It’s almost that time of year again, when you can magically find a parking space on the Corner and there’s no line for grain bowls at Roots. So before all the students disappear (graduation is May 18 and 19), we pulled together some reporters from The Cavalier Daily to catch us up on life on Grounds.
UVA’s student paper has done great work this year, including a recent piece on the challenges faced by low-income students (at a university where the majority of students come from families in the top 20 percent of the federal income bracket) and a FOIA-fueled report on the gender wage gap among faculty (women earn roughly $34,000 less than their male counterparts, in case you’re wondering).
Here, they share some lighter stories about university life, from the small but steady presence of activists on campus to a talk with the DJ who pumps
up the crowds at football and basketball games. Editor-in-chief Gracie Kreth posed some questions to Jim Ryan, who’s rounding off an impressive first
year as UVA’s ninth president. Ryan says the university needs to build trust with the community by backing up its words with actions, and he got off to
a good start by raising the minimum wage of hourly workers to $15 starting January 1, after years of student-led organizing on the issue.
As the city’s largest employer and a magnet for money and talent, what UVA does—whether it’s raising wages, investing millions to train data scientists, or becoming a partner (or not) in a regional transportation system—has an outsize impact on life in our city. We’ll keep watching.
