“For the third time this year, national media have flooded our space,” sighed the University of Virginia’s student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, in an editorial this week. “University students are, understandably, exhausted.”
They’re not alone. Many administrators — even those paid to do so — had stopped taking calls from reporters even before broadcasters’ satellite trucks rolled back onto the campus last week. This time, the stories were about Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control agents’ detaining a popular 20-year-old black student, Martese Johnson, for reasons that remain disputed. Passers-by shot video showing agents handcuffing Mr. Johnson, face-down on the sidewalk with his head bleeding, and it went viral.
Faculty members and students are similarly reticent — in no small part, certainly, because in midsemester they’ve all got a lot of work to do, but also because plenty of people talked themselves out during last fall’s big controversy over a high-profile Rolling Stone article’s claims that a student referred to only as “Jackie” had been gang-raped in a fraternity house.
The claims unraveled within a matter of weeks, but not before protests had taken place on the campus, the entire fraternity system had been suspended, the Board of Visitors had held an emergency meeting, and other women had come forward with similar stories. Just this week, Charlottesville’s police chief, Timothy J. Longo, announced that an extended investigation had turned up no evidence to support the article’s allegations.
Earlier in the fall the university was consumed by an even more tragic event — the disappearance of a second-year student, Hannah Graham, whose body wasn’t found for five weeks. In February prosecutors filed first-degree-murder charges against Jesse Matthew, a local man who was the last person seen with Ms. Graham. He has also been charged in the 2005 rape and attempted murder of a woman in Fairfax County, Va., near Washington.
As if the high-profile news weren’t bad enough, three undergraduates committed suicide during the fall semester, leading the university’s counseling service to undertake an “all-out blitz” of suicide-prevention efforts.
All of which has been a lot to process — a lot of grief, a lot of anger, a lot of questioning. “This is our third time in the national spotlight,” said Chukwudumebi Joy Omenyi, president of the Black Student Alliance, soon after Mr. Johnson’s arrest. “How do we assure that what’s happened in these three things never happens again?”
Shared Disbelief
The university’s administrators must be asking similar questions, and perhaps wondering how they became the “unluckiest” college leaders in the United States, to expand on the headline of a Fortune magazine article about UVa. Having wrestled this year with campus safety, sexual assault, and race relations, they might be asking what national issue in higher education UVa hasn’t been in the middle of.
Being center stage is nothing new for the university. Three years ago a high-profile dispute between the Board of Visitors and Teresa A. Sullivan, the president, revealed how badly UVa’s leaders disagreed over two big trends in higher education — the move to provide more online courses and the increasing corporate mind-set of boards.
Disagreements among the leadership spilled into public view when the board ousted Ms. Sullivan, only to reverse course two weeks later amid an outcry from students, faculty members, and others.
But in the midst of this year’s anguish, such disagreements seem remote.
“It has been a really tough year for the entire community — students, faculty members, staff, friends of the university, neighbors, and community members,” said Coy Barefoot, an adjunct faculty member who teaches about the history of the university and hosts a radio and TV program called Inside Charlottesville. “We have all shared in the disbelief, the sadness, and the concern.”
Mr. Barefoot, a graduate of the university who reported on Ms. Graham’s disappearance for CNN, said “Here come the sat trucks!” had become a common warning around Charlottesville. The city, he said, “tops the list in so many ways — best place to live, best place to raise kids — and the university is among the best in the world, so we’re all very tired of getting to the top of the list for bad news.”
“What I have learned,” said Mr. Barefoot, “is really what an amazing community this really is. There’s been such a tremendously compassionate response to all of these troubles from people, many of whom have nothing to do with UVa. They reacted as if Hannah were their sister or their daughter, as if Martese were their brother or their best friend.”
And while no one would have wanted any year to turn out the way this one has, it has nevertheless taught students how to exercise their First Amendment rights and channel their concern into a cause, said Maurice Apprey, the university’s dean of African-American affairs and a professor of psychiatry. “It reminds me of the 60s and 70s all over again,” he said.
That was just a few days before Ms. Omenyi made a special appearance before the Board of Visitors to put the university “on notice” that black students would “speak loudly and often” until changes in law-enforcement practices, faculty hiring, and other policies “make UVa and Charlottesville a more humane place.” When board members asked what she and the Black Student Alliance would recommend, she promised that a full list of suggestions would be coming soon.
Looking Ahead
What kind of legacy will such a year leave? “I think it’s going to take us a while to figure that out,” Mr. Barefoot said. And Ms. Omenyi observed that acceptance notifications for the Class of 2019 had gone out in the midst of protests over Mr. Johnson’s treatment.
Still, the admissions office’s blog noted that UVa had received 30,853 applications for 3,675 spaces in next year’s entering class — a statistically insignificant 189 applications fewer than last year. And Ms. Sullivan, UVa’s president, told the board during this week’s meeting that the university had “robust applicant pools” for faculty positions.
The board also surprised many here this week with a move aimed at making the university more affordable for low- and middle-income students. The decision will raise in-state tuition by $1,000 a year over the next two years and use the increase to lower the amount that students who get financial aid are expected to borrow. Some students and others questioned the plan — one member of the board said it threatened to turn UVa into a “redistribution authority” — but perhaps a debate about the cost of college is ordinary enough to seem welcome in a year of such unusual and tragic incidents.
Meanwhile, classes continue, teams practice (except for the men’s basketball team, whose season was ended by a 60-54 March Madness loss to Michigan State), and the renovation of the Rotunda proceeds. There have been even opportunities for humor and inventiveness.
After the video feed died in a room for overflow viewers of a question-and-answer session this week with law-enforcement representatives, a young woman stood up and resourcefully started reading aloud another student’s live tweets from the main auditorium. Then, after the Q&A had been halted so the feed could be restored, a student at the auditorium microphone could be heard wondering whether the pending tuition increase would “fix our Wi-Fi.” She got a big laugh.
Lawrence Biemiller writes about a variety of usual and unusual higher-education topics. Reach him at lawrence.biemiller@chronicle.com.
