Monthly Archive for April, 2006

Page 4 of 7

Living Wage Protest Photos

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 16, 2006 in UVa. 1 Comment

There are some good photos of the now-finished living wage protest and sit-in on Flickr, notably Billy Hunt’s pictures (you know him for his work in The Hook) and P. Hugh’s pictures. This is the first area event that has produced some decent Flickr documentation, at least that I’ve noticed.

For those who don’t know, Flickr is a venue for photoblogging. You can take pictures, post them to Flickr (for free), and others can view them there. For those who choose to make their photos available under an appropriate license, blogs like this one can then publish your photos, which is a great collaboration. It’s wonderful tool to facilitate citizen journalism.

Living Wage Protesters Arrested

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 15, 2006 in UVa. 25 Comments

All seventeen students protesting the living wage by staging a Madison Hall sit in have been arrested, Andy Mullan reports in The Cavalier Daily. Their refusal to leave was a planned act of civil disobedience, since the building has to close during off hours. They had recently provided their counterproposal to President John Casteen, and were described as being in the midst of negotiations. Some of the students wouldn’t leave under their own power, and were hauled into waiting police wagons.

The entire thing made for quite a spectacle. Assuming that media were present, or at least will use the student photos, this is not going to look good on Monday’s news. On the other hand, the idea might be to get it in the news tomorrow, on Easter, when few are likely to be watching. Who knows where things will go from here?

Casteen Meets with Wage Protesters

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 15, 2006 in UVa. 11 Comments

UVa president John Casteen and several other high-ranking UVa officials have met with the seventeen living wage protesters staging a sit-in, Chris Hall reports for The Cavalier Daily. Between 1:15am and 2:55am the parties engaged in negotiation talks, after which food was allowed to be given to the protesters, who have begun to run out. Casteen has posted a letter to the students on his website in which he proposes that they leave Madison Hall and that they work together in addressing the matter in a less disruptive manner. The students were given until 2pm today to provide a counterproposal; there’s nothing on the students website about that just yet.

Interestingly, none of these goings-on qualify as “The Latest News About the University of Virginia”—the university makes no mention of the protest on the site.

Out of curiosity, I’ve crunched the numbers on the cost of the living wage. I used Melanie Mayhew’s numbers on full-time and part-time employees at UVa that would be affected, assumed that part-time employees average twenty hours a week, and that all employees are paid for 51 weeks of work each year on average. That’s an additional cost of $42,120 each week, or $2,148,120/year. That’s less than the combined salary of just five UVa employees: Prof. Arthur Garson, Dr. R. Edward Howell, Prof. Irving Cron, Prof. Robert Harris, and Dr. Robert Cantrell. (The five best-paid employees at UVa, as of 2004.) Perhaps that provides a sense of scale.

Blogging Round Up

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 14, 2006 in Blogs. 1 Comment

Here are some of my favorite Charlottesville blog entries from the past week.

Dan Kachur discovered that we’re not as jaded about celebrities as we like to think that we are, demonstrated by Steve Carell and Molly Shannon.

Chuck Beretz reviews “The World’s Wife,” currently playing at Live Arts. He rules it good, but not great, but still recommends going.

Trish visited Orange and took lots of pictures. It’s a nice town, and often worth a Saturday visit. (I live as close to Orange as I do to downtown Charlottesville.)

C.R. is signing off—he’s graduating and moving home to Northern Virginia. It was a good run. I’ll keep reading, even if he’s not a Charlottesville blogger.

Anoop Ranganath continues his food reviews. Christian’s delicious. Café Europa great. Arch’s hit the spot. Take It Away OK. Amigo’s still uninteresting. La Taza average. Oakencroft wine worth buying, Hilltop Berry a lot of fun. Wine, Anoop? Sounds like you’re taking things up a notch. You should get together with Wineona.

David is pissed off about MLB steroid use, writing that they’ve deliberately turned a blind eye towards the problem. He prescribes five steps that must be taken to clean up baseball, some of which are both startling and smart.

Sean Tubbs podcasts an interview with The Thomas Jefferson Center’s Robert O’Neill about this year’s Muzzle Awards. Bob is absurdly intelligent. Listening to him speak for more than two minutes makes me feel like a drooling moron.

Marijean has an open letter to the woman at Harris Teeter. I got a good laugh out of it.

Rick Sincere reports on his birthday weekend in London, complete with birthday pictures and promises of show reviews, natch.

Jeannine doesn’t understand why Walker Square lets a homeless woman live in the utility closet next to her apartment. Having followed her blog, I think this may just be par for the course for Walker Square. That place is sketchy.

Zoe Krylova blogs about the Burning Spear concert at Starr Hill, finding its aromatheraputic aspects beneficial.

Darlene and Chris make a typical American meal. Typical chickpea gravy and typical pan-fried tofu. You know, regular stuff.

Finally, Laura took part in the UVa living wage protest, leading the protesters in “We Shall Not Be Moved” and “We Shall Overcome.” Complete with photos.

RSWA Decides: South Fork Pipeline

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 13, 2006 in Development. 4 Comments

The Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority has debated what to do about the Central Virginia water shortage for years. Expand the reservoirs? Build a new reservoir? Pipe water from the James River? Do nothing at all? In today’s Daily Progress, Jessica Kitchin breaks the news that the RWSA has decided to expand the Ragged Mountain reservoir and build a pipeline between it and the South Fork Rivanna reservoir. That will capture the 97% of the precipitation that flows right over the dam on the Rivanna and store it in the 133-acres-larger Ragged Mountain. No timeline is described in the article; presumably this will take many years. At $130.5M, it’ll certainly be expensive.

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