Tag: UVA

UVA remembers

“I welcome you to join us and share in the experience as we memorialize, as we celebrate, as we commemorate and learn lessons of the contribution of people of color who were enslaved and yet helped to build this university community,” said Mount Zion First African Baptist Church Pastor Alvin Edwards at the opening of last weekend’s virtual dedication ceremony for UVA’s Memorial to Enslaved Laborers. The memorial has been open to the public since last year, but an official dedication ceremony had been postponed due to coronavirus.

The virtual event featured remarks from UVA President Jim Ryan and former president Teresa Sullivan, a performance from local African dance group Chihamba, spoken word poetry from two current Black students, information about the memorial’s creation, and testimony about the site’s importance from a wide variety of community leaders who had been involved in the project over the last few years. 

“As students, we felt the legacies of those whose names were engraved here, and those whose names we do not know,” said Ishraga Eltahir, a 2011 UVA graduate whose advocacy as a student helped create the impetus for the memorial. “As a Black student at the University of Virginia, those legacies manifested in particularly complicated ways. They were everywhere and in everything. …Memory of a complete history is what we were denied.”

Throughout the program, multiple speakers emphasized that the memorial is the beginning, not the end, of racial justice work at UVA.

“We feel this project has brought life and light to the buried and forgotten,” said Khalifa Sultan Lee, another former student whose work was instrumental in the memorial’s creation. “We pray everyone joins us in the consistent remembrance and the ongoing reparations work to come.”

Bugging out 

You might have heard some buzz about a wave of cicadas swarming across the East Coast this May. Billions of winged creatures—the ominously named Brood X—will soon wake up from their 17-year slumber and emerge ready to mate, lay their eggs in trees, and then burrow back underground. If that prospect gives you the heebie-jeebies, don’t leave town this spring. Northern Virginia skies will ring with the high-pitched wail of the insects, but central Virginia’s cicadas, known as Brood II, are set to snooze until 2030. 

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Quote of the week

“To tell us that a Black Army second lieutenant in uniform can have that type of treatment imposed upon him—imagine what happens when the body cameras are off.”

—NAACP Executive Director Da’Quan Marcell Love, speaking at a press conference after video surfaced of Windsor, VA, police harassing and pepper spraying a Black man at a traffic stop

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Jerry jumps in 

Local media mogul Jerry Miller announced that he’s running for the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors. In a rambling campaign announcement livestreamed on his I Love Cville Facebook page, Miller said he’d seek to prioritize economic growth, job creation, and support for small businesses, as well as public transportation and broadband internet expansion. If you’re itching to head to the polls and cast your ballot for Miller, you’ll have to wait a while longer—the seat won’t be open until 2023. 

Suite deal?

The Omni Charlottesville Hotel is suing the City of Charlottesville, reports The Daily Progress. In 2020, the city charged the downtown hotel $440,000 in taxes. On its website, the hotel advertises “Downtown Luxury, Southern Splendor,” but in court filings the hotel’s representation insisted that the place is actually not nearly so resplendent, and that the tax figure should have been closer to $350,000. City Council voted last week to retain an outside lawyer to argue on behalf of the city.

Ralph backs the Mack 

Governor Ralph Northam has endorsed his former boss, Terry McAuliffe, in the 2021 governor’s race. Northam served as McAuliffe’s lieutenant governor during The Macker’s first term, from 2013-2017. McAuliffe was among the many state political leaders who called on Northam to resign after Northam’s 2019 blackface yearbook scandal, but apparently any bad blood from that moment has passed. Northam chose to endorse McAuliffe over state legislators Jennifer Carroll Foy and Jennifer McClellan, either of whom would become the nation’s first Black woman governor should they triumph in November.

In 1990, 12 percent of UVA’s students were Black. In the three decades since, that number has fallen, and now hovers around 6 percent. (The school doesn’t represent the state—19 percent of Virginia residents are Black.)   

How did the university lose so many Black students? How can it increase Black enrollment? And how can it make sure Black students feel safe and included on Grounds?

These are just a few of the tough questions tackled in a new podcast, “Still We Rise,” created by a handful of UVA students as part of a larger oral history project called Reflections: Oral Histories. “Still We Rise”—a nod to Maya Angelou’s acclaimed poem—explores the legacy of racial injustice at UVA through thoughtful and provocative conversations with Black students, staff, faculty, alumni, and members of the Charlottesville community.

“We’re not looking so much at the era of slavery and segregation,” explains third-year Logan Botts, creator and manager of the podcast. “A place where we have a lot of ground to make up is what happened after Black students came to UVA. What has happened since integration? What is that culture and environment like? What can we do and what conversations do we need to have to make that better?”

Last year’s uprisings against police violence and systemic racism inspired Botts to start the podcast. She worked with her team at Reflections to secure financial support from UVA’s Democracy Initiative, allowing her to hire five students—almost all of color—to write, produce, and host each episode.

After a semester of research, interviews, and production, the students launched the podcast in early January, kicking it off with a two-episode discussion on the history of race in athletics and the role student-athletes play in social justice. The second pair of episodes, released in late February, examines UVA’s struggles to recruit and enroll more Black students, as well as the lack of safe, inclusive spaces for Black students on Grounds.

“We pick topics that are at the forefront of the dialogue about UVA,” says Botts. “When you think about [UVA], athletics and academic rigor are some of the first things that come to mind. But we never talk about the racial history and context of those.”

The podcast’s next episodes will discuss student activism on Grounds, as well as the fraught relationship between UVA and the Charlottesville community. 

“Student self governance is everything that they talk about here at UVA, but the notion of [it] lends itself to perpetuating some inequities, with students of color bearing the burden of doing a lot of activism work and advancing equity,” explains graduate student Victoria Nelson, one of the podcast’s hosts. 

“We want to pay tribute to the work that’s being done [at UVA] and may not be recognized, particularly by racially marginalized students,” adds third year and co-host Pinay Jones.

Hard conversations about racial injustice are especially important at a place like UVA, founded by enslaver and rapist Thomas Jefferson, and built by an estimated 4,000 enslaved laborers. UVA did not admit a Black student until 1950 and did not fully integrate until well into the 1960s.

“There’s a rich, rich history of segregation and discrimination specifically against Black students and faculty,” says Nelson, who is Black. “We want to shed light on that, and want to situate ourselves in the present moment, paying tribute to what has happened in the past and how that has affected us today.”

In addition to highlighting the injustices endured by Black students, the podcast celebrates their many strides and accomplishments at UVA.

“[The Black experience] is very much a struggle and rooted in oppression…but there’s also this sense of community,” says Jones, who is Black. “We try to strike that balance between highlighting very real injustice…and the beauty that people have been able to construct out of their experience.”

While the team hopes the podcast attracts a variety of listeners, they especially want current UVA students to tune in, think critically, and take action.

“The people who care about the racial legacy are already talking about it. But there is a large percentage of the student body, faculty, and administrators who don’t know where to begin,” says Botts. “I want to create a place where you can come knowing nothing and leave knowing something—and potentially start a deeper journey into making UVA a better place.”

Students of color are strongly encouraged to submit their own stories through the Reflections website.

“[For] a lot of marginalized groups, especially Black people, our stories are told by other people,” says Jones. “So it feels good to be a part of a project where we are marginalized students, many of us Black, we’re telling the story, and drawing on other Black people who can tell their story in the moment.”

“Still We Rise” is free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.

UVA’s Lawn is the school’s historic center. Here, prospective students and donors are wowed; here, a select few fourth-years are chosen to live, as a reward for their hard work on behalf of the institution and its associated clubs.

The university would very much like every blade of grass on the Lawn to stay in its place. And so Hira Azher’s signs have cut like a knife. 

Last fall, the fourth-year stirred up controversy when she hung a large black sign on her Lawn room door. “Fuck UVA,” read the hand-painted sign. “UVA Operating Costs: KKKops, Genocide, Slavery, Disability, Black and Brown Life.” Other Lawn residents followed her lead and posted similar posters on their doors.

Some alumni and community members urged UVA administration to forcibly take down the signs, claiming they were offensive to Lawn visitors. (Azher says several people harassed her and tried to cut down her poster.) After consulting with its legal team, the university ruled that the signs were protected under the First Amendment and should stay up, though it also changed the policy for Lawn room door signs moving forward. Starting next year, their size will be restricted. 

UVA President Jim Ryan penned a letter to the school community entitled “Great and Good, Revisited,” in which he wrote that “personally, I find the signs deeply disappointing,” but that “I believe it is a matter of principle and the obligation, especially of universities, to protect speech even when it is offensive.”

However, when Azher, a Muslim woman of color, put another poster criticizing the university on her door earlier this month, Housing and Residence Life accused her of inciting violence. She was told to take the sign down—or possibly be kicked out of her room.

“I was just really angry and frustrated,” says Azher. “This is so obviously not an incitement of violence.”

The second sign is a bright red poster showing the Rotunda surrounded by flames, its clock replaced with a camera shutter. Below the Rotunda is a camera, belt buckle, University Police Department badge, gun, and a banner stating, “Burn it all down!” A Ku Klux Klan robe, along with the Grim Reaper holding a scythe and wearing a mask, loom behind the building. Underneath the scene is a quote from civil rights activist Kwame Ture: “In order for non-violence to work, your opponent must have a conscience,” followed by Azher’s take: “UVA has none!”

Angered by the murder of Xzavier Hill and other acts of police brutality in the Charlottesville area, as well as the surge in COVID cases following fraternity and sorority rush, Azher put the poster on her door on March 11. Two days later, she says a university dean and a facilities management employee showed up, and told her they had to take down her sign. (Azher opted to take it down herself, so it would not be thrown away.) They also handed her a letter from Housing and Residence Life, claiming the sign “advocates physical violence” and was not protected speech.

“The threatening nature of this Lawn sign is particularly apparent in the face of recent history, including the fear and intimidation brought to the Lawn by torch-bearing rioters on August 11, 2017, the violence that continued the following day, and the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol that resulted in several deaths,” reads the letter. 

“If you post this or a similar sign on your door in the future, you will be subject to further discipline, including potential removal from University housing,” the letter ends.

Azher argues that UVA completely misrepresented the meaning of her poster, which she says criticizes the school’s surveillance of students and the community, history of white supremacy and police violence, and its mishandling of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. UVA “does not care about the violence it inflicts upon the Charlottesville community and UVA students, especially on the most marginalized of those groups,” Azher says. “The [quote] combined with the ‘Burn it all down’ is a statement that this system entirely needs to be shut down.” 

Virginia ACLU Executive Director Claire Guthrie Gastañaga also disagrees with UVA’s rationale for removing Azher’s poster.

In order to be exempted from the First Amendment, “speech must be ‘directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action,’” says Gastañaga. “[The poster] does not appear to be intended to produce ‘imminent lawless action,’ and neither is a poster with a quotation standing alone likely to ‘produce’ such action.”

A UVA spokesman did not respond to request for comment by press time.

Second-year Ella Tynch, UVA Young Democratic Socialists of America communications chair, accuses the university of being hypocritical when deciding what is acceptable and unacceptable on the Lawn. There will soon be additional restrictions on Lawn room signs, but “no restrictions on whether or not students can run naked down the Lawn,” Tynch says.

“It’s very clear that these restrictions are in response to a specific leaning [and] political opinion,” says Tynch, referencing last year’s “Fuck UVA” Lawn posters.

This is not the first time this spring that the university has tried to silence Azher’s acts of protest. On February 28, she put a poster on her door that was almost identical to the one HRL forced her to take down this month, but did not picture flames surrounding the Rotunda. The poster was torn down in the middle of the night the same day, she says.

Azher assumed a student had removed the original sign, but when HRL asked her to take down the recreated poster several weeks later, the residence administrators informed her they had removed the first sign, too.

“They had never told me why it was taken down, or that they had taken what was mine and I had worked so hard to create,” claims Azher. “This time maybe because I was closing the shutters at night, they weren’t able to take it down discreetly.”

Though Azher does not believe the university had legal grounds to remove her posters, she stresses that the issue is “so much bigger” than freedom of speech.

“[Freedom of speech] has historically always protected hate speech and white supremacy. It has never helped or protected us when we’re fighting for liberation and revolution,” she says. “It’s the same way those Unite the Right rally ‘protesters’ were protected.”

“What will actually be liberating and will actually help us is by focusing on what the issues are and what the sign is raising,” she adds. 

Before graduating, Azher plans to put up one last sign—but will have to make sure it will not cost her her spot on the Lawn.

“Regardless of a little sign or not, I know that this resistance to UVA and these issues that have been brought up by people before me will continue to be brought up after me,” she says.