Brightman arrived at UVA in December, 2004.
HAWES SPENCER PHOTO; UVA PHOTO INSET

Christopher Brightman, the man at the helm of UVA’s investment arm— which lost a billion dollars during the 2008 market turmoil— has suddenly resigned for “personal reasons” unrelated to the group’s operations, according to a published report.

Brightman, who, a little over a year ago, steadfastly declined to directly speak with Charlottesville reporters about the endowment funds he was managing, appears to be maintaining that silence. However, he apparently did tell a financial newsletter called Pensions & Investments that he plans to return to the investment world after resolving his unspecified personal issues.

In the late 1990s, the University of Virginia Investment Management Company, or UVIMCO, began earning market-beating returns by emulating Yale with high-risk, high-reward instruments such as hedge funds and private equity. Hired near the end of 2004, Brightman continued the strategy; but when the markets soured in the fall of 2008, he found himself (more)

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John Yoo was in Charlottesville to explain the torture memos– and talk about his new book.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

The Miller Center of Public Affairs has a long tradition of luring influential people to speak to engaged citizens, but this genteel practice degenerated on Friday, March 19, at an appearance by the lawyer who wrote the infamous “torture memos” that the Bush Administration used to justify waterboarding terrorist suspects.

While irate audience members shouted at the interrupters, the Center’s programs director, George Gilliam, scolded disruptive protesters during the talk by University of California at Berkeley law professor John Yoo.

“I would like to thank George again for duplicating a Berkeley atmosphere,” joshed Yoo, as the tension mounted.

Yoo has just written a book called Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush. His theory is that those considered the best presidents (more)

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“Someone knows something,” says Dan Harrington, pictured here with wife Gil on March 17 in front of John Paul Jones Arena. “They need to come forward.”
PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART

Her parents desperately wish it weren’t so, but they say they’re convinced: Morgan Harrington suffered before she was killed.

On the five month anniversary of the Virginia Tech student’s disappearance and less than two months after her remains were discovered in a remote area of a southern Albemarle County farm, her parents, Dan and Gil Harrington, spoke to reporters in front of the John Paul Jones Arena, where Morgan attended an October 17 Metallica show the night of her disappearance, to beg anyone with information about the case to come forward and to urge caution in the Charlottesville community.

“A monster walks among you,” Gil Harrington says, calling her daughter’s killer a “violent, sadistic and dangerous man.”

Although a medical examiner quickly ruled 20-year-old Morgan’s death a homicide after her body was discovered January 26, police have been silent in recent weeks and have released no further information on her cause of death.

However, her parents, both medical professionals, say signs of violence were obvious on their daughter’s remains, which were released from evidence and returned to them in February.

“He chooses to kill in a savage and brutal way,” says Gil Harrington, an oncology nurse, of her daughter’s killer, “to break her bones before he murdered her.” Dan Harrington, a psychiatrist, confirms (more)

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The Battle Building will transform West Main’s streetscape.
Odell & Associates

“Building, but not sprawling” was the headline of a recent UVA Magazine story on the school’s $308 million build-a-thon this year— in the face of a recession and UVA budget cutting. But next year one massive project will dramatically alter West Main’s streetscape (something UVA has long been threatening to do): the $141 million, 7-story, 200,000 square foot Barry and Bill Battle Building at UVA Children’s Hospital, which is scheduled to go up on a temporary parking lot beside the 12th Street Taphouse from 2011-2014.

The new building, which will serve as an outpatient surgery and (more)

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So long, Larry.
PHOTO COURTESY POLLSTAR

John Paul Jones Arena officials announced March 16 that Jason Pedone, assistant general manager for the venue since 2007, has replaced Larry Wilson as general manager. Wilson, who has been GM since the arena opened in 2006, has taken a loftier GM position for SMG— the management company that operates the Arena on behalf of the University— in Jacksonville, Florida, where he’ll manage six venues in the city.

“Larry leaves us in a great situation,” says Pedone, who served as the director of event services for SMG at Reliant Park, home to the NFL’s Houston Texans, before coming to Charlottesville to assist Wilson. “My goal,” he says, “is to keep a good thing going.”

Indeed, despite some early skepticism about whether or not such a small community could support such an arena, Wilson lured many of the world’s top touring acts to town, including The Police, Metallica, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billy Joel, Justin Timberlake, Eric Clapton, and U2, with acts like Larry the Cable Guy, Lipizzaner Stallions, and The Wiggles thrown in for good measure. Under Wilson’s management, the arena was named Pollstar’s Best New Major Concert Venue 2006.

Wilson also managed the Paramount Theater in town, but Pedone says (more)

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UVA’s Institute on Aging presents Virginia Morris, a nationally recognized authority on eldercare and author of How to Care for Aging Parents, who will discuss how families can effectively engage in the difficult but necessary conversations about legal, financial and medical plans for aging parents and spouses at the Culbreth Theater, as part of the Virginia Festival of the Book, on Friday, March 19 at 2:00pm.

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Alexandra Fitzsimmons may not be able to return to Concepcion, where she teaches English.
PHOTO COURTESY ALEXANDRA FITZSIMMONS

Like most people in Chile, Alexandra Fitzsimmons was asleep when one of the largest temblors ever recorded rumbled to life at 3:34am. As her bed slid across the room as if inside a ship rocked during a storm, she pretty quickly realized that it wasn’t a dream.

“We’re very lucky,” says Fitzsimmons, 25, in a telephone interview from a friend’s apartment on a seventh floor in Santiago. There are cracks in the ceiling and chunks of drywall that have fallen out, but from the outside, she says,”You’d have no idea anything happened.”

Fitzsimmons considers herself particularly fortunate because (more)

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How did Corks & Curls disappear without anyone noticing?
COVER DESIGN BY ALLISON SUMMERS

After a 119-year run, Corks & Curls, the student yearbook first published in 1888, disappeared without anyone really noticing. On Thursday, January 21, following up on rumor that the storied yearbook had been nixed, the Hook asked UVA Dean of Students Allen Groves if it were true. Groves passed the inquiry on to Karen Shaffer, UVA’s director of Student Activities.

“The Corks & Curls yearbook is traditionally published by UVA students, but the group is currently not active,” said Shaffer. “While they may choose to regroup and publish a yearbook in the future, there is no plan to do so in the 2009-10 academic year.”

Yikes! How could a University steeped in history allow one of its oldest traditions to perish? Was it a funding issue?

“Not so much a funding issue, as a sign of the times,” said UVA spokesperson Carol Wood the next day. “Apparently, there was little interest on the part of students to want a yearbook, as more and more students (more)

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No more Corks & Curls? From right to left, the 1928, 1930, 2007, 1908, and 1913 editions of the yearbook.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

After a nearly 120-year run, there’ll be no University of Virginia yearbook for sale this year, say UVA officials.

“The Corks & Curls yearbook is traditionally published by UVA students, but the group is currently not active,” says Karen Shaffer, UVA’s director of student services. “While they may choose to regroup and publish a yearbook in the future, there is no plan to do so in the 2009-10 academic year.”

The news came as a shocker for historian Coy Barefoot, who says he drew heavily on archival copies of Corks & Curls in compiling his own book, The Corner: A History of Student Life at the University of Virginia.

“It’s a prime historical resource,” says Barefoot, who is teaching a local history course this semester. “This is just awful from a historian’s standpoint.”

However, according to Cavalier Daily editor Andrew T. Baker, the yearbook hasn’t been making much of an impression on current UVA students.

“I haven’t seen much publicity or presence from the yearbook around Grounds in the four years I’ve been here,” he says.

“I’ve tried testing the waters with some of my friends, casually mentioning that the yearbook isn’t going to be published,” says UVA student and Hook music writer Stephanie Garcia, “and no one seemed to really care.”

An even bigger shocker, according to Aaron Josephson, who serves on the executive committee of the Class of 2009, was that the historic treasure wasn’t (more)

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A smiling Teresa Sullivan, current provost at the University of Michigan, greets future colleagues in the Rotunda at an event announcing her hiring as UVA’s eighth president.
PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART

The UVA board of visitors voted unanimously on January 11 to appoint Dr. Teresa Sullivan, provost and vice president of academic affairs at the University of Michigan, as UVA’s eighth president, replacing John Casteen III when he retires in August.

Following the vote, UVA Rector John O. “Dubby” Wynne introduced 60-year-old Sullivan, praising her more than three decades experience in “almost every aspect of higher education,” and claiming with incredulity that Sullivan met a list of requirements put forth by the board “so comprehensive as to be unattainable.” Among other things, he said, she is a leader “who could create a vision that could be measurably achieved”; a recruiter of top notch faculty; someone who values diversity and understands the benefits of athletics; and an experienced budget manager who was chancellor over nine schools in the University of Texas system. Beyond those characteristics and skills, Wynne said, the board wanted someone with “emotional intelligence, who is self aware, sociable and empathetic.”

In her acceptance speech, Sullivan praised Casteen, promising to “pursue the course he has charted.” She introduced her husband of 38 years, Douglas Laycock, who will teach at UVA Law, and her two grown sons, Joseph, a doctoral student at Boston University, and John, a recent college grad who is planning a fall wedding.

In the coming months, Sullivan said, she will continue her full time work in Michigan, where, she noted with a smile, “I have a budget due and 200 promotions to make decisions about.” She plans to visit Charlottesville at least once a month to meet with faculty, students, board members, and Virginia legislators in preparation for taking over this summer.

While Sullivan may be amply qualified to head a university of any size, UVA’s presidency, she confessed, is the only such position she has ever applied for.

“This,” she explained of UVA, “is one of the jewels of higher education.”

As for the challenges she will face, Sullivan, who is also a demographer and a sociologist whose research focuses on consumer bankruptcy, says her biggest short term challenges as president will be financial. The long term challenge, she believes, will be the “hot competition to get the best minds.”

Sullivan’s five-year contract promises her total annual compensation of $680,000.

— story updated at 4:39pm
–Old headline: “Sullivan becomes new UVA president”

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One scientist was so irked by global warming skeptic Pat Michaels that he ill-advisedly jotted an email expressing interest in slugging Michaels.
FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

The summit on global warming opened in Copenhagen December 7, but the heat generated by hacked emails that appeared November 20 has refused to cool, even in the face of the salacious Tiger Woods scandal.

Former Virginia state climatologist and global warming skeptic Pat Michaels (”Hurricane Pat,” as we once fondly dubbed him) pops up in an email as someone that a scientist from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California would like to attack— and not just in the latest issue of a peer-reviewed journal.

“I’m really sorry that you have to go through all this stuff,” Benjamin Santer allegedly wrote a colleague. “Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted.”

The electronic missives purloined from the (more)

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UVA athletic director Craig Littlepage, left, introduces UVA’s new head football coach Mike London.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

UVA athletic director Craig Littlepage announced that University of Richmond head football coach Mike London will replace recently fired UVA head football coach Al Groh. London comes to UVA after only two seasons as head coach for the Spiders, but Littlepage expressed no reservations about his decision.

“We need a coach that can win,” Littlepage told the crowd of spectators and media that had gathered in the dining hall at John Paul Jones Arena. “Mike stood out on the strength of his character, as a coach, teacher, and leader. He will give UVA football an exciting jump start.”

London racked up a 24-5 record at Richmond and won the 2008 Football Championship Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-AA) title.

London becomes the third African-American head coach in (more)

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Michael Underwood, Escapement.

Occasionally, a non-filmmaking artist decides to take a stab at the cinematic art form. Sometimes the results are shockingly good. For instance, painter Julian Schnabel’s Basquiat, Before Night Falls, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly are breathtaking films. Other times, as in the case of Michael Underwood’s Escapement, currently screening at the Niche in the Fine Arts Library, well, not so much.

A photographer by training, Underwood and his brother, Matthew, set out in 2002 to make a documentary examining whether or not four dams on the Snake River, a tributary of the Columbia, should be removed to allow dwindling salmon populations to recover. In 2009, the brothers completed the project, although it’s unclear from the 28-minute video what was filmed when and how the situation may have changed over the seven-year span.

Escapement contains all the elements of a standard documentary. Shots to establish a sense of place? Check. “Talking heads” expressing contrasting viewpoints? Check. A map for geographical reference? Check. Archival photographs enlivened by camera pans, a la Ken Burns? Check. Successful documentaries, though, require attention not just to visual components but also to sound, editing, and storytelling.

Escapement’s biggest technical problem is its sound. One minute the spoken words are clear, the next they’re layered with interference. In at least two places, the stereo abruptly shifts to single channel. This inconsistent quality is jarring, distracting, and screams “amateur.” In addition, when Escapement includes voiceover, the narrator reads the script in a sing-song-y cadence that undercuts the words’ meaning.

The editing is also uneven. Interviews last too long, and the narrative thread does not un-spool smoothly. Also, the map is a visual snooze, and the use of black frames to divide the film into sections is overworked. In one instance, an interview subject’s words are inexplicably voiced over a black frame for several seconds before he is revealed.

Which is not to say Escapement doesn’t have redeeming aspects. Chief among them: every shot is beautifully composed, often contrasting the geometric lines of manufactured structures with the organic flow of nature. Underwood also skillfully imbues the video with a strong palette of red, blue, yellow, and green that provides unity.

Escapement is most successful when its compelling shots wordlessly tell the story. Underwood’s images of glass windows at a dam revealing fish swimming upstream through green water are particularly memorable.

But he probably shouldn’t quit his day job.

Michael Underwood’s documentary, Escapement, is on view through December 31 at The Niche in the Fine Arts Library. Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library, Bayly Dr. (across from the Architecture School). For more information, visit http://thelibraryniche.blogspot.com.

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Cal Otto, one of three men who founded the Virginia Festival of the Book in 1994, died November 23 in Colorado Springs at age 79.

“He and I and Tom Dowd are typically credited with starting it,” says Heartwood Books owner Paul Collinge, “but the actual ball got started when he walked into the shop and said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

Otto also developed the Virginia Arts of the Book Center dedicated to books, printing and printmaking before moving (more)

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“At first, I hated Cabell Hall,” said UVA architectual history professor Richard Guy Wilson, “But the purpose of the big building, I finally realized, was to keep students on the Lawn.”
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

When visiting dignitaries tour The Lawn at UVA, says Richard Guy Wilson, Chair of the University’s Architectural History Department, they are often struck by how “wrong” everything looks. Indeed, as Wilson points out, the Lawn’s Pavilions are a clash of architectural styles that are perhaps more noticeable to those unfamiliar with Thomas Jefferson’s brand of genius.

“Sorry, I have to say. This is the way it is,” says Wilson. “Jefferson knew the rules of architecture, but he broke the rules.”

And he broke them, Wilson explains, to create an architectural experience for students that would teach them as much as their professors did.

“The experience of the buildings around them was as important as what was being said in the classes,” Wilson says. “It is a matter of how the space it used. It is a public communal space.”

Recently, Wilson and University Architect David Neuman discussed the (more)

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