(By W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia) “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family,” Justice Anthony Kennedy rightly argued in his majority opinion in the Obergefell v. Hodges case. Even today, when marriage is less likely to guide our lives, relationships and families, it’s still the case that marriage is without peer when it comes to calling forth the best in our relational lives.
Meditative techniques were widespread in northern India by the time that Gautama Buddha was born, around 480 B.C. Ascetics roamed the countryside, wearing rags and begging for their meals, and the Buddha became one of them. He famously achieved enlightenment—his insights about the cause of suffering and the way to end it—while meditating under a pipal tree. The Buddha taught his followers that practicing meditation was crucial to preparing their minds for enlightenment. For most of Buddhism’s history, however, meditation wasn’t actually practiced that much, outside of m...
Channing Tatum has gone from being a stripper in Florida to one of Hollywood’s top earners. What does that do to a person? Joseph Allen, a psychologist at the University of Virginia who was the lead author of the study on popular kids published in Child Development, has a cute term for this: “The high school reunion effect,” in which the beautiful ones return looking diminished, to the quiet glee of rehabilitated nerds in their Audis. Tatum, if he hadn’t stumbled into movie stardom — hardly the career he dreamed of while on the football field at Tampa Cathol...
Communication has always been key to opportunity for the deaf community. But technological advances, which have changed the way everyone communicates, and a growing popularity among college students to learn American Sign Language have removed even more obstacles to the deaf community and the hearing community connecting. "Recent technology advances have been very good to bridge gaps between deaf and hearing people," said Christopher Krentz, an English and ASL professor at the University of Virginia, using video-phone technology to speak.
Former Virginia soccer stars Morgan Brian and Becky Sauerbrunn and current Cavalier coach Steve Swanson are World Cup champions.
Ren You is a 29-year-old with a Harvard MBA and a job at a private equity firm. He is also someone who does not like to be inefficient and does not want to miss out on opportunities. Those two character traits led You to develop a novel way to find love. The Birmingham, Alabama, resident is offering $10,000 to anyone who can find him a girlfriend of six months or more. He is accepting applications now on his website, DateRen.com. The University of Virginia alumni says he received a handful of submission after launching the website earlier this week but now has around 400 potential d...
When 17-year-old Zyrees Oliver collapsed after a high school football practice last August, his friends and family likely did not guess that the cause wasn't the heat and humidity, but actually overhydraton. The medical term for this — drinking too much water — is hyponatremia, a condition that can be fatal in endurance athletes, and as recent incidents have shown, children participating in sports on hot summer days. Mitchell H. Rosner, M.D., a professor of medicine at the University of Virginia and an expert on hydration, told weather.com that young athletes should be taught t...
On the heels of his latest Supreme Court victory, President Barack Obama visited Tennessee Wednesday touting his signature health care plan — a victory lap that signals his focus has shifted to changing the national conversation from repealing the law to ways to improve it "There's very little chance that much will change on the ACA front during President Obama's term. Obama has secured the program for now. As long as a Democrat wins the White House or Democrats win the Senate, Obamacare will continue to be safe," said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics a...
Virginia has a new law that allows mothers to breastfeed their babies in many public places and not get hassled. Mothers with young children in baby strollers joined other advocates of breastfeeding (pictured) Wednesday in Charlottesville’s Lee Park. University of Virginia nurse and lactation consultant Valerie Goodman says breastfeeding mothers have been immunes from legal hassles for years in other states.
When I got the assignment a couple of months ago to write about Jefferson and his protégé William Short and their dialogue about race and slavery, the nine murdered worshipers at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston were still alive. We’ve lost far too many people to race-inflected violence and outrage in recent years, but this feels different. It feels impossible now to dive in to telling a story about race from 200 years ago without acknowledging at the outset this most recent stain on our nation. This story starts and ends with a mystery document. It’s like a whodunit,” s...
President Barack Obama will nominate Lt. Gen. Robert “Bob” Neller, a infantry officer who commanded Marines in Iraq, as commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced Wednesday. Neller holds a bachelor’s degree in history and speech communication from the University of Virginia as well as a master’s in human resource management from Pepperdine University.
(By Maurie McInnis, a professor of art history at the University of Virginia and author of Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade.) The notion that the flag is a symbol of Southern heritage and nothing more is an ahistorical one. From the moment it was designed it was intended to convey the South’s reliance on the institution of slavery. When it has been revived by later generations, they, too, have imbued it with meaning. But it has always been a symbol of white power and racial oppression.
Remote Area Medical (RAM) will be returning for the 16th year to the Wise County Fair Grounds in Wise, VA during the weekend of July 17-19. RAM is a non-profit, all volunteer organization that provides FREE dental, medical, and vision care to isolated and rural communities in the United States and abroad. The purpose of RAM is to provide FREE care to the uninsured, underinsured, unemployed, working poor, and others that cannot afford to pay.
A professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine is leading a team of avian flu researchers. Dr. Lukas Tamm and his team are trying to understand more about how the influenza virus passes from birds to humans. The hope is to create a tool that will predict the risk of potentially deadly outbreaks.
Less than 30 percent of Virginia’s adolescent girls were vaccinated for human papillomavirus (HPV) last year, despite the fact that the Commonwealth was one of the first to pass legislation mandating the vaccine for sixth grade girls. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) wants to know why vaccination rates for HPV—the most common sexually transmitted disease in the U.S., which can lead to at least six types of cancer—are so low among girls and boys, and granted $138,000 to the University of Virginia Health System for a study to map out compliance rates across the state. &ldquo...
The University of Virginia released an updated version of its sexual assault policy Wednesday afternoon to comply with changes in state law. One of the laws requires employees of colleges and universities report sexual assault to the institution’s Title IX coordinator. The coordinator, meeting with a committee, then decides whether it is necessary to report the information to law enforcement authorities.
In light of a few recent allegations and related negative press regarding the University of Virginia men’s swim team, we, the incoming men’s Class of 2019, want to share our perspective. All nine of us stand by the University, the team and our coaching staff. Every single one of us fell in love with U.Va. and remain convinced it represents a perfect place to grow and reach our personal, academic and athletic goals. We are excited to come in and work hard, to do what is necessary for the team and for each other.
WXTJ, a radio station run entirely by University of Virginia students, will begin broadcasting at 100.1 FM to supplement its continuing online broadcasts. A date has not been set yet for FM broadcasting to begin, but station officials hope to have the station going live on FM by the end of the upcoming fall semester.
At age 82 and in “retirement” Jefferson founded the University of Virginia, designing its buildings and curriculum and watching its construction from Monticello by means of a telescope trained on the campus through a clearing in the forest created for that reason.When we took a walk through the campus to see the Rotunda and The Lawn at its heart, we very much felt Jefferson’s presence. In the drama department that was gearing up for this summer’s Heritage Theater Festival we chatted with Robert Chapel, the festival’s producing artistic director, who told us our ex...
She has a varied background in dance and is currently a student of a University of Virginia vocal teacher. The 20-year-old is a rising junior at U.Va., where she studies foreign affairs and Arabic. She hopes to one day serve as an FBI agent and ultimately run for Congress.