Healthy minds: CHS students discuss mental health with Virginia’s education secretary

Shana Bullard felt terrified. She was about to meet Virginia Secretary of Education Atif Qarni, for a roundtable discussion on mental wellness initiatives at Charlottesville High School. “I was very intimidated,” says the CHS junior, who’s been active in several of the school’s mental wellness programs. But she found Qarni to be personable and down-to-earth. […]

Turning up the heat: Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci faces a progressive challenger with deep pockets

Political races in Albemarle County are usually pretty staid compared to Charlottesville’s—except for the commonwealth’s attorney race. Prosecutors Jim Camblos (in 2007) and Denise Lunsford (in 2015) were both ousted after controversial, high-profile cases. And 2019 has promised to be another closely watched contest—even before incumbent Robert Tracci’s opponent received an unheard-of $50,000 donation. Republican […]

30 years and counting

In 1989, Bill Chapman was a senior at Hampden-Sydney College and Hawes Spencer, a former student, was working in the communications office. Chapman had just completed a summer internship at Richmond’s Style Weekly, and “It seemed like Charlottesville needed a smarter, less reverent paper than The Daily Progress,” he says.   The two founded C-VILLE […]

In brief: New Hogwaller project, march on, cyberstalking arrest, and more

Hogwaller reset After City Council’s rejection of his zoning and permit requests earlier this year, Justin Shimp, developer of the embattled Hogwaller Farms project in Belmont, is back with fresh plans for a newly acquired parcel partially overlapping the site of his previous proposal. The name of the new project—Rootstock Farm Apartments—should be better received […]

Slow going: Water Street coal tower restoration project at a standstill

Charlottesville’s C&O train station closed its doors in 1986, but that hasn’t kept the building and its adjacent coal tower out of headlines in the three decades since. The site of both a double homicide and an apparent suicide, the abandoned tower became a popular hangout spot for drug users and the homeless in the […]

Vape escape: Raising the vaping age hasn’t deterred teens

Bathrooms. Locker rooms. Cars. Check any of these places on a typical school day, and you’re likely to find students taking part in the latest teen trend: vaping. “It’s pretty common around my crowd,” says one Charlottesville High School senior, who estimates about 25 percent of his classmates vape. “Kids will duck out of class […]

Putting up a fight: Rural Dems band together in deep-red districts

Ten Dems running in solidly red General Assembly districts—like the ones that dissect Albemarle County—are doing what rural folk have always done: banding together to help each other out. They’ve formed a coalition called Rural Groundgame, hired a few staffers, and are sharing resources on how to reach the voters who face the same rural […]