The Mall fountains are still idle because the city is waiting on replacement parts. They hope to have ’em working next week. #
The Mall fountains are still idle because the city is waiting on replacement parts. They hope to have ’em working next week. #
The state prison system has shut down the locally-based Books Behind Bars program, Maria Glod writes in tomorrow’s Washington Post, because they’ve deemed it a security threat. As first reported by Bryan McKenzie in Monday’s Daily Progress, the twenty-year-old program has been banned by the Virginia Department of Corrections. Operated out of and funded by the Quest Bookshop on West Main, the program functions without taxpayer dollars, for the purpose of allowing prisoners to better themselves through literacy and education. They’ve provided an estimated one million books to prisoners over the years, according to the Post. Prisoners make requests for books—the dictionary and the Bible are especially popular—which Quest fulfills by mailing books directly to the prisoners, free of charge. The books are treated like anything materials mailed to prisoners, inspected by officials for contraband before being given to prisoners. After prison officials found a CD left in one book and a paperclip in another, they deemed the program both a security threat and a waste of prison employees’ time, and informed Books Behind Bars that they could not send books to prisoners.
Note that prisoners can purchase both books and CDs from approved vendors, and they are permitted to keep up to thirteen books in their cell. So they can receive books, and they can keep books, but they just can’t receive books from Books Behind Bars.
The program’s founder—Quest owner Kay Allison—has asked the Department of Corrections to reconsider their decision, but lacking some sort of pressure other than that of a 78-year-old woman asking nicely, there’s no good reason to think that they’ll change their mind.
More budget cuts are hitting UVA, Bryan McKenzie writes in the Progress, with the state cutting its funding by 8% and requiring university employees to take a day of unpaid leave next spring. Only something like 6% of UVA’s funding now comes from the state—awfully low for an ostensible state college—with this cut coming to about $7.7M. Gov. Tim Kaine’s budget reduction plan (2MB PDF) makes cuts across state government, including layoffs of nearly 600 employees, though none at the university. This is just the latest in a series of such cuts in the past year and a half. Though there have been no layoffs at UVA yet, there’s speculation among many employees that they’re coming.
Disclosure: I’m a UVA employee though, oddly, not a state employee.
Free cvillenews.com text ads are newly improved—they can be twice as long and are (experimentally) no longer topic-restricted. #
To witness Lynchburg’s burning hatred for us, check out today’s News & Advance editorial about Places29. It borders on (unintentional) humor. #
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