AS THE student member of the Board of Visitors, I want to let all my fellow students know more about the Board's recent meetings.
LAST WEEK, the University witnessed two events of similar stripe. On Monday, members of the Woroniecki family brandished a banner and posters, shouting messages such as, "You're cowards!" and "You're going to hell!" On Thursday, demonstrators from Life and Liberty Ministries, a pro-life group, appeared on-Grounds spewing similar epithets and flashing signs of mutilated fetuses.
THE POPULATION of Albemarle County grew from 30,000 in 1960 to nearly 80,000 in 2000. Because the Board of Supervisors has managed that growth much more responsibly than in many other counties in Virginia; we aren't living in a diminutive Loudoun County.
STUDENTS in the College of Arts and Sciences detest one particular competency requirement more than any other: the foreign language requirement.
AS DONATIONS are pouring into various organizations for hurricane relief, the grim reality sets in that still more money will be needed for these efforts.
YOU SEE them everywhere. They pass you on the street like an army of clones obeying some unknown leader.
WHEN THE Honor Committee formed its ad hoc committees at the beginning of our term, we recognized the need to work towards presenting an alternative to the single sanction.
AS MANY are aware, the University community is in the middle of its second annual Crimson War Blood Drive.
LAST WEEK University President John T. Casteen, III sent a letter to faculty members deploring recent racist slurs and graffiti.
LAST MONTH, messages from two African-American organizations were painted over on Beta Bridge. Despite the FBI's finding that the incident was not racially motivated, there are lingering doubts.
THE UNIVERSITY of Virginia has a wide-ranging variety of traditions and stereotypes, many of which are common to colleges across the country.
ON SATURDAY thousands of people came together on the Mall in Washington to stand for one single, unified purpose: to stop the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Colombia and Palestine, to end colonialism and capitalism, to support gay rights and abortion rights, to legalize marijuana, and, judging by the plethora of recycled t-shirts, to elect John Kerry.
PROTESTORS, media and police will never agree on the numbers, but from the packed streets and the endless sea of signs, it was clear that Saturday's demonstration in Washington, D.C.
IN RESPONSE to the Thursday, Sept. 8 story in The Cavalier Daily about the meeting of the University Judiciary Committee's Ad Hoc Sub-committee for Sanctioning of Hate Crimes, I wish to present some counterarguments to the contention that the UJC should create additional or specific punishment guidelines for judicial offenses primarily motivated by hatred based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion or disability.
AS THE death toll from Hurricane Katrina passes 1,000 and while Hurricane Rita inundates the five million residents of the Houston area, it's about time for our political leaders to stop running away from reality.
THIS WEEK saw a continuation of two debates on the letters page: the debate over architecture on campus and one about the single sanction punishment for honor violations. Many letter writers were responding to other letter writers, and it became somewhat convoluted to follow the flurry of opinions and facts being flung back and forth.
ONE OFTEN mentioned proposal for political reform is a reinvigoration of moderate positions in American life.
BENJAMIN Franklin once said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Apparently, Jillian Bandes never read Franklin.
IT'S DEPRESSING to imagine what they must think of us. The outside world, Virginians unaffiliated with our school and folks as far north as Boston, who read about the University over their morning coffee, clucking their tongues at news stories about, as the Washington Post phrased it "at least nine racist incidents -- slurs shouted from cars, ugly words written on message boards, a racist threat scrawled on a bathroom wall." It's disheartening that this is the face of Mr. Jefferson's grand project to those outside our community -- not the architectural glory of the Lawn, not the top ranked academic programs, but the shameful acts of a handful of cowards.
THERE is a recent trend in the United States of federal judges more and more often abandoning their proper roles and allowing personal beliefs to interfere and influence rulings in the absence of a clear and established legislative precedent.
