Robert Smith
PHOTO COURTESY UVA POLICE

A man wearing construction clothes allegedly grabbed a purse while in a UVA building June 29 and fled, plowing into a pursuing university employee with his car.

Robert Smith, 59, of 802-M Hardy Drive, is charged with malicious wounding, breaking and entering, and grand larceny.

According to police, Smith went into 918 Emmet Street, took the purse and was chased by its owner, who alerted others to the theft. Another UVA employee stood in front of Smith’s green Chevy Cavalier and went over the hood when Smith didn’t stop, says Lieutenant Melissa Fielding with UVA Police. The employee was treated and released at UVA Medical Center.

Police discourage standing in front of a fleeing suspect’s vehicle, says Fielding. “Get the license number, a description of the suspect, and the direction the car is headed,” she advises. “But any physical intervention is dangerous.”

On June 30, Smith was arrested at his home in a public housing project (which, incidentally, may soon be redeveloped), and was being held without bond at press time. He has no connection with the University of Virginia, says Fielding, and at age 59, is “outside the profile of our typcial larceny suspect.”

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The Rotunda stands as the centerpiece of a Jefferson masterpiece, one of only four structures in the United States to be named a World Heritage Site, but there’s one problem: 95 percent of it is not the work of Jefferson.
FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

As UVA prepares to restore the Lawn, just how much Jefferson to put back into it appears to be a matter of intense discussion. In the Spring issue of UVA’s alumni magazine, an article on the restoration plans, “This Old Academical Village: Preserving a national treasure,” elicited a number of angry letters-to-the-editor in the magazine’s Summer issue, questioning the wisdom of some of the proposed projects. In particular, alumni criticized plans to attach a “parapet” to Pavilion X and change the colors of the Lawn’s white columns and dark green shutters, arguing that just because Thomas Jefferson may have wanted them (more)

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Congressman Tom Perriello (D-Ivy, left) declined a request for federal funds for Larry Sabato’s Youth Leadership Initiative. Now Senator Mark Warner (D-VA, right) is lobbying his colleagues to save it.
HOOK FILE PHOTOS

Few political scientists are as tapped into the ways of Washington as the University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato. For his encyclopedic knowledge and predictive acumen, he has be come the go-to-guy for the national media seeking political analysis. Now, after decades spent watching Capitol Hill, Sabato needs an act of Congress to keep his brainchild alive.

“If we do not receive federal funds,” says Ken Stroupe, chief of staff of Sabato’s UVA Center for Politics, “we do not have a sufficient endowment to continue to operate this program.”

The program is the Youth Leadership Initiative, a national civics education program founded by Sabato in 1998, providing free teaching tools to 50,000 social studies teachers of all grade levels nationwide. Every two years, the program runs mock elections with students voting on the same candidates their parents will on Election Day, making for what the Center for Politics says is the nation’s largest mock election.

Since its inception, the Youth Initiative received most of its funding from a federal earmark introduced annually into the House of Representatives by Congressman Virgil Goode (R-Rocky Mount). After (more)

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Last summer, the Hook examined the secret of UVA President John Casteen longevity, but today Casteen announced his retirement.
COVER PHOTO ART

UVA President John Casteen today announced his retirement from the university he’s headed since 1990. At a meeting of the Board of Visitors, Casteen announced his plans to step down on August 1, 2010.

“These years have been all but magical for my family and me,” Casteen said in an official release. “We have had the pleasure of living and working among students, staff members, faculty members, alumni, other backers of the University, and the women and men of a community that we see as America’s best. These have been years of working with legislators, board members, and others who care about the roles of universities in promoting and sustaining the common good, and of imagining with them how to cultivate a University capable of making Virginia’s and the Republic’s future worthy of their past.”

Rarely smiling and attired in an orange tie in the Dome Room of the Rotunda, Casteen received a standing ovation from the Board of Visitors and those gathered there for the announcement.

During his tenure, Casteen has increased the university’s endowment and its diversity, and he cites AccessUVA, the financial aid program that assures low-income students the means to attend the university without having to take out loans, as one of the accomplishments of which he’s most proud.

Presidents of the top 50 schools hold their jobs on average six years. Casteen, 65, has spent most of his adult life at the University of Virginia, starting with his enrollment there in 1961 as a 17-year old.

Casteen talks to the press after his announcement, and says he has no regrets about the amount of time he spent fundraising.
PHOTO BY CAMERON FELLER

“John Casteen will be remembered as the person who understood Jefferson’s vision of this place and catapulted it into the 21st century. He will leave an indelible mark and will be remembered as the father of our modern University,” said University Rector W. Heywood Fralin.

Fralin said that a “community-wide commemorative celebration” is being planned for Casteen to recognize his accomplishments. Fralin also said that Casteen will serve as a consultant for a year for the new president, and then return as a faculty member after a sabbatical leave once he steps down next August, when he becomes president emeritus. Fralin says the search for a new president will begin in late July.

Updated 5:05pm

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