The African Company Presents Richard III

stage Before there were docu-dramas or historical fictions, there were Shakespeare’s histories—just enough fact to make a good story believable and a believable story great. Playwright Carlyle Brown takes the origin of America’s first black theater company and twists it wonderfully into a history within a history and a play within a play for Culbreth […]

Akron/Family, with The Great White Jenkins

music In the world of indie and experimental music, bands of unclassifiable weirdness end up on lo-fi legend Michael Gira’s tiny imprint, Young God Records. And Akron/Family is unclassifiably weird. The evening at Satellite Ballroom started with Richmond transplants The Great White Jenkins, who sound something like Harvest-era Neil Young filtered through a more melodic […]

Opening the door

By some measures, UVA is pretty affordable. The elite state school that benchmarks itself against privates like Cornell, Stanford and Duke still offers a price tag that’s truer to its public school mandate: about $17,700 a year for in-state students and more than $35,600 for out-of-staters.

"Part church and part car dealer"

March is high season for college admissions offices. The applications are in and deans are juggling: athletes, quiz show champs, active volunteers, math whizzes, minorities, kids with disabilities, kids who’ve composed symphonies, kids with perfect SAT scores—sometimes all of these things at once—all vying to get into a top school. Apparently, many factors go into […]

Read on

Volumes have been written on equality and higher ed. Here’s a short list: Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education, by William G. Bowen, Martin A. Kurzweil, and Eugene M. Tobin. Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education, by Peter Sacks, due in May. College Access: Opportunity or Privilege? Edited by […]

A very strong commitment

AccessUVA was created in 2004, after the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill introduced the “Carolina Covenant,” the first financial aid program at a public school that promised to meet all student financial need. Though Access UVA is the new umbrella name for all of UVA’s financial aid programs, here’s what is new: AccessUVA […]

UVA By the numbers

In-state cost (including tuition, room and board, travel and expenses): $17,725 Out-of-state cost (not including travel): $35,605 Percentage of students on Pell grants: 7.9 Percentage who are “low-income”: 5.5 Percentage who apply for financial aid: 25 Percentage of undergraduates who apply for financial aid: 45 Funds given in need-based aid 2006-07: $33.5 million Funds given […]

Downtown hotel design is back

For the four members of Charlottesville’s Board of Architectural Review (BAR) (www.charlottesville.org) that were around in 2004, the night of February 20 offered a moment of déjà vu. The application for a nine-storey, 86,000-square-foot, 100-room hotel was the same exact submittal the BAR approved three years ago for the site of the former Central Fidelity […]

Bill changes definition of blight

The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the rights of American citizens by placing a number of restraints on the government. “Individual rights are not meant to make the government’s job easier,” says Albemarle Delegate Rob Bell. “They’re meant to make it harder.” One restriction the Bill of Rights sought to impose was […]

City wants more from Biscuit Run

The City has finalized its list of transportation proffer priorities in the Biscuit Run development south of Charlottesville in Albemarle County: City Council (www.charlottesville.org) decided at their February 5 meeting to request improvements for Old Lynchburg Road, synchronized lights in the city and money toward a Fontaine connector. Those recommendations have been forwarded to the […]