4BETTER OR WORSE- The week in review

Published online 8:00am Thursday Apr 10th, 2008
and in print issue #0715 dated Thursday Apr 10th, 2008

Latest UVA football player arrest: J'Courtney Rydell Williams, 19, is charged with credit card theft and fraud April 1, the Progress reports. The arrest is tied to a March 10 wallet theft at the Aquatic & Fitness Center. The victim's credit card was used 19 times at Tuttle dorm, where Williams lives. Williams is the sixth player to be bounced from the team so far this year.

Least successful kidnaping: UVA students Guanyu Lu, 19, and Baichuan Shu, 20, plead guilty April 2 to the abduction of Paul Wang in Fairfax County over Thanksgiving. The two second-year engineering majors face up to 20 years when they're sentenced June 6.

Worst blow to the "buy local" movement: The Drug Enforcement Agency, with assistance from the JADE Task Force and Virginia State Police, bust Scottsville indoor growers Michael Lewis Easton, 49, and Debra Allyn Morris, 46, for cultivation of more than 50 marijuana plants over the past year, according to a release. Easton faces additional charges for having 10 firearms while being an "admitted user of marijuana," and his two-acre Scottsville Road property and grow lights are subject to forfeiture. Taxpayers could support Morris in prison for the next 20 and Easton for the next 30 years if they're convicted and don't come up with the $1-$1.25 million fines they also face.

Most applications: UVA hopefuls top last year's 18,076 wannabe Hoos with 18,758 applications for the class of '12, the Cav Daily reports. Class size should stay the same at 3,170, despite 370 more acceptance letters going out.

Most exclamatory: The theme of this year's Virginia Film Festival, October 30 through November 2, is "Aliens!"

Most visited: Montpelier, the under-restoration home of James Madison, has seen its visitation up 50 percent over 2007. More than 6,500 people have come to the house since January.

Best news for Death Rowers: Governor Tim Kaine declares a moratorium April 1 on executions in Virginia until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether lethal injections are constitutional.

Best Congressional testimony: Former astronaut/current UVA associate dean Kathryn Thornton tells a House committee April 3 that it's time go beyond the Earth's orbit and set our sights on some real space exploration– Mars.

Best time to be wearing a lacrosse helmet: When UVA student Jacob Hallman allegedly darts into the street of the 1700 block of Gordon Avenue around 12:21am April 3 and is hit by a car and thrown onto the car's roof. Hallman gets a ticket, according to the DP.

Best landing: Student pilot Matthew Edward Scott, 27, runs out of gas on his first solo flight and touches down on I-81 April 2 within sight of the airport in Abington, Media General News Service reports.

Best city/county collaboration: Bulky waste amnesty days at the Ivy Landfill, a.k.a. the Material Utilization Center. Bring us your tires (May 24), your hazardous household waste (May 3), your soiled mattresses yearning to be free (May 10).

Most dubious best-place-to-live awards: Fortune and Money magazines pick Charlottesville– out of 250 cities– as the 18th best place to live and launch a business, while Forbes says Charlottesville is the ninth best small city to do business (number one is Sioux Falls, South Dakota).

Most dubious Cavalier Daily award: A Jefferson Muzzle from the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression for the paper's decision to squeeze out cartoonist Grant Woolard last fall after 200 not-amused students protested in the CD offices about his comic, "Ethiopian Food Fight."