4BETTER OR WORSE- The week in review

Biggest Pavilion crowd: Nearly 5,000 people pack the outdoor amphitheater October 29 to hear presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama.

Biggest presidential fundraiser: Obama pulls in $250,000, topping his rival, Senator Hillary Clinton, who pocketed $200,000 at her September 23 chat with John Grisham at the Paramount.

Latest Monticello brain drain: Kat Imhoff, Thomas Jefferson Foundation VP, announces she'll leave in January, following executive director Dan Jordan's announcement he'll retire in November 2008. Imhoff heads out to be executive director of the Nature Conservancy in Helena, Montana. 

Worst blow to School Bus Safety Week: Scottsville resident Leslie Mason slams her Subaru Outback into the back of a Ford Ranger stopped for a school bus on Route 20 October 22, Kate Harmon reports in the Daily Progress. The impact sends the truck head-on into the bus, which was carrying 32 Walton Middle School students, none of whom were injured. Mason is charged with reckless driving.

Worst blow to finding election poll workers: Seven UVA employees who worked city polls in last year's elections aren't signing up because UVA has called a halt to double dipping– the workers collected their university salaries along with the $175 check for spending 16 hours at the polls, Bob Gibson reports in the Progress. UVA policy is to confiscate the poll paycheck unless the employees use vacation time on election day.

Worst showing by police dogs: Canine cops fail to find the hit-and-run driver of a Saturn Ion who collides head on with a pregnant woman's SUV in Cismont October 24 and flees, leaving an empty bottle of gin. And police bring in the dogs in an unsuccessful October 23 search for assault suspect Lamar Redee Williams, who flees into a wooded area off Cherry Avenue after pushing a police officer who tried to take him into custody for seven outstanding warrants. The shove adds two more charges. 

Most ambitious write-in campaign: City resident Robert Brandon Smith III proclaims himself a candidate not only for the House of Delegates seat held by David Toscano, but also for City Council and School Board posts.

Most challenging location for a downtown grocery: The former A&N building owned by Gabe Silverman on the Mall, which is being touted as the site of a much-needed grocery but still suffers from no back doors and no parking– drawbacks that allegedly led A&N to ditch the place in 2006.

Best new buddies seeking low-income students: UVA teams up with Harvard and Princeton admissions deans in a 19-city tour to reach students who normally wouldn't apply to those schools because of financial considerations. All three universities have dropped early admissions programs, for which few lower-income students applied, according to a release.

Worst forecast for students at UVA: The university projects in-state tuition and fees could double over the next six years, from $6,821 this academic year to $13,931 for 2013-14 in a worst-case scenario if the state doesn't cough up more funding for higher education, Brian McNeill reports in the DP.

Highest honors: UVA law professor Richard J. Bonnie receives the Thomas Jefferson Award for his work in mental health law.

Most lapsed: Readers seeking the Cavalier Daily website– cavalierdaily.com– October 30 land on a generic website that notes the domain name has expired. 

Best lost and found story: Mississippi fisherman Keith Page hooks a UVA class ring belonging to "J.P." from the class of 1966 in Okatibbee Lake October 22. UVA  alumni staffers track down its owner, John Pospisil, 64, a retired pilot living outside Chicago who lost the ring in the early '70s, according to a Brian McNeill story in the Progress.

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