Following sexual assult allegations earlier in the month, the UVa Medical Center made good on their promise (threat?) to fire convinced felons. Today, they fired nine employees, all of whom were either temp workers or had been hired in the past six months.
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
Sideblog
Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
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This is incredibly cruel scapegoating. These are people who have paid the price for their crimes. They were hard workers who did their jobs and now they are paying the price for someone else’s criminal negligence. When they were hired by the University their convictions were part of their applications. UVa knew that they had been convicted and then entered into an employment agreement with them anyway. Now UVa is betraying that agreement. Their firing shows a great contempt for the concepts of rehabilitation and forgiveness. Also, only temps (read exploited) and probationary employees were fired. Does this mean that attaining “classified” status somehow frees one of the stain of a felony? There are classified employees who are also convicted felons. Are they going to be fired next? Of course not. There are too many. Shame on the thoughtless, heartless boneheads that did this. I hope to hell that the U get sued and loses.
Kevin Cox
I’m certainly inclined to agree. Under our legal system, somebody who has served their time (in jail, probation, or through fiscal restitution) is to be punished no more. I suppose that employers have the right to be selective in who they hire, but, last I checked, UVa is not only desperate for hospital employees, but is also a state-owned facility, meaning that they should be held to the standards established by the state, including those of our judicial system.
-Waldo
If they had done this earlier, that woman would not have been raped.
Who’s to say that if this guy hadn’t been hired at UVA, he wouldn’t have raped someone else? And what’s to keep some non-felon they hire instead from doing the same thing? While it might be true that doing this earlier could have prevented this crime or a similar one, such speculation ignores the problem so blatantly that it’s completely useless. Felons are not the problem here. Hundreds of thousands of people are convicted on felony charges every year, and it’s completely ridiculous and most likely unconstitutional to treat them all like potential rapists when an exceedingly small number of them are. The problem, if anything, was hospital security and a failure to respond to previous reports of similar behavior. Most important, however, is that given the circumstances, it was impossible to forsee this sort of thing happening because the likelihood was so low. Keeping felons from working in the hospital will have little effect on the likelihood of this happening again