The Williamsburg City Council voted unanimously to send the new four-person rule to the Williamsburg Planning Commission for two minor edits Thursday.

In December, the council voted to increase the occupancy limit of homes within the city’s rental inspection districts from three unrelated tenants to four. Those petitioning to allow a property to house four unrelated people must obtain permission from the city of Williamsburg, pending several inspections.
City Manager Jack Tuttle brought the issues with the new ordinance to the attention of the council.

The ordinance states that in order for a property to be considered for four-person occupancy, the owner must submit a site plan. Property owners must consult licensed engineers or architects and pay up to $500 to obtain site plans. Tuttle suggested the language be changed to “plot plan,” so that property owners would neither have to consult outside professionals nor pay a large sum of money.

“It would simply save an unnecessary expense, if that were changed from a site plan to a plot plan,” Tuttle said.

The city would check to ensure the plot plans’s accuracy since no architect or engineer’s seal would be required for the document to be valid.

The ordinance also requires properties being considered for four-person occupancy to undergo an electrical inspection to ensure the home can accommodate an extra renter. Tuttle said that since three related people can already live in dwellings without the electrical inspection, this part of the ordinance would not benefit the renters or owners and was just another expense.

“I feel there is enough protection there,” Tuttle said. “And there is no requirement no matter how many related people you have in a house to have a separate electrical inspection.”
Tuttle said that the site plan and the electrical inspection combined could cost up to $700.

“It does appear to be unnecessary bureaucracy without changing anything much if we already have inspections and can determine if there are enough parking spaces without site plans,” Williamsburg Mayor Jeanne Zeidler M.A. ’76 said.

Because the ordinance deals with zoning issues, it will be sent back to the planning commission for review before the city council can vote on the changes.

This week’s meeting of the College of William and Mary Student Assembly focused on “purposeful playing.”
In a 15-3 vote, the SA passed the Ping Pong Provision for Purposeful Playing Act II.

“This is round two because round one didn’t work out so well,” Sen. Ben Brown ’11 said.

The first act provided a ping pong ball dispenser, which was eventually stolen. The new bill allocates $75 from the consolidated reserve to purchase four containers that will be placed in the Sadler Center’s Student Exchange and at the Campus Center’s candy counter, as well as $400 to purchase 2,880 ping pong balls. To prevent theft of the dispensers, balls will be available for 25 cents during the hours these facilities are open.

After the initial investment, new ping pong balls will be bought with the money earned from the purchase of old ones.

“This bill essentially pays for itself,” Sen. Stef Felitto ’12 said.

Although some members of the SA expressed concern that the bill was frivolous, Brown said it provided a good service.

“I don’t know of any sales of ping pong balls on campus,” he said.

The SC Free Pool Act also passed by unanimous consent. The bill will cover the costs students currently pay to play pool in the SC games area.

“They charge for pool because they need money to make repairs for when the felt is scratched or when the cues break,” Sen. Brittany Fallon ’11 said. “This would be around the right amount [to make up the costs].”

The Free Pool Act allocates $1,000 from the Consolidated Reserve to fully subsidize student pool playing in the SC.

“Everyone loves pool,” Sen. Jim Dunleavey ’10 said.

The Student Organization Act, which would help provide planners to students, was introduced and will be voted on at a future meeting. The Office of Health Education and the Career Center, which have supplied the planners in the past, have lost funding due to decreased advertisement revenue.

The Potentially Necessary eBallot Upgrade Act was also introduced. The act would fund the integration of online voting for student elections through Blackboard Academic Suite.

“Students log in with their normal user ID and password … and vote on whatever election’s going on,” Brown said. “It’s likely that we will be able to create a new organization that’s responsible for maintaining our e-ballot.”

If created, this group would have its own budget to pay for the annual license needed for the online voting system.

The SA is also considering sponsoring a spring carnival similar to October’s Fall Spooktacular.

“There will be a return of the petting zoo,” Sen. Betty Jeanne Manning ’12 said.

Additionally, Grace Colby ‘13 was sworn into the senate during Tuesday’s meeting.

Manning also announced that the College would be switching its e-mail service to Gmail.

Sigma Phi Epsilon, returning to the College of William and Mary after a six-year hiatus following the loss of its charter, will begin recruitment Feb. 20, after all other fraternities’s Bid Signing Days. It will be the 19th fraternity on campus.

While re-establishing itself on campus, representatives of Sigma Phi Epsilon said the organization hopes to change the recruitment process by discarding recruitment tactics.

Now, after a member joins, he will go through a self-paced, four-step advancement through the organization. Sigma Phi Epsilon created this new program to encourage member retention.

The program is credited with improving Sigma Phi Epsilon’s national GPA and giving Sigma Phi Epsilon the largest undergraduate membership of any fraternity nationally. Other fraternities have introduced similar programs at the College.

Along with this program, the Sigma Phi Epsilon national organization created a voluntary board of nine members to nurture the chapter at its inception and pledge support to the growth of the new chapter.

Representatives from Sigma Phi Epsilon said they were excited to re-establish the organization on campus.

“We are confident that this college has many outstanding students who are currently not involved with the Greek community and [who] have the potential to be great leaders,” Sigma Phi Epsilon Director of New Chapter Development Ryan Dressler said.

To ensure that Sigma Phi Epsilon does not take students bound for other fraternities this semester, the Council for Fraternity Affairs barred it from recruiting until the pledge classes of this semester have already committed.

Another fraternity — Sigma Alpha Epsilon — came to campus last fall.

Sigma Alpha Epsilon is the largest fraternity nationally, but has had considerable difficulty in recruiting at the College, garnering only four total brothers.

“I think when you’re starting an organization from the ground up, challenges arise where you’re trying to establish a working process,” Sigma Alpha Epsilon President Andrew Tran ’11 said. “Nothing is set up for you and getting everything created and organized takes time and a lot of energy.”

A number of current brothers and alumni have since developed an organizational foundation, giving Sigma Alpha Epsilon the ability to focus on recruitment. Tran acknowledged this as a difficult task in a school with 19 fraternities.

Although Sigma Alpha Epsilon still lacks the manpower to launch events that larger Greek organizations are able to host, the organization has contributed philanthropically including hosting a poker tournament to support William and Mary Supports Haiti.

The organization also plans to send as many brothers as possible to Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s leadership school over the summer.

The Ukrop’s chain of grocery stores was officially purchased Feb. 8 by Giant-Carlisle, a U.S. division of the international Amsterdam-based company Royal Ahold. The 25 stores were purchased for approximately $140 million. The sale, first announced in December, included the transition of current Ukrop’s employees to the new company.

The popular chain of family-owned Ukrop’s supermarkets began as a single store established in 1937 by Joseph Ukrop and have been operated by his sons Robert and Jim ’61 since 1974. Ukrop’s Super Markets Inc. also owns First Market Bank, of which Jim is the CEO.

Jim and his wife Barbara ’61 are both alumni of the College of William and Mary, and have remained active supporters for many years. Their son Robert graduated from the College in 1985.
Jim served on the Board of Visitors from 1985 until 1993. He also served as president of the College of William and Mary Foundation, the Tribe Club and the Alumni Association. Barbara served on the BOV between 2001 and 2009, as well as the Major Gifts Committee and the Student Advancement Association. Both have been awarded the Alumni Medallion, the Alumni Association’s highest honor.

Jim and Barbara have financially supported many of the College’s programs, including both men’s and women’s athletics, as well as institutions like Earl Gregg Swem library, the Mason School of Business, the School of Education and the Alumni Association. They donated funds in 2000 that will be used to build a new soccer and lacrosse stadium. Campus Drive was even renamed Ukrop Way in 2006 to honor their contributions.

According to Robert Ukrop, the decision to sell the company was partially fueled by concerns that the chain’s small size would prevent it from being able to compete with larger industry leaders. Ukrop’s was recently replaced by Food Lion as the top competitor in local market shares, a position it had held since 1986. Jim Ukrop stated in a recent press conference that changes like selling alcohol and remaining open on Sundays would not have been enough to solve the company’s long-term problems.

Ukrop’s stores will be gradually renamed “Martin’s” throughout the spring. The stores will be open on Sundays and begin to sell beer and wine upon adoption of the new name.

“Before we made the announcement, we gathered a lot of feedback from the community in a variety of ways … about what they liked about Ukrop’s and what they would like to see changed,” Director of Public and Community Relations for Giant Tracy Pawelski said. “We believe that Monday’s announcement is very much a reflection of the feedback we received.”

According to the Grant-Carlisle CEO, traditions such as employees carrying groceries to a customer’s car will “absolutely” remain in effect.

“As far as other policy changes, as we make decisions, we will announce those and try to communicate proactively with customers and associates,” Pawelski said.

First Market Bank will not be affected by the transition and will continue to operate in the 23 stores where they are already present, including the Williamsburg location.

Ukrop’s bakery will also remain unchanged, and will function as a separate company run by Robert Ukrop.
Royal Ahold owns about 6,500 stores worldwide, which include US supermarkets Stop-and-Shop and Bi-Lo.

The company has just recently begun to refocus on expansion after its American division, U.S. Foodservice, experienced a massive fraud scandal in 2003.

Giant-Carlisle alone owns over 150 stores in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia, including those in the Giant and Martin’s chains.

Barbara Ukrop declined to comment for this story.

In 2003, the College of William and Mary joined with Brigham Young University to create an interdisciplinary joint initiative called Project-Level Aid, which centers on creating a web-accessible database to catalogue financial aid given to developing nations. The database monitors its effectiveness and how external factors like the environment-impact aid, and the group publishes its findings for public and government use.

“One of the main questions we’re trying to answer is, ‘Is aid effective?,’” Michael Tierney, government professor and PLAID leader, said. “‘Does it achieve the purposes for which it is given?’ In order to answer that, you need a database that has more of the foreign aid projects in the world, and one that is more accurate in terms of the type of aid that is given … We think we have that.”

PLAID is currently the largest development finance database in the world, with over 837,000 projects worth an estimated total of $4 trillion.

Tierney said that the database would also enable donor nations to contact one another.

“They can use the information in the database to help coordinate their activities,” he said. “If you’re doing a water project in Tanzania, it might help you to know who else in Tanzania is doing a water project.”

PLAID is led by Tierney, economics professor Robert Hicks and sociology professor J. Timmons Roberts, and is funded by large organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and by smaller private contributors. Brad Parks, a researcher with the College’s international relations department, is also involved.

Students at the College also take part in projects such as contacting government officials and compiling data too complicated to be arranged by computers.

PLAID catalogues large-and small-scale financial aid projects since 1970 and provides daily updates. The database has already collected previously unpublished data from 19 countries, and has identified at least 30 more.

Data on large donors like the United States, France and the United Kingdom is collected from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Researchers led by Jonathan Chan ’09 also contact donor countries that traditionally do not report the aid they are giving.

“My job is to contact relevant officials in the government, like their ministry of foreign affairs, and explain what we’re doing here,” he said. “We explain the benefits of reducing global poverty … We also emphasize the benefit to them in that it is good publicity.”

Chan said that the process is intensive and often lengthy.

“It can be very intimidating,” he said. “And it can take months to actually get the data.”

Last year PLAID partnered with Development Gateway, a foundation that studies international development, to create AIDdata, an internet program that combines information from the PLAID database with web-based tools that can be used to track and analyze information.

This system simplifies the process of interpreting development finance by breaking it down into smaller categories, by deciding which nations receive aid and how much. It also seeks to make this information more understandable by providing “data visualization tools,” which convert raw information into interactive maps, to making tracking financial aid patterns easier.

The project’s primary goal is to enable government officials and policy writers to make more informed decisions regarding the allocation of funds, thereby improving the overall effectiveness of the financial aid system.

The information will be available to everyone from individuals to national governments.

AIDdata will be officially launched at the Aid Transparency and Development Finance Conference at Oxford University in March.

The first of three focus group meetings about the future of Greek housing at the College of William and Mary was held Tuesday night, with only three students in attendance.

Associate Director of Student Activities Anne Arseneau ’89 said the poor turnout was not unexpected.

“I’m not totally surprised, but I would hope that we have more in the future,” she said. “We provided the message in Greek Digest, but there were some technical difficulties and it went out later than I think [Council for Fraternal Affairs President Ian Fenwick ’10] had hoped it would go … It’s not really symptomatic of anything. It’s easy to think others will respond, and that you don’t have to.”

Arseneau met with members of the Delta Chi and Kappa Sigma fraternities to discuss their ideal fraternity housing design.

“We’re just trying to compile lots of conversations about what people don’t like about what we currently have,” she said. “We’re collecting feedback from constituent groups for the ideal setup of fraternity housing. What would we do differently?”

Arseneau asked the fraternity members questions ranging from what they thought the underlying purpose of fraternity housing was to what design elements would be present in a perfect situation.
Fenwick said that future Greek housing must provide individual buildings for each fraternity with an individual building.

“Obviously if we’re actually going to think about building different places, one thing that comes up a lot is separate buildings — separate houses, not fraternity stairwells,” Fenwick said.

Fenwick said that separate buildings would alleviate the security problems fraternities currently face by sharing entrances and stairwells.

“For entrances for the actual building, I’d say two entrances,” he said. “That really will help mitigate the risk-management problem. Right now, to get into a unit, you don’t just have a front and a back door; you can also come in from all different sides. Two entrances — one in front and one in back — would be best.”
Delta Chi House Manager Ethan Smith ’13 said that the goal of fraternity housing should be to build bonds between brothers.

“I think fellowship is one of the bases of fraternities,” Smith said. “It’s absolutely vital to keeping a pledge class strong and to bringing alumni back.”

Although housing is important to creating unity within a chapter, Smith said that the units failed in other ways.

“A lot of people can’t — or won’t — live in a unit,” he said. “The units were built in the 60s, when membership was around 70 to 80 members. I don’t think we’re ever going to see that again in terms of fraternity size.”

According to Arseneau, one option the College could pursue is fraternity housing of different sizes.

“The units right now are [occupied by] around 35 people, and that’s the one option we have,” Arseneau said. “Would the ideal have a set number, or would it have a range of numbers available? Would the ideal scenario be to have a seven-person option, a 12-person option, a 15-person option and a 10-person option? Or would it be the opposite — that we would have fifteen 20-person options?”

Arseneau said that the focus group’s present Greek students should take advantage of a forum to voice their opinions on the current state of Greek affairs.

“I think having the CAP [Coalition Assessment Project] experience provided an opportunity,” Arseneau said. “Everybody else thinks someone else will be the one to voice the feedback. But remember, this is just the first of three.”

Another focus group session was held last night in the Colony Room of the Sadler Center.

However, the meeting was unattended by students.

An additional focus group will be held Feb. 18 at 6 p.m. in the York Room.

Four bills to limit out-of-state enrollment at state schools were tabled Monday by a Virginia House of Delegates subcommittee, delaying the potential legislature from progressing for at least another year.

The bills were tabled by a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, which recommended that the issue be studied over the coming year by Gov. Bob McDonnell’s advisory commission on higher education.

One bill in particular, introduced by Del. Timothy Hugo ’86 (R-Fairfax), would have required state universities to enroll at least 75 percent of their students from in-state schools. The proposed bill would have affected the College of William and Mary, which currently enrolls 63 percent in-state students, the University of Virginia, at 62 percent, Virginia Tech, 70 percent, and James Madison University, 71 percent.

Hugo, who has previously referred to the College as “the University of New Jersey, Williamsburg campus,” and U.Va. as “the University of New York, Charlottesville campus,” has addressed the issue numerous times on the House floor this year, arguing that qualified in-state students are being denied because out-of-state students are “flocking in” due to relatively low tuition rates of Va. state universities.

For the College, the implications of such a bill would be serious. College spokesman Brian Whitson noted that increasing the in-state student ratio to 75 percent would result in a reduction of about $9 million in revenues to the College’s operating budget.

Hugo’s bill would have required that this loss of revenue be made up by increasing out-of-state tuition. Whitson said, however, that such a measure would be extremely unlikely.

“William and Mary does not have much more flexibility in terms of increasing the proportion of our tuition costs paid by out-of-state students,” he said.

Currently, out-of-state students provide nearly 70 percent of all tuition paid by students, and each out-of-state undergraduate pays approximately $20,000 more in tuition than Va. residents.

“The state does not provide adequate funding per student, so this policy would be a real hit to the budget,” College Provost Michael Halleran said. “Quality education would diminish because of that.”

Del. Jimmie Massie (R-Richmond) also opposed the bill, despite its personal appeal.

“As a parent of a high school senior — daddy’s only daughter — who is applying to three out of the four schools [affected by the bill] I am very sensitive to this,” he said.

Massie said that if an in-state student applies to all four of the state schools in question, they have a 96 percent chance of being accepted into at least one of them.

“Part of a full spectrum of higher education opportunities for college seniors includes schools with healthy percentages of national and international students,” he said.

College officials agreed that limiting the number of out-of-state and international students admitted to the College would have implications for its quality and diversity.

“We think our out-of-state students add a great deal to this campus and to the Commonwealth beyond just the obvious financial implications, though those are also significant,” Whitson said. “Having a talented and diverse student body — and having students from across the country and from the rest of the world — is one of the reasons so many young people want to attend William and Mary.”

Halleran said that the incoming class would not be as strong academically if the College enrolled 75 percent Virginia residents.

“The truth is, William and Mary is a very competitive institution, with very rigorous standards,” Halleran said. “There will always be a lot of good students who will not get in. Would more Virginia students get in? Obviously. But there would still be quality students that would not get in.”

Whitson said that admitting non-Virginian residents does more than increasing diversity and quality of the College.

“Out-of-state students are important contributors to both the College of William and Mary and the economic future of the Commonwealth,” he said. “Many out-of-state students come to school in Virginia and decide to stay here for life.”