
“It was definitely a challenge, just in that I felt like I didn’t belong here. How can I compete with all of these people who have had this help and support from the very start?” says Randazzo, who is also the group’s co-chair of leadership and development.
Randazzo says she hopes to serve as an older sibling for incoming FGLI students. “Yes, you can ask us about the best course to take for a subject [or] the best place to eat on the Corner, but also we are a resource for help, when you’re having difficulties with XYZ.”
The group is also working to expand its mentorship to high schoolers interested in applying to UVA, by reaching out to guidance counselors at local high schools.
In the near future, the group plans to offer other types of services specifically tailored to FGLI students. It is currently applying for over $100,000 in grant funds to create a free textbook library inside Newcomb Hall. Textbooks can be brutally expensive, and the group hopes to ease that burden.
“We’re hoping to be able to purchase anywhere from around 300 to 400 books for students…[mainly] for first-year classes” says Page. “The goal is to have the university incorporate it into their services, and keep it going that way. And negotiate with the bookstore to get a good discount.”
Page says they should be able to purchase at least 20 to 50 textbooks by the spring.
The grant would also go toward expanding accommodation services for low-income students with disabilities, as well as the Next Steps Fund at Student Health, which pays for two sessions with a community therapist outside of CAPS.
Both Milicic and Randazzo hope The College Scoop’s advocacy will ultimately push UVA to make a greater effort to destigmatize the hardships FGLI students face.
“When I was a first year, it was difficult to put that label on yourself as first gen, low income—it just kind of makes you feel other,” says Milicic. “There can be less negative stigma [around] being FGLI just by talking about it more, and making it known that there are these resources to help you and there are other people here like you.”
UVA needs to do a better job of promoting FGLI resources to first years, “so they don’t feel like outliers…and want to transfer out,” adds Randazzo. “Feeling like you don’t fit in at your own university is just a really tragic feeling to experience.”
Virginia’s COVIDWISE app uses Bluetooth to anonymously track the spread of the virus.
By Geremia Di Maro
As the community searches for answers to the COVID pandemic, both the Commonwealth of Virginia and UVA have rolled out apps designed to suppress the spread of the virus. While state officials are excited about the state app’s ability to track the disease, UVA’s app—which cost a similar amount to develop—merely encourages users to evaluate their own symptoms.
Almost two months after launching, the Virginia Department of Health’s COVIDWISE app—the nation’s first COVID-19 exposure-notification app for iPhone and Android devices—is slated to reach an important milestone of 600,000 downloads in the commonwealth, as thousands of Virginians continue to download the app each day. Currently, about 13.2 percent of the state’s population has the app on their phones.
COVIDWISE is among a growing list of similar exposure-notification apps in the U.S. The app trades randomly generated IDs between cell phones via Bluetooth connection, without draining battery or accessing location data. Then the app compares the IDs the phone has received to a statewide database of IDs associated with positive COVID-19 test results. If an app user tests positive. and inputs that test in the app, any other app user who has been near the positive case will then be notified.
“There is no GPS or other location data at all, it doesn’t matter where geographically you were,” says Andrew Larimer, an engineer with Spring ML, who helped develop COVIDWISE and is also assisting in the development of a similar app in North Carolina. “The only thing that matters, from the app’s perspective, is whether you were nearby someone else who has gone on to test positive for COVID 19…This framework was designed to take people’s privacy concerns very seriously, and avoid any kind of location tracking.”
As of September 28, 225 positive cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed via COVIDWISE.
“We don’t collect location data, we don’t collect any sort of personal identifying information,” says Jeff Stover, the executive advisor to the Virginia Department of Health commissioner. “The issue is for any given state, because it’s an anonymous process, it’s very difficult to link back to anything and show any kind of correlation …We understand that this creates data limitations for some people who would like to do more, but we’re serious about protecting patient privacy and just privacy in general.”
However, Stover cited a recently published study by Oxford University examining the potential for exposure-notification apps to reduce the rate of infection and the subsequent number of deaths caused by COVID-19 in a given area, based on an analysis of app usage and case statistics in Washington state. According to the study’s findings, “a well-staffed manual contact tracing workforce combined with 15 percent uptake of an exposure notification system could reduce infections [from COVID-19] by 15 percent and deaths by 11percent.”
Stover says that, with more Virginians downloading COVIDWISE each day, the state expects to reach that 15 percent threshold in the next few weeks. He also emphasizes that there are still few concrete examples and metrics to hold COVIDWISE up to, since Virginia was the first U.S. state to employ exposure-notification technology in earnest.
“Obviously, the more downloads there are, the greater the impact,” Stover says. “But because we were the first state out of the gate, it’s very difficult—it’s as if we’re running a race by ourselves, and we can’t really tell if we’re running fast or slow, or somewhere in between. So there’s no one to compare ourselves to.”
Although not nearly as complex or as involved as the COVIDWISE app, UVA has also rolled out its own app—Hoos Health Check—for students, faculty, and staff to use to combat the spread of COVID-19 on Grounds and in Charlottesville.
Designed through a partnership between the university and Charlottesville app developer WillowTree, Hoos Health Check is meant to work alongside and with COVIDWISE. UVA’s app does not share or collect data like an exposure-notification app, but encourages users to also download COVIDWISE, according to university spokesperson Brian Coy. However, Hoos Health Check does require users to sign in to the app via their university-affiliated account.
Hoos Health Check cost $300,000 to develop, and Coy notes that this figure includes additional features embedded within the app, but did not specify what they were. By comparison, COVIDWISE cost $229,000 in CARES Act funds to develop and has a maintenance budget of $29,000.
“The primary purpose of Hoos Health Check is to prompt users to evaluate their own health and symptoms every day before coming to Grounds,” says Coy, “as a means of helping them make the decision to stay home and away from other members of the community in the event they are feeling ill (and thus, potentially infected with COVID-19).”
The app reminds users daily to complete the symptom check, although it is only required if a student or employee plans to be physically present on Grounds on a given day. If a user reports no symptoms (cough, shortness of breath, fever, muscle pain, loss of smell or taste, etc.), he is presented with a set of guidelines for preventing the spread of COVID-19, including wearing a mask in the presence of others, maintaining social distancing, and encouraging others to also follow public health guidelines.
If a user indicates that he’s feeling sick, the app “prompts him to contact student health or his health-care provider for additional screening,” Coy says. It doesn’t enter the symptoms in any database or automatically communicate with any public health authorities.
Coy says more than 27,000 downloads of Hoos Health Check have taken place since its launch in early August, adding that the app sees greater than 80 percent daily usage across the university community.
COVIDWISE is free to download on Apple’s app store or the Android store.
For many people, Shenandoah National Park is a great place to hike, camp, bike, and explore. But now, Albemarle’s middle and high schoolers will have a chance to see a different side of the park, and dig deeper into its creation. What happened to the people who once lived there? What are their stories? Can we feel those ghosts in the park today?
Thanks to a $50,000 grant from the National Geographic Society, Albemarle County Public Schools is launching a new social studies project, combining field experiences with geographic inquiry and geospatial technology.
Students will conduct what project leader Chris Bunin calls an “above-ground archeology dig” using high-tech radar at several local historical sites, including the Downtown Mall, Montpelier, and the University of Virginia. They’ll start by thinking of a geographic question for a particular site, focusing on the different perspectives and experiences people have had there over time, based on their race, class, gender, and other parts of their identity.
“When you take some of our cultural iconic places, and even simpler places, in our community, depending on the eye of the beholder…that space and place means something differently,” says Bunin, who teaches geography at Albemarle High. For example, “when some students come to school, they feel very safe and see a place of learning. Other times, people see a place that’s very powerful and uncomfortable.”
“More people need to be able to access those viewpoints, so we can have rational conversations about what’s going on, or what we’re trying to do to improve our community,” he adds, pointing to critical aspects of local history—like slavery and urban renewal—whose harmful effects can still be seen and felt today.
In addition to visiting sites, students will answer their questions using primary resources, including photographs, property sales, interviews, old maps, and texts.
“We want students to see themselves in their community, see their perspective in their community, and see themselves as contributors to that narrative,” says Monticello High School geography teacher John Skelton, who’ll also be working on the project. “And if those stories have not been shown, they can show them.”
With the help of geospatial technology, students will share their data and analyses in the form of an interactive story map of their historical site. Users will be able to click on different icons on the map, and discover video and oral histories, pictures from the past and present, and excerpts from historical documents. Members of the community will be able to interact with these maps first-hand at two public showcases. As the project expands and evolves, library media specialist Mae Craddock envisions students being able to create augmented reality walking tours.
“We’re thinking about cultural geography, not just as a slice in a single time, but rather a slice across time,” says Craddock, who will be leading the middle school portion of the project at Murray Community School.
Bunin and his colleagues came up with the idea for the project while discussing their field experiences with each other last year. With the help of Craddock and Skelton, as well as Murray lead teacher Julie Stavitski and Albemarle High learning technology integrator Adam Seipel, he designed and submitted a grant to National Geographic, called “Revisiting Charlottesville.”
With classes online this fall, the project is a rare opportunity to get students away from their screens. Kids will be asked to research and analyze their own homes and neighborhoods, and think about how they perceive these spaces and how they have evolved over time.
“They’ll take some 360 [degree] photos, use Google Maps to create tours, record audio, and [do] some interviews,” Craddock says. “They’ll really think about their own environment, before we head out to the city at large.”
Bunin hopes students will not only develop a new understanding and appreciation for local history, but have an opportunity to “fix” it in the present day, pointing to a past field excursion he did with some colleagues to a World War II cemetery. A teacher assigned to research a particular soldier buried there discovered that his tombstone was misspelled, and was able to get it corrected.
“The vision for us is that we’re going to have these things happen with us too,” Bunin says. “Things that are just not on the surface, that no one knows about and are hidden in the stacks somewhere—[they’re] going to be recovered or uncovered, so that our community now has [them].”
In an ongoing effort to atone for its racist history, the University of Virginia could provide scholarships to descendants of enslaved laborers as soon as 2022. PC: Stephen Barling
Elijah. Julia. Sam. I took in every name, and let each resonate within me, as I quietly examined the granite slabs. I saw the name of my brother, then I saw it several more times. If he had been born just over 150 years ago, he could have been enslaved at the University of Virginia, alongside the rest of our family.
But what struck me even more were the unnamed. Of the 4,000 deep gashes inscribed into the memorial walls—each representing a person enslaved at the university—only 578 have names resting above them. Because they were viewed as property, and treated as such, the identities of more than 3,000 men, women, and children remain lost to history, and may never be discovered.
With its compelling symbolism and innovative design, the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers urges its visitors to confront these cruel realities of slavery, and honor the countless contributions enslaved people made to UVA, left unacknowledged for nearly two centuries. It is a site for learning, mourning, and remembering, as the university works to heal from its violent past.
As recent protests against systemic racism held at the memorial show, it also serves as a call for change. The painful effects of slavery can still be felt and seen around UVA today, and the school has a long way to go to achieve racial equity. But for many, paying respect to the Black people who built the university is the first step in the right direction, and offers a glimpse of a better future.
Long time coming
In 1619, the White Lion landed in Point Comfort, Virginia. The “20 and odd” Angolans aboard the ship were sold to Governor Sir George Yeardley, and brought to Jamestown—becoming the first enslaved Africans in England’s colonies in the Americas.
Nearly 400 years later, in 2007, the Virginia General Assembly issued an apology for the state’s role in the institution of slavery. UVA’s Board of Visitors followed suittwo months later, expressing “profound regret” for the university’s use of enslaved people.
Earlier that year, the board also voted to place a small gray stone marker in the ground near the Rotunda, honoring the “several hundred women and men, both free and enslaved, whose labor between 1817 and 1826 helped to realize Thomas Jefferson’s design for the University of Virginia.”
Marcus Martin PC: Dan Addison/UVA Communications
“Most people step over it all of the time,” says Marcus Martin, MD, former vice president and chief officer for diversity and equity at UVA. The low stone “falls short in that it’s not very visible, and only talks about the period of 1817 to 1826. …Slavery didn’t end until 1865, and there were more than several hundred free and enslaved men and women [who] helped erect the university and maintain it.”
“The university, at that point, didn’t have the tradition of telling the full story about its history. Everything was focused on Jefferson,” says UVA history professor and associate dean Kirt von Daacke. “There was sort of a sense that Jefferson’s hand was in everything—he built it, he designed it. That was a vague myth.”
In 2010, two students—one an intern for University and Community Action for Racial Equity, the other a co-chair of the Student Council Diversity Initiatives Committee—took the controversy surrounding the marker as a chance to raise greater awareness about slavery at UVA, forming a group called Memorial to Enslaved Laborers.
The group organized community discussions on the creation of a memorial, among other initiatives. And the following year, it held a design competition.
“There were some neat concepts, but they were not of the quality to withstand the environment and test of time, [and] to be approved and erected on Grounds,” says Martin.
Accompanied by his assistant Meghan Faulkner and IDEA Fund chair Tierney Fairchild, as well as student leaders, Martin met with then-president Teresa Sullivan’s cabinet in 2013, proposing the university create a commission entirely dedicated to studying the university’s history of slavery, and recommending ways to commemorate the contributions of enslaved people—including a memorial.
According to von Daacke, it was not easy getting everyone on the Board of Visitors to agree to build the memorial “sooner rather than later.”
“When you start with projects like this, running counter to how you’ve done things before, there’s often a sort of fear-based perspective about it. That if we do this, it will bring protests. …That it’s talking about an unpleasant reality of the university’s past, and will be bad for the university, ” he explains.
“Our job [as the PCSU] was to convince everybody that no that’s not true. …Embracing difficult history is beneficial to us in a multitude of ways,” he says. “That takes some time. You have to do the research and public talks, where everyone gets used to hearing these stories, and you have to talk to people one-on-one. [But] protests aren’t going to come unless you do nothing.”
Kirt von Daacke PC: Supplied photo
In 2016, after years of lobbying, the BOV finally commissioned the memorial, and put together a design team: architecture firm Höweler + Yoon; alumna and architectural historian Dr. Mabel O. Wilson; landscape architect and professor Gregg Bleam; polymedia Nigerian-American artist Eto Otitigbe, and community facilitator Dr. Frank Dukes, co-founder of University and Community Action for Racial Equity and past director of the Institute for Environmental Negotiation at the UVA School of Architecture.
The design team immediately sought input from the community, sending out surveys and hosting public forums for students, staff, faculty, alumni, local residents, and descendants of the enslaved both inside and outside of Charlottesville, with the support of the PCSU.
In 2017, the BOV approved a final design and location for the memorial, and allocated funding toward its $7 million price tag the next year, alongside private donations.
After about a year of construction, the project was completed this April. Though its dedication ceremony had to be rescheduled for next April—during Black Alumni Weekend—due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the memorial is now open, “demanding you pay attention and interact with it,” says von Daacke.
The memorial “is really a reflection of the community in Charlottesville,” says Otitigbe, who is based in Brooklyn, New York. “[We] had a lot of interesting conversations with different community members and descendants…I am really thankful they all welcomed me and allowed me to do this, because I was essentially working with, in some way, the remains of their ancestors.”
Stone and symbols
The memorial’s stone was quarried nearby—it’s a variety of granite called Virginia Mist. The name fits: The memorial’s designers hope this stone can provide a physical representation of a murky and poorly documented past.
PC: Stephen Barling
“One of the first things we heard [from the community] was you can’t build a memorial that is meant to humanize the enslaved without picturing humanity in some way,” says von Daacke. “This was sometimes interpreted as a call for a figurative sculpture of an enslaved person,” like Isabella Gibbons, who was enslaved at UVA and became an educator in Charlottesville after emancipation, he explains.
“But of course at UVA, we can’t do that. We have no images of enslaved people at UVA. We have post-emancipation photos, [which are] probably not good images to use to capture what life was like in slavery,” he adds. “Or there are pictures of people who continued to work for the university during Jim Crow, and were treated by white Charlottesville and UVA as the faithful slave. Their picture and story were told by [whites], and is not reflective of who these people were.”
Instead, architectural historian Wilson proposed a more abstract, circular structure for the memorial, symbolizing the broken chains of slavery. It’s also a nod to the ring shout, a dance rooted in West African traditions celebrating spiritual liberation practiced by enslaved people, during which they clapped, prayed aloud, sang hymns, and shuffled their feet in a counterclockwise direction. The ring is 80 feet in diameter—the same as the Rotunda.
“It’s nice that [the memorial is] visible from town and not within the enclosure of the university, on the Lawn or on Grounds, where these people were forced to work,” says Jalane Schmidt, a UVA religious studies professor and community activist. “They had complete lives. They did not define themselves solely as laborers. …They were members of a community.”
The design team says the horizontal slashes that are spread across the interior wall of the memorial’s larger ring are reminiscent of scars from brutal whippings that once covered the enslaved peoples’ bodies. After years of examining historical records, researchers were able to find the names of 578 people enslaved at the university to add to the wall above the memory marks, along with 311 people known by their occupation or kinship relation. However, the rest of the marks remain nameless, laying bare the violent dehumanization of slavery.
PC: Stephen Barling
This wall “extends the narrative about who this African American community is…[and] allows us to have distinct conversations about what their service looked like,” says Andrea Douglas, executive director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, and a member of the PCSU. “It really gives a better agency to people who were at some point largely dismissed.”
Every inch of the memorial was designed purposefully, and every detail is symbolic.
The eyes of Isabella Gibbons are inscribed on the outside of the wall. Otitigbe used a post-Emancipation photo of her to lightly carve her eyes into the rough-hewn granite, so they are only clearly discernible in early morning or late day.
“Her eyes are looking out to the community, and that can represent many things,” says Dukes. “To me, it’s asking ‘What are you doing? We’re here—what are you doing about it?’”
A second, smaller ring inside the larger circle contains a shallow water fixture, symbolizing the rivers used as pathways to freedom, as well as African libation rituals, baptismal ceremonies, and the Middle Passage. Once the fixture is turned on, water will flow over a historical timeline etched into the ring detailing the everyday experiences of enslaved people at UVA, beginning with the first enslaved Africans arriving in Virginia in 1619 and concluding with Gibbons’ death in 1889.
PC: Stephen Barling
Stepping stones adjacent to the memorial point to the North Star, which led enslaved people to freedom. And the brick walkway visitors use to enter the memorial will align with sunset on March 3, or Liberation and Freedom Day, when Union troops emancipated enslaved people in Charlottesville at the close of the Civil War.
The smaller ring encircles a fresh cut lawn, a space for gatherings, celebrations, performances, classes, and protests centered around topics of racial justice.
An excerpt of one of Gibbon’s writings from 1867 appears at end of the timeline: “Can we forget the crack of the whip, cowhide, whipping-post, the auction-block, the hand-cuffs, the spaniels, the iron collar, the negro-trader tearing the young child from its mother’s breast as a whelp from the lioness? … No, we have not, or ever will.”
In view
Douglas arrived at UVA as a graduate student in the ’90s. Confederate flags flapped from fraternity house windows, and students regularly popped up at parties wearing blackface. (Those things still happen, but with a little less frequency.)
Andrea Douglas PC: Eze Amos
“White supremacy was very much inculcated into the culture of the school,” she says. “Going to a university with that much blatant anti-Black racism, to have this [memorial] as prominent as it is [and] know there is a movement towards a kind of respect for the community the university sits in…It feels much different from when I got here.”
For activist Don Gathers, seeing the names—or lack of names—on the memorial for the first time was “incredibly powerful,” bringing him to tears, he says.
“To stand there and take it all in—it speaks volumes to you. You realize the struggle and sacrifice that those individuals made, and were forced to make, to bring us to the point we are now.”
Though the memorial is effective, Gathers believes the location could have been better chosen.
“Where it is, it still has the semblance of…the Rotunda and Jefferson himself looking down upon the enslaved,” he says.
“Community members told us that they don’t go on Grounds,” explains Dukes. “We don’t feel welcome. So if you build it on the Grounds…we’re not going to come. It’s not going to be for us.”
Third-year Black student activist Sarandon Elliott believes the location of the memorial makes it much more visible, especially to students.
“When people walk towards UVA, they’re going to have to see that. And I also like that it’s near the Corner, a really busy area. People walking past it can stop and reflect upon it,” says Elliott, president of the school’s Young Democratic Socialists of America.
It remains to be seen if the memorial’s current location—technically off Grounds but still very much amidst the UVA bubble, tucked between the hospital and the Rotunda, just across the street from the student-swarmed Corner—will attract a lot of Charlottesville residents.
Though it’s just about impossible to identify every enslaved person, von Daacke and other researchers continue to search for names, occupations, and kinships to engrave on the monument’s inner wall. (A handful have already been found since it was completed, he says.)
Jalane Schmidt PC: Eze Amos
Last year, UVA also began discovering the names of enslaved people through its new descendant outreach project, spearheaded by renowned genealogist Shelley Murphy, which will continue for at least the next two years.
The descendants have formed a leadership group, but are still getting themselves organized, according to UVA employee and descendant DeTeasa Gathers. They plan to conduct educational tours and talks at the memorial, when the pandemic finally comes to an end.
“We consider this very vital, because the history books in Virginia are not inclusive and not very detailed [on] the quandary of slavery,” says Cauline Yates, who is also a descendant. “[Students] are our up-and-coming leaders of the future. We’re trying to make sure that they understand what even happened in their very own backyard.”
“This is not completely about us. This is more about telling the unvarnished truth about what happened going forward,” says DeTeasa Gathers. “We see this memorial as people who were enslaved…but it did last for generations past. It’s important to not forget the generations behind it who have been affected.”
Structural change
Shortly after the murder of George Floyd, dozens of UVA Health employees gathered at the memorial, kneeling for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin dug his knee into Floyd’s neck.
In addition to raising awareness about police violence against Black people, the group called attention to systemic inequality and racism in the health care system—bringing a crucial purpose of the memorial to fruition.
PC: Stephen Barling
Now that the memorial is finished, the university needs to answer its call to action, and implement real changes, says Schmidt.
The Memorial to Enslaved Laborers “is the sculptural, African American version of institutions’ spoken indigenous land acknowledgments, both now made with fanfare and solemnity: It’s a nice gesture,” she says. “But absent concrete material actions of repair, it remains just a gesture.”
Martin echoes Schmidt’s calls for sweeping structural change, pointing to the detailed list of recommendations the PCSU made in its final report to Teresa Sullivan in 2018.
For Martin, one of the most crucial issues facing UVA is its small population of Black students. While the state of Virginia is nearly 20 percent Black, only about 7 percent—a little over 1,000—of the university’s undergraduate students are Black.
UVA doesn’t just need to admit more Black students, but figure out how to attract and keep them here, explains Martin. He says the university offers admission to around 1,000 Black students each year, but only 35 percent of them accept.
A solution, he says, would be to offer more scholarships through the Ridley Scholarship Fund, minimizing the student debt for a demographic that statistically already has less wealth. The university could also explore ways to create a need-based scholarship fund for descendants of its enslaved laborers through the fund.
Martin also calls for the creation of more fellowships related to Black studies, so the school can attract more Black faculty—4 percent of the faculty of the state’s flagship university is Black.
Schmidt is all for more scholarships, but she believes UVA needs to include reparations in its admissions practices, like Georgetown University, which, since 2016, has given preferred admissions, or “legacy” status, to the descendants of those enslaved there.
UVA should not just aim to get more Black students, but also make them feel included and valued once they are on Grounds, says Elliott. This includes following up on the range ofrecommendations issued by the university’s Racial Equity Task Force last month, and removing racist symbols and names—from Alderman Library to the George Rogers Clark statue.
UVA student activist Sarandon Elliott believes the memorial must be accompanied by structural reforms. PC: John Robinson
“If we are not actively fighting racial and economic inequity, we are not properly honoring enslaved peoples,” she adds.
After spending an hour or so at the memorial, I left feeling pained. Black people at UVA, in Charlottesville, and across the country have endured so much violence and oppression. The memorial is here, but the violence has yet to cease.
But I also left with a sense of hope. Now more than ever, radical student leaders and activists of color like Elliott are holding the university accountable for its racism—without the initial push from students, it’s likely the memorial wouldn’t exist today. Through their efforts, and the efforts of the next generation, and the next, UVA may someday atone for its troubled past.
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.”
UVA's coronavirus dashboard shows that, as of Wednesday morning, 155 students, faculty, staff, and contract workers have tested positive for the virus.
Against the advice of pretty much any person, group, or institution that’s decided to weigh in on the topic, UVA is sticking to its plan to hold in-person classes, the school confirmed on Friday.
Though many upperclassmen have already settled in to their off-campus apartments, the decision means that hordes of first-years will move in to their dorm rooms this coming weekend.
“We know people will contract the virus and some will get sick,” the administration wrote on Friday. “There will likely be outbreaks that we will have to work to contain…You can do everything in your power to plan and prepare, but it still might not be enough, as things can change rapidly.”
Indeed, things are already changing rapidly, and not for the better. As of Wednesday, 117 students and 38 faculty, staff, or contract employees had tested positive for the virus. Of those positives, 129 have been confirmed since August 24. Two new people were hospitalized on Tuesday, and 18 people have been hospitalized since the beginning of last week.
In the Thomas Jefferson Health District, the count of those infected continues to rise. From August 21 to 28, the week prior to UVA’s decision to return, 155 new cases were confirmed in the area.
Statewide, hospital ICUs are currently at 77 percent capacity, a 10 percent increase from last year’s average.
UVA has decided to plow forward despite evidence from college towns across the country that doing so will result in a dramatic increase in infections. At the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill—a large, selective, southeastern state university—the return of students heralded an immediate outbreak. One thousand, forty-four students and 56 employees at Chapel Hill have tested positive as of Monday.
And though UVA can’t control whether or not students return to their off-campus apartments, the school could have kept students out of university-run residence halls—the very locations that have been most severely affected at UNC. One Chapel Hill residence hall, Granville Towers, has seen 188 cases so far.
UVA instructors have the option to conduct their classes entirely online, and most of them have exercised that option. Students will move back to dorms, but many will sit in their rooms for days of online-only classes that could have just as easily been completed in more well-ventilated spaces.
The COVID response from the administration has been so poor that it galvanized students and staff to begin efforts to unionize. Two weeks ago, The United Campus Workers of Virginia announced that it had come in to being in part because of dissatisfaction with the administration’s actions.
Charlottesville residents have been just as vocal about their concerns about the return of students. The Charlottesville Human Rights Commission, a city advisory panel, called on the school to hold solely virtual classes. City Council has been equally clear: In July, Mayor Nikuyah Walker called the plan “a recipe for disaster.”
If anyone would be excited for the return of students, you’d think it would be the students themselves. But even UVA’s own student council has called for the suspension of in-person classes, and in doing so, the council has exhibited a moral clarity the administration has lacked. “The University cannot, in good conscience, resume in-person instruction,” the council writes. “COVID-19 will spread, the Charlottesville community will suffer, and students, faculty, staff, and community members will die.”
After nearly two decades of municipal hiccups and mishaps, the city’s plan to replace the Belmont Bridge is finally coming to fruition.
On Monday evening, City Council conducted a first reading on an allocation for the project: The state will pay $12.1 million, the federal government will pay $3.2 million, and the city will kick in $13 million. Council will hold a final vote on the decision August 17.
The city has completed right-of-way acquisition of necessary land and is now finalizing plans with the Federal Highway Administration and Virginia Department of Transportation, explained Jeanette Janiczek, Charlottesville’s Urban Construction Initiative program manager.
Last year, the Board of Architectural Review approved a certificate of appropriateness for the project. However, Janiczek said the certificate is currently being updated.
The city has been working to replace the nearly 60-year-old bridge since 2003, but has run into numerous issues. Initial designs were shot down by the public, and the consultants first hired for the project, MMM Design Group, shut their doors in 2014.
Kimley-Horn took charge of the project in 2017, and council approved a final design the following year.
The new bridge will include pedestrian lighting, benches, and bike racks, as well as a seven-foot-wide bicycle lane and a 10-foot-wide sidewalk, which will be separated from the road by a median. Ramps and stairs on the north end will connect the sidewalks to the Downtown Mall and Water Street.
Construction will begin next year, and is expected to be finished by 2023.
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Quote of the week
“Don’t create these boards and these commissions as bandaids to shut people up.”
—Police Civilian Review Board member Dorenda Johnson, speaking as a resident on City Council’s actions toward the board
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In brief
Riggleman running?
After losing the Republican primary to Bob Good, lame-duck Congressman Denver Riggleman told a Bloomberg podcast that he was “seriously considering” an independent run for governor. Riggleman said he lost his seat because he “refused to commit to supporting anything even close to racism or bigotry.” During his two-year term, Riggleman voted in line with Donald Trump 94 percent of the time.
Testing turmoil
UVA’s hopes for a hybrid semester rely on testing students at a high volume. That plan got off to a rocky start this week. The school sent an email to all students directing them to order COVID tests from the university website, but the website immediately crashed, multiple students report. Once the site came back online, other glitches emerged: The drop-down menu where students were supposed to input their home addresses omitted Rhode Island and New Jersey.
COVID outbreak
Cedars Healthcare Center, a skilled nursing facility in Charlottesville, has been devastated by a coronavirus outbreak, reports NBC29. As of July 31, 96 of the center’s 112 residents, and 44 of the 140 staff, have tested positive for the virus. Seventeen residents have passed away.
Name game
Since the resurgence of protests against police violence around the country, multiple local residents have submitted applications to the city asking for a street downtown to be named in honor of the Black Lives Matter movement. But City Council decided to hold off on voting on the name on Monday, waiting to have more “community involvement” in the matter. Council will now accept related honorary street name requests until August 31, and will consider all of the applications together before taking action.
Incoming UVA first-year Ella Fendley says she’ll be enrolled this fall, because even online classes were a better option than taking a gap year. PC: Marley Nichelle
By Claudia Gohn
University administrators around the country have expressed concern about whether students would show up for a non-traditional school year (and, accordingly, pay tuition). UVA’s incoming freshmen have shown that they’re so eager to begin their halcyon college years, they’ll do so even during a pandemic.
According to Dean of Admission Greg Roberts, 42 percent of students offered UVA admission accepted—up 2 percent from last year. As of mid-July, just 74 students have requested to take gap semesters or years, the university reports.
“None of us really thought about taking a gap year, just because we still wanted to have a college experience,” says incoming first-year Willow Mayer, referring to the other rising freshmen she’s spoken with, “even if it might not be the same as it was for other students who’ve already had their first year.”
Like many universities, UVA announced in early summer that the fall semester would be a hybrid of online and in-person learning. Though pressure is mounting for the school to switch to an all-virtual plan, UVA seems to hold out hope for some in-person instruction. The university recently sent an email to students, directing them to take a COVID test before arriving on Grounds.
It won’t be easy for UVA to hold a safe in-person semester, especially where first-years are concerned. All freshmen live in on-Grounds housing, and under the current plan, “double rooms will continue to be the default option for housing incoming first-year students,” the school says. The university plans to enact other measures, such assigning students to specific sinks and showers and closing common spaces.
The promise of a hybrid semester has lured some students who might not have otherwise come. Jack Meaney initially considered taking a semester off, but once he learned classes wouldn’t all be online, he decided to start his college career in August. “It might be different, but it’s still going to be a college experience,” he says.
Others balked at the idea of paying full tuition for a watered-down product. Azaria Bolton says she hasn’t committed yet, and will wait to see what classes look like before signing on. “Is it really worth all this money that I would have to be spending?” she asks. “Or would it be better to just leave it all and then come back to it when it’s back to normal?”
“Once I get all of the [information]…especially when it comes to classes and whether my classes would be in-person or online, that [will] probably be the biggest determining factor,” Bolton says.
Based on the number of students who have requested a gap year so far, students like Bolton and Meaney are in the minority. Most, it seems, will pay tuition regardless of the university’s instructional plans. Mayer says she doesn’t care if classes are fully digital; she’ll be enrolled anyway. “I can keep up with them better since there’s always the due dates and then I can just turn in the assignment right away,” she says.
Ella Fendley, who attended Monticello High School, chose UVA over other colleges specifically because of the pandemic. Given the uncertainty, staying close to home has benefits, she says. And while Fendley considered taking time off, she ultimately decided against it because she didn’t have anything else lined up.
“I didn’t have a plan for a gap year, and I didn’t want to sit around for a year and just not do anything,” she says.
