NEW C-VILLE COVER STORY: The Power Issue

Don’t worry, dear reader. Though this week we give you a ranked list of Charlottesville’s most powerful, even we recognize the inherent ridiculousness of ranking people based on such an elusive concept. Like all ranked lists, this one intends to raise questions rather than supply definitive authority—we hope that you will point out our oversights and over-inflations. The exercise did get us thinking, though. Charlottesville is close to a company town, and UVA employees accordingly garnered six spots on our Top 20 list. Still, in considering local power, we realized that this isn’t a dictator’s realm. No one person can control Charlottesville, as Muammar el-Qaddafi did Libya and, to only a slightly lesser extent, Michael Bloomberg rules New York. It says something that our most powerful person, UVA President Teresa Sullivan, only moved to town last year—and what it says is comforting: That around here, us little people aren’t that little. Read the cover story here, and don’t forget to leave comments. 

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