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Tag: University of Virginia

  • Sabrina Rubin Erdely Apologizes For False University Of Virginia Rape Story

    After months of silence, Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely finally breaks her silence over her discredited article with an apology.

    Erdely’s report A Rape on Campus appeared in  the Rolling Stone and was about a woman’s alleged brutal sexual assault on the University of Virginia campus. According to the author, a woman identified only as “Jackie” claims she was repeatedly assaulted when she went to a party hosted by the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.

    The story spread quickly on the campus and around the US, prompting protests about the way the college allegedly botched the handling of Jackie’s claims. It also set off intense discussions on sexual violence on campuses and forced the university to suspend all social functions.

    However, Erdely’s work was quickly discredited by journalists who saw certain discrepancies and mistakes in the report and prompted Rolling Stone to request for an investigation.

    A three-person team from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism conducted the investigation and concluded that the story is a “journalistic failure that was avoidable,” citing Erdely and her editor’s failure to corroborate Jackie’s claims as a prime example.

    Rolling Stone has already retracted the story and will publish Columbia University’s analysis as a way of explaining to its readers how the story came about. The magazine’s Managing Editor Will Dana and Erdely have also issued apologies in conjunction with the report.

    Erdely described reading the Columbia report as “a brutal and humbling experience.”

    “I want to offer my deepest apologies: to Rolling Stone’s readers, to my Rolling Stone editors and colleagues, to the U.V.A. community, and to any victims of sexual assault who may feel fearful as a result of my article,” she added.

    While Erdely sounds properly contrite in her statement, the author didn’t include the Phi Psi fraternity in her apology, an action that has some sectors understandably angry.

    “It’s completely tarnished our reputation,” Phi Psi U-VA chapter president Stephen Scipione claims. He added that the fraternity is now looking into what legal options are available to them.

  • Body Found in Virginia Could Be Hannah Graham

    Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia police this week announced that a body found could be missing University of Virginia student Hannah Graham. Graham’s disappearance on September 13 prompted a month-long search for the student.

    On Saturday police provided an update on the Graham case. Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo called the search for Graham “unprecedented,” stating that “thousands” of hours have been spent looking for the missing woman. That search now seems to have paid off.

    According to Longo a search team in southern Albemarle County found human remains in an abandoned property on Saturday. The body has not been identified and Charlottesville police are referring to the it as a “preliminary discovery.” Albemarle County Police have since stated that authorities will not be answering any questions about the discovery until the body has been identified. Police said they do not have a timeline for when the medical examiner’s test results will be available.

    “These are human remains and forensic tests need to be conducted to determine the identification of those remains, but nonetheless we wanted to be quick and timely to share that information with the Graham family,” said Longo.

    Hannah Graham was an 18-year-old student at the University of Virginia at the time of her disappearance. According to a USA Today report she was last seen at a downtown Charlottesville restaurant with a 32-year-old man police initially identified as a person of interest.

    One week after Graham disappeared police identified the man as Jesse Matthew, Jr. Police issued an arrest warrant for Matthew on September 21 and searched his apartment the next day. Matthew was arrested days later in Galveston County, Texas.

    Since his arrest Matthew’s has been linked to a 2005 sexual assault on an woman in Fairfax, Virginia. He has been charged with attempted murder, abduction with intent to defile, and sexual penetration with an object. Police say that Matthew’s DNA has also been linked to the murder of 20-year-old Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington in 2009.

  • Financial Aid Changes at UVa Protested by Students

    In August of this year, board members at the University of Virginia decided to made significant changes to its financial aid program, called AccesUVa. According to the University of Virginia, this program accommodated 100% of the demonstrated need of students who fell within the lowest income bracket, or those families who make less than twice the national poverty level ($31,000 for a single parent with a single kid and $47,100 for a family of four in 2013).

    Starting in 2014, however, incoming first-year students will not be able to use the program as it was originally instated. UVa board members voted to change the program, citing concerns that it was not sustainable. In 2004, the first year of the program, 24% of undergraduates qualified for aid, and a total of $11.5 million was doled out. By 2012, though, those numbers had jumped to 33% of undergraduates qualifying for aid, and a total of $40.2 million given out. The university believes that this drastic increase of people available for aid stems from the 2008 financial crisis.

    Thus, the class of 2018 will share the same experience with most other college attendees of paying for their education with student loans. The new version of AcceesUVa passed by the school allows in-state students to receive a maximum of $14,000 in student loans over 4 years, with out-of-state students receiving $28,000. These numbers reflect the board’s decision to decrease the amount of grant-based-aid given to in-state students by $3,500 every year (and $7,000 per year for out-of-state students.)

    Students at UVa are not about to let this legislation pass without a fight, though. Voices for AccessUVa, a student-formed group, has been protesting the passage of the new version of AccessUVa. Many students have serious concerns that this will drastically decrease the number of low-income students attending the university, and will also have a negative impact on the school’s diversity.

    Joseph Williams, a fourth-year student at UVa who was once homeless, released a poignant statement concerning the decrease in financial aid:

    “This institution is a public institution. It’s a state institution. It’s here to provide services for the state, to uplift the state, to uplift the people of the state, many of whom are underprivileged, many of whom are African American, many of whom are Latino, many of whom are first-generation college students. And when we take away access to those people, we take away what this mission of our university is really about.”

    Perhaps the most intriguing statement came from Hawa Ahmed, a third-year student who fled from Chad in the 1990’s. Ahmed stated that “U-Va. should invest in low-income students because we will put the money back into the places that we came from.”

    Perhaps more public, state colleges should look into this model of financial aid. If UVa made students sign a contract stating that they would agree to stay in-state and use their talents to bolster their own communities instead of fleeing to locations “more opportunity”, then perhaps the university could justify paying students that extra bit of money they need to afford to go to college. Since UVa is a public institution which receives funding from tax dollars and state revenue, this type of contract would make AccessUVa a more sustainable vision. The current generation of student is already saddled with enough student debt, and if UVa can find a way to circumvent adding to that number, perhaps it will keep its position as the 2nd best public institution in the nation.

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  • Teens Use Facebook To Improve Existing Friendships

    While parents often have concerns about allowing their teens to use social media sites like Facebook and MySpace, a new study by University of Virginia psychologists indicates that well-adjusted youth with positive friendships use these sites to improve the positive relationships they already have.

    However, they cautioned teens who have behavioral problems and difficulty making friends, or who are depressed, may be more likely to use social media in negative and sometimes aggressive ways.
    Amori-Mikami
    "We were interested to find that the best-adjusted young people were far more likely to use social media as an extension of their positive friendships, while less socially adept youth either did not have Facebook or MySpace pages, or, if they did, were more likely to use these sites in less-than-positive ways," said U.Va. psychology professor Amori Yee Mikami, the study’s lead author.

    The researchers assessed the friendship quality and popularity of 172 13-to 14-year olds, and then eight years later, "friended" the study participants on their Facebook and MySpace pages to examine their interactions and friendship quality.

    "It was like being a fly on the wall at a slumber party," Mikami said.

    She found that those who were better adjusted in their early teens were more likely to use social media in their early 20s, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity or parental income, and that overall, the patterns of friendship quality and behavioral adjustment as early teens continued into early adulthood.

    "We’re finding that the interactions young adults are having on their Facebook and MySpace pages are more similar to than different from the interactions they have in their face-to-face relationships," Mikami said.

    "So parents of well-adjusted teens may have little to worry about regarding the way their children behave when using social media. It’s likely to be similar positive behavior."

    Overall, 86 percent of the youths in Mikami’s study used social media Web sites, which parallels the national average, she said.

    "Use of Facebook and MySpace is really pervasive among this age group, so it’s understandable that young people would want to be connected with their peers in this way; it’s an extension of the relationships they already share," Mikami said.

    "So parents should try to stay involved with their children and make an attempt to understand their online world in the same way they would want to understand any other aspect of their lives."
     

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