The two new courts on August 30, a few days after the sand was poured.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Been by UVA’s Snyder Tennis Center lately? There are two new courts in the making, but they aren’t tennis courts. They’re volleyball courts, of the sand variety. And the coach of the women’s volleyball team thinks they’ll propel his program to new heights— even when his ladies aren’t leaping for a spike.

“We’re big proponents of sand volleyball because of all the positive effects it will have on indoor athletes,” says Head Coach Lee Maes. “It gives the varsity team a chance to cross-train.”

But there’s another reason for the courts, located along busy University Avenue: visibility. UVA’s been fielding a team in the Olympic sport of indoor volleyball since 1979, but Coach Maes says that not everybody seems to know that.

So last spring, this coach, who was hired in 2008, received a marketing report from some students in UVA’s undergraduate business school. A hitherto underutilized corner of Nameless Field was chosen, and after some “generous donations” including $40,000 just for the sand (a blend called “the Fort Myers mix”), the courts should be ready for play by this weekend, says Coach Maes. He says that lighting, audio, a scoreboard, and even an outdoor shower will be installed during the coming weeks.

“We want the community— the students and faculty— to use it,” says Coach Maes. “If you build it, they will come.” Meanwhile, his team, which suffered a losing season last year, has started (more)

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A stray bullet flew into the swanky Glenmore subdivision Sunday night.
PHOTO FROM THE GLENMORE WEBSITE

The Glenmore subdivision website touts the “simple joys of Southern living.” In some quarters, shooting guns is such a joy, but that’s one aspect of Southern life Justine Joscelyne never considered she’d encounter in the gated community east of Charlottesville.

It happened on Sunday evening around dusk.

“I was in the backyard watering my plants and felt this intense pain,” says Joscelyne of the August 29 incident. “It was a shock. The bullet went through my right breast.”

Joscelyne, 61, says because of the way she was standing, the bullet didn’t damage internal organs— but left her with both an entrance and exit wound.

“I’d been out in my yard about 40 minutes,” she says. “I’d heard popping sounds and thought it was fireworks. I’m certain it was outside Glenmore.”

Joscelyne’s husband, Trevor, who is president of the Glenmore Community Association, took her (more)

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The Ghana delegation (Head of Warrior Group Joseph Baiden, Transport Minister Mike Hammah, and Municipal Chief Executive’s Representative Godfrey Kwame Nkrumah) meets with Worrell Water Technologies researcher Eric Lohan.
PHOTO COURTESTY WWT

When a delegation from Winneba, Ghana visited Charlottesville several weeks ago, one city official criticized those who might “poo-poo” the idea of a fourth sister city as a waste of tax payer money. An appropriate phrase, as it turned out, because the African delegation visited Worrell Water Technologies, a company known for turning sewage into fresh water.

In 2007, Worrell Water built one of its “Living Machine” waste-water treatment systems— featured in a 2009 Hook cover story entitled “The Tao of poo”— in Tema, Ghana, one of more than a dozen such systems the company has installed around the world.

What’s a Living Machine? Well, imagine a man-made, turbo-charged tidal wetland. Basically, waste water is pumped and filtered, and monitored by microcomputers, through a series of cells that use plants in porous gravel to cultivate natural microorganisms that eat up the waste. The cells continuously fill and drain, mimicking the tidal action of estuaries.

Whereas the earth only has two tidal cycles a day— nature’s way of flushing the toilet— the Living Machine replicates that cycle 10 to 12 times a day.

“It was my second visit to Worrell Water this past year,” says Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris, who tagged along with the Ghana delegation, “and I am definitely (more)

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Peatross’ ruling leaves Cucinelli right to refile.
HOOK GRAPHIC WITH DAN KACHUR PHOTO

The controversial “climategate” inquest by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli came to a halt Monday as an Albemarle County judge issued a declaration that set aside a demand for old emails from Michael Mann, the former UVA professor and creator of the so-called “hockey stick graph,” which posits that global temperatures are undergoing an unprecedented spike.

In a case that drew international attention, both sides spun the decision their way.

On the hot-button issue of whether such an inquest would have harmed academic freedom— something that was argued by four rights groups in an amicus brief— retired judge Paul Peatross seemed reluctant to carve out such a privilege.

“The Attorney General has the right to investigate if he meets the other requirements of the statute,” wrote Peatross, noting that he was preserving Cuccinelli’s right to refile a narrower inquest.

“I am pleased that the judge has agreed with my office on several key legal points,” Cuccinelli said in a prepared statement, “and has given us a framework for issuing a new civil investigative demand to get the information necessary to continue our investigation into whether or not fraud has been committed against the Commonwealth.”

Judge Peatross heard arguments from the two sides on Friday, August 20— the same day that a small protest of UVA professors and students took place on the steps of the Rotunda.

The Peatross ruling blistered the AG’s office on several points including the state’s failure to state precisely why it believes that old emails relate to a monetary fraud. Additionally, Peatross found that only one of the five grants Mann received at UVA actually consisted of state money, and so it didn’t meet the requirements of the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, or FATA, the 2003 Virginia law that gave the AG the right to his so-called Civil Investigative Demand.

Peatross also found that most of the grants preceded FATA, which was designed for frauds against the Commonwealth, but he left the door open to a refiling if the Attorney General can show that Virginia funds were paid during a time when FATA was in effect.

–story updated for print with UVA’s spin at 2:50pm, Tuesday, August 31

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At UVA’s new Transitional Care Hospital, Michelle Hereford stands under a ceiling-mounted lift that can transport obese patients from bed to bathroom.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

UVA’s newest hospital building acknowledges a cruel fact of life: Americans are getting fatter— much fatter. At the swanky new Ivy Road facility designed for long-term acute care, 11 of the 40 rooms can handle patients weighing up to 1,000 pounds, thanks to heavy-duty beds and overhead electric lifts.

“It is very innovative,” says Michelle Hereford, associate chief at UVA’s new Transitional Care Hospital. “It decreases injuries and helps with patients being mobile.”

On a reporter’s recent tour of one of the so-called “bariatric” patient rooms, it’s evident that the room is bigger than usual. So are the beds, which are reinforced and capable of holding patients who might qualify for the record books.

Overhead, a monorail-like ribbon of steel snakes across the ceiling. That’s the track for the  Pinnacle brand overhead lift, an electric winch-equipped device that can lift a half-ton patient out of bed and all the way to the bathroom.

Bariatric medicine is booming locally. An estimated 20 to 24 percent (more)

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After 40 years in public service, Albemarle County exec Bob Tucker promises to stay to the bitter end of the year, even if it’s New Year’s Eve, before starting his retirement.
FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

Albemarle County’s longest-serving chief executive, Bob Tucker, announces his plans to retire at the end of the year after 20 years of managing the employees and steering growth into designated areas.

Georgia-born Tucker came to Albemarle in 1973 as its assistant planning director, and even then, containing sprawl was his mission. “Directing growth and development into defined growth areas to maintain those rolling hills, keeping agricultural activities active, and keeping those cows and horses in the pasture” are  among the accomplishments of which he’s most proud.

Albemarle just picked up another AAA bond rating from Moody’s, and Tucker is also proud of the county’s sterling credit rating. “When we got it the first time from Standard and Poor’s, we were the smallest county in the country to have it,” he recalls. “It’s the same as getting an Academy Award.”

Number three on his list of top achievements as county exec is snagging the former Wachovia building, which became the 5th Street County Office Building. “I grabbed it a quickly as possible and saved $7 million,” he brags in his own modest way.

Even for a CEO who’s been well-regarded by— and has outlasted many of— the county’s elected Boards of Supervisors, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for Tucker, especially in the tightened economy with its reduced revenues, while trying to maintain the services a best-place to live demands.

“The most difficult time of my tenure has been the past three years,” he admits.

Supervisor Rodney Thomas lauds Tucker’s people skills. “He could walk (more)

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Vitalija Vasciunaite on Facebook, in jail, and the monument reminding drivers to avoid hitting workers.
FILE PHOTOS: HAWES SPENCER, FACEBOOK, MUGSHOT

In her first court appearance, the attractive college athlete charged with nearly killing a highway worker looked little like her puffy-eyed, pink-faced mugshot. Instead, the Lithuania native appeared sober in Albemarle General District Court on August 26.

Sporting long white pants, a dark jacket, and with her shoulder-length blonde hair confined to a bun, 22-year old Vitalija Vasciunaite— charged with two allegedly alcohol-fueled felonies— let her attorney do the talking Thursday.

“She looked like a normal college kid,” her lawyer David Heilberg said afterward. Alas, Vasciunaite’s mid-July arrest has put a halt to her college career, which she may need to remain in the United States.

“We’re in a Catch-22,” said Heilberg, explaining that trying to obtain a senior-year transfer for a student facing a potential multi-year prison term is proving to be difficult.

New York’s St. Francis College, where the young woman’s basketball career was to have culminated this year, confirms that she’s out. “She will not be returning,” says sports information officer David Gansell. “She has lost her scholarship.”

Charged with driving (more)

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Protest organizer Ryan McElveen, who enters a master’s program at Columbia this fall, meets the press.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

As global temperatures rise, so does Charlottesville’s profile in a worldwide debate. Two events last Friday highlighted the anger and frustration felt on both sides as Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli continues his quest to peek at the early musings of Michael Mann, the former UVA climate professor and creator of the doomsday-invoking “hockey stick graph.”

“Ken Cuccinelli wants to take away the most precious things we can leave to the next generation: a healthy environment and a healthy and strong university. Don’t let the history books read, ‘When climate scientist Michael Mann was ignored, the planet burned up.’”

So said Ryan McElveen. The 2008 UVA graduate had been hoping that at least 50 people would appear for the protest he launched with some emails and flyers. He chose Friday, August 20, because that was the day that a judge, just a mile away, was hearing arguments on whether Cuccinelli’s inquest could move forward. Turns out that’s also the eve of move-in for the fall semester at UVA.

“Bad timing,” McElveen admitted (more)

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Jaquith: “It was a toxic environment for Kevin.”
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

The controversial suicide of an editor at UVA’s top literary journal made it to one of America’s most high-profile news programs Monday, the Today show on NBC. Including an in-studio interview with an expert, the program devoted nearly six minutes to the topic of workplace bullying, a phenomenon allegedly on display by boss Ted Genoways that some claim led to the death of 52-year-old Kevin Morrissey.

The 7:43am broadcast marked the first public comment by Waldo Jaquith, the usually outspoken blogger and VQR employee who has maintained a relative silence on the allegations since Morrissey’s July 30 death.

“It was a toxic environment for Kevin,” Jaquith told interviewer Jeff Rossen. “Ted’s treatment of Kevin in the last two weeks of his life was egregious, and it just ate Kevin up.”

Genoways’ lawyer Lloyd Snook also appeared on the program to defend his client. “Ted Genoways was not a workplace bully,” said Snook. “When Kevin Morrissey committed suicide, it was some combination of unhappiness at work combined with his own longstanding clinical depression.”

Morrissey’s sister, Maria, who was also interviewed for the piece, was generally pleased with the coverage, but wanted to point out an important error.

“They said Kevin’s suicide note blamed Ted,” says Morrissey, who sent Today show producers a copy of the note, “but that’s not true. No where in that note does it blame Ted or anyone else.”

Interestingly, Genoways lambasted Today show reporter Jeff Rossen in an editor’s note for the fall 2004 issue of the VQR, calling him a “smarmy reporter” with an “insatiable thirst for the most vicarious thrill and an aching desire to be first, not a sense of duty to be most considered and most correct.”

–with additional reporting by Dave McNair

To comment on this story, please go to the Hook’s original story: Tale of Woe: The Death of the VQR’s Kevin Morrissey.

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Following the suicide of Morrissey (inset), UVA president Teresa Sullivan has commissioned a “thorough review” of VQR management.
HOOK COVER

With the story behind the suicide of the Virginia Quarterly Review’s managing editor Kevin Morrissey making national news and new UVA President Teresa Sullivan intensifying her probe of the troubled journal, new information arises about the quandary facing Morrissey, including his own unwillingness to file an official complaint.

President Sullivan approved a financial audit two weeks ago but announced a broader examination Thursday, August 19, about three weeks after the suicide and one day after an in-depth article by Dave McNair appeared online, airing concerns about VQR’s questionable hiring practices, strange emails, dwindling finances, potential conflicts, and prior bullying allegations.

Now, there’s new information uncovered by McNair that shows that UVA had taken steps to educate employees and fight office bullying, but the University stopped short of enacting policies.

Former UVA President John Casteen, whose office long supported the award-winning VQR, has thus far declined to enter the fray. Meanwhile, while an alienated staff puts together the fall issue, embattled VQR editor Ted Genoways, who has retained a lawyer to fight the bullying allegations, remains on leave with a Guggenheim fellowship.

“They are trying to play you,” says Genoways lawyer Lloyd Snook in reference to those asserting the bullying allegations, which, because they involve personnel matters, he declines to specifically discuss. “We are looking forward to the investigation that President Sullivan is calling for,” says Snook, “because we assume that in that investigation, we will actually have some specifics to which we may respond.”

Multiple sources indicate that Morrissey, before taking his life, sought help from various UVA departments, including Human Resources, the President’s Office, and University Ombudsman Brad Holland, who— citing confidentiality agreements— declined to discuss Morrissey’s case.

Holland laments the fact that UVA has no formal anti-bullying policies in place and hopes Sullivan’s probe might lead to enacting some. It was Holland who, a little over a year ago, led (more)

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Yeardley Love and the man accused of murdering her.
PHOTO UVA ATHLETICS

In the days before the brutal May 3 slaying of UVA lacrosse player Yeardley Love, she and her former boyfriend George Huguely had an argument in his apartment that ended with Love hitting Huguely with her purse, according to statements from a Kappa Alpha Theta sorority sister who was there.

The contents of Love’s purse scattered, and later— once Love realized her camera and cellphone were missing— she asked her friend to go back to Huguely’s to retrieve them. The friend returned with only the camera, according to heavily redacted affidavits for warrants to search the two computers recovered in Huguely’s apartment at 230 14th NW for stored— or deleted— emails referring to Love between April 3 and May 3.

The warrants were filed August 17, and Judge Paul Peatross ordered them temporarily sealed. Only redacted versions of the affidavits have been released.

Among the information blacked out are the names of at least two of Love’s friends, who recounted hearing about an email Huguely sent Love. One of the friends was in a hotel room in Chicago with Love, who read it to her. Apparently the email was so gripping that Love read it to her friend out loud again (more)

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Dentist George Tisdelle was arrested nearly a week after a former employee says she was groped at his Ivy Road office.
MUGSHOT ALBEMARLE POLICE

It was a classic case of she-said/he-said. She said the farewell hug included a grope of her right buttock. He said it was a rub on the back. In Albemarle General District Court Wednesday, Judge Bob Downer found dentist George Tisdelle, 51, guilty of sexual battery, a Class 1 misdemeanor, and gave him 90 days, all suspended.

The young Ruckersville woman who filed the complaint testified that the groping took place on June 3, her last day working at Tisdelle’s Ivy Road practice, where she’d worked for a year.

“He came in to say goodbye,” Kristen Hanlan recalled. “He had his arms out and said, ‘Can I get a squeeze or a hug?’”

Defense attorney Rhonda Quagliana noted that the written complaint filed six days after the incident only mentioned a request for a hug, not a squeeze. And throughout the 90-minute trial, Quagliana portrayed a mere “A-frame hug” that her client allegedly used, with hands on the shoulders in a position far north of the derriere.

Former employee Hanlan disagreed. She portrayed a devilish dentist who pointed out that she was thin and then awkwardly reached southward.

“He came around and grabbed my right butt cheek,” she testified. “I was not expecting that.”

She also testified about an uncomfortable interlude, a months-earlier incident in which (more)

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What happened at the VQR?

HOOK’s 8/19  COVER

On John Casteen’s last official day in office as the president of the University of Virginia, a tragic story, one fit for the pages of the award-winning literary journal that he nurtured, began to unfold.

That Friday, July 30, the managing editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, 52-year-old Kevin Morrissey, took his own life. Since then, UVA has shrouded VQR behind a wall of silence, changing the office locks, launching an audit, and even routing all incoming telephone calls to the University’s public relations office.

A Hook investigation reveals that behind the staid, Thomas Jefferson-designed exterior of VQR’s headquarters swirl allegations of financial recklessness, conflicts of interest, and a bizarre pattern of management-by-email that drove a staffer to quit. Some say there was also a pattern of bullying that may have pushed a fragile man into tragic oblivion.

What’s more, according to a former VQR employee, University officials have known about some of the personnel problems for at least five years.

An ambitious editor

A group called the Workplace Bullying Institute minces no words about the situation, suggesting that Morrissey’s boss, VQR editor Theodore H. “Ted” Genoways was a bully and that UVA was “unresponsive.” But if Genoways has been cast as the problem, he also appears to be a key source of VQR’s success.

Hired in 2003 at the tender age of 31, Genoways arrived with high hopes and high praise including President John Casteen’s enthusiasm for his “energetic intelligence and visionary thinking.”

He transformed VQR— long known for publishing poetry and short stories on black & white pages— with punchy, magazine-style theme issues and loads of full-color photography. Along with the new look came an expanded mission including hard-hitting non-fiction such as Toni Morrison’s account of the long road to racial integration and an on-the-ground exposé on the capture of Saddam Hussein. Just three years after Genoways arrived, Casteen’s enthusiasm seemed justified as the journal won two National Magazine Awards, bringing new prominence to VQR, and to its young editor.

For Maria Morrissey, however, the older sister of the late Kevin Morrissey, the success also brought heartache. Based on information she gathered from VQR staffers, University officials, police, and her brother’s own notes, Maria Morrissey portrays Genoways as someone who created a work environment so hostile it became unbearable.

“Our family is convinced,” she says, “by all that we have learned since Kevin’s death that, were it not for Genoways’ relentless bullying, Kevin would be alive today.” (more)

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