The hidden life of UVA

Mai El Gasim Year: SeniorMajor: Premed Home state: Arizona What’s in your backpack? Coat that she borrowed from a friend, Arabic 202 grammar and reading packet, agenda, class notebook, velcro wallet, key ring from first-year orientation, pink second-generation iPod nano, three pencils, two pens (one broken), one pink highlighter, cell phone, eraser, mints, spare change, […]

Thao with The Get Down Stay Down

Thao’s songs are refreshingly not all about angsty break-ups. Instead, she writes about family and presents the everyday with new significance as she says, “You can’t build cathedrals out of finger steeples,” and “We don’t dive, we cannonball.” A year and a half ago, Thao was in the Satellite Ballroom, opening for Laura Veirs. The […]

Former mayor, delegate Van Yahres dies

Mitch Van Yahres Charlottesville lost one of its longtime public servants on Friday, February 8, when Mitch Van Yahres, 81, died in the Martha Jefferson Hospital of complications after surgery to remove a tumor in his lungs. As mayor and city councilor, Van Yahres cast a crucial vote to create the Downtown Mall in 1974. […]

Your tax dollars, at work

Dayna Awkard Worked for Albemarle County for: 18 years come March 15Resides in: Waynesboro Job title: Deputy Clerk. She started working as a deputy clerk straight out of Fluvanna High School after her mother noticed an ad for the job. “She knew I loved typing and office stuff,” Awkard says. Although she initially resisted taking […]

City prepares to turn down the volume

A few weeks ago on the Downtown Mall, there was an unusual performance: Jim Tolbert, the city’s director of Neighborhood Development Services, strummed an electric guitar hooked up to an amp in front of Snooky’s Pawnshop, with a couple of cops milling about.

One day from progress

One day after appearing on CBS’ “60 Minutes” with Katie Couric—one of UVA politics professor Larry Sabato’s first students—Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton sat before a whole class of Sabato’s, in a nearly full auditorium at Old Cabell Hall. With only a day to go until Virginia’s primary the New York senator was here to rally the college vote.