__Rental Inspection Program allows city to inspect rental houses in blighted areas every time occupants change__

A 2002 report from Williamsburg Planning Director Reed Nester identified four zones that were deemed blighted based on the number of registered complaints, proximity to the College and on the neighborhoods’ “history of residential structures that lack facilities that provide minimum levels of health, safety and welfare to the occupant, including the dilapidation of buildings and other structures.”

p. The report identifies two of the zones, along Richmond and Jamestown roads, as providing “housing to a substantial number of College students.” According to Sharpe program data cited in the report, 62 percent of the off-campus student population lived in the zones at the time.

p. Rental units within the zones are subject to inspection once every four years and upon change of occupants. Code violations often result in more frequent inspections. The city and state both cite the health and safety of residents as the primary reason for rental and housing inspections.

p. According to former City Councilman Billy Scruggs, the creation of the conservation zones stemmed from a handful of tenants “believed to be students, who were being a nuisance.”

p. Scruggs described the city’s response as “one-size-fits-all.” He said he can see why students believe they are being alienated by the city.

p. He said that the city and its residents’ concern regarding property values may play a role in the city’s stringent code enforcement.

p. Jenna Casebolt ’08 and Kelly Flanagan ’08, whose home was cited for code violations last year for having debris in their backyard, agree with Scruggs’ assessment.

p. “I can understand the city’s position on trying to keep the city tidy,” Casebolt said. “But when it’s out of sight and not a hazard … I don’t understand.”

p. Mayor Jeanne Zeidler defended the conservation zones and rental inspections. She said the zones were selected based on their respective histories of high numbers of property maintenance cases.

p. She cited incidences at other college campuses, where student renters died in fires or from carbon monoxide poisoning due to poor conditions in their rental homes.

p. Zeidler mentioned a case in Williamsburg where an inspection revealed a gas leak that had gone undetected as an example of the program’s importance to public safety.

p. “We want these houses to be safe and healthy,” Zeidler said. “These inspections apply equally to student renters and others who rent in the [conservation] zones.”

p. City landlord Gary Shelly ’72 called the current program a “travesty.”

p. Shelly said that the city used the Rental Inspection Program as a tool to find student violations of the three-person rule. Shelly added that the city requirements that call for an inspection every time a house changes tenants are excessive.

p. Stanley Skinner, the new codes compliance administrator, said as long as there are no complaints of infractions, there won’t be any problems for renters.

p. James Banton, an inspector for the city, said some of the more common infractions were peeling paint, broken windows and gutter problems.

p. Flanagan and Casebolt said that although they had done their best to keep their yard neat, they were still cited by the city for blight conditions.

p. “It’s an older property,” Casebolt said. “And we couldn’t afford to get gardeners or contractors.”

p. Zeidler defended the regulations.

p. “Chipped paint is aesthetic, but it allows moisture to get into the building, which leads to mold,” Zeidler said. “Also, children can eat the paint chips. So it all really falls under health and safety.”

Local news station WAVY-TV 10 presented the Jefferson Award for Public Service to Daniel Key ’08 Oct. 26.

p. The award recognized Key for his service to the Williamsburg community.

p. Key said that there are 10 winners every year from the WAVY-TV 10 viewing area, and he was one of three college students among the WAVY-TV 10 winners for this year.

p. According to a William and Mary News release, Key’s service activities include Housing Partnerships, Inc., Circle K International, the Service Leader Corps, spring break service trips, summer service and the Bequia Sunshine Project, as well as working in the Office of Student Volunteer Services. Key also said that he is involved with the Community Service Leaders.

p. During spring break of his freshman year, Key went to Atlanta, Ga. through a now-defunct organization called Help Unlimited; sophomore year, he went to Bay St. Louis, Miss. with Project Relief; for his junior year spring break, he co-led a service trip to Biloxi, Miss.

p. Key said that he was required to do 40 hours of service during every year in which he attended his private high school. Key cited his current roommate’s involvement in service from the beginning of his time at the College, as well as his own participation in the Atlanta spring break service trip during his freshman year as how he became involved in service while at the College.

p. “A big part of service for me is looking at the why, too; not just looking at the situation, but also looking at why the situation is occurring and what can I do to change that,” Key said.
Over winter break, Key will participate in his first international service trip with the Bequia Sunshine Project. On the trip to the Caribbean island Bequia the volunteers will paint a local high school and tutor kids.

p. As for his plans for after graduation, Key said that he has been mostly looking at one-year service positions, such as AmeriCorp. He has also applied to work on a sustainable farm in Vermont for six months.

Prime Tribe, or non-traditionally aged students, provide the College with an underrepresented form of diversity — age.
For some non-traditionally aged students, service to their country came before an education.

p. Tom Jones ’09 was a Marine for several years before attending the College under the support of the GI Bill, the Marine Corps College Fund and his wife. Despite all the financial support, Jones still works part-time at the Marketplace to help pay bills.
“It’s a lot, but it’s easier to handle now that I’m a little older and more disciplined,” he said.

p. Dana Clay ’08 is a 27-year-old Air Force veteran currently attending the William and Mary in Washington program. She feels that military and real world working experience have better equipped her for success.

p. Many non-traditional students return to the College in hopes of advancing their career opportunities.

p. “When people ask me what I plan on doing with my degree, my usual response is double my income,” Kathy Eggers ’09 said.
Beth Henry ’09 came to the College looking forward to a “life outside of children.”

p. “I went to college when I was 18, but played much more than studied and then got married. I had five children and when the [last] one was in high school, I decided to go back and finish a degree,” she said.

p. Other students have found their children to be a source of inspiration.

p. “One of the most important reasons for going back to school is because I didn’t want to say to my children that they must go to college if I had not done it for myself,” Lara Overy ’08 said.
Cheryl Frankum ’08 said that her four children support her and that she keeps a Tuesday through Thursday class schedule to minimize her time away from home.

p. “They are particularly fascinated with meeting mommy’s professors,” she said.

p. There are many students for whom the College is their first higher education experience.

p. “I was a child of the ’50s [when] women were encouraged to marry young and have children, so that is what I did,” Kathleen Rose ’10 said.

p. Rose, a part-time art history major, went back to school to serve as a role model for her children and grandchildren.

p. “It is important to me to be a role model to my children and grandchildren by pursuing a college education at my age,” she said. “I know I illustrate the power of determination, imagination, courage and hope not only to my family but to my fellow co-workers as well.”

p. Most non-traditionally aged students say they have had fairly good experiences fitting into the College community.

p. “Most of the time kids don’t even pay attention to me, in the sense that I’m ‘different’ than they are,” Katarina Kochan ’09 said. “They treat me just like I’m their age.”

p. Neil Riley ’08 came to the College after leaving the Army in 2006, and his freshman year pledged Lambda Chi Alpha.

p. “Everyone usually jokes and laughs about it, sometimes calling me ‘Blue,’” Riley said, referring to an elderly pledge in the 2003 comedy “Old School.” “It doesn’t really bother me though.”

p. Besides attending classes, many older students attend campus events with their families.

p. “During orientation weekend, I brought my son with me. It turned out to be a very inspiring weekend for him, and he’s now setting his sights on [the College] in 2014,” Eggers said.

p. While students appreciate the experience, they believe there are ways the College could improve.

p. “I would love to see the traditional student body being more welcoming [of non-traditional students], particularly as more and more of us are realizing that you can’t make it anymore without a degree, and more and more of us are returning to school to pursue our education,” Eggers said. “Aren’t we ‘Prime Tribers’ part of that diversity too?”

College graduate students Ryan Burdge ’08 and Jonathan Holley ’08 recently received grants for their research projects from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the Virginia Environmental Endowment, respectively. Burdge’s research focuses on the health of bluebirds living near pesticide-treated golf courses and Holley is researching stormwater management practices, according to a College press release.

p. “I’ve always been interested in how human landscapes could be incorporated into wildlife conservation efforts,” Burdge said.
He is specifically interested in the quality of life of Eastern bluebirds on golf courses. He will monitor the bluebirds’ breeding success and determine if and how the birds are ingesting pesticides.

p. Burdge is building on research conducted by former College graduate student Dr. Dan Cristol, his advisor. Burdge received a total of $27,500 for his research. He needs the funds for pesticide analysis, field supplies, travel costs and research stipends.
Holley said that his research on the effectiveness of stormwater retention ponds was prompted by a previous job where he inspected retention ponds in North Carolina. Retention ponds retain and treat stormwater runoff before channeling it into local streams.

p. Stormwater runoff can carry pollutants that may cause serious damage to streams.

p. “Stormwater management … has outpaced the science; the levels of water quality improvement associated with retention ponds are for the most part unknown,” Holley said.

p. Holley’s grant was $15,400. The money will go to purchasing lab equipment, field equipment and water samplers for analysing water samples for pollutants.

p. Burdge and Holley will both graduate from the College’s Master of Science program in 2008.

From the beaches of the Atlantic Ocean to the towering Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia has a wealth of diverse landscapes that can suit almost anyone’s desire to see the great outdoors.

p. One of the most ecologically and geologically interesting places in Virginia rests within the boundaries of the Shenandoah National Park, situated in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The park is surrounded by the Shenandoah River and Valley to the west and the Virginia Piedmont to the east.

p. The Shenandoah National Park hosts a rich geological history, which explains the way the Appalachian Mountains formed.
According to the National Park Service, 1 to 1.2 billion years ago, tectonic plates collided to form the Grenville Mountain range in the area where the Appalachian Mountains now stand.

p. Around 570 million years ago, tectonic plates moved apart and lava began to flow, erupting at rift zones along the surface.
The lava flows that exuded from the rift zones formed the Catoctin Formation, creating broad, rolling plains similar to those found around Big Meadows in the Shenandoah National Park. The original lava flows were originally composed of basalt.

p. As they metamorphosed, they became richer in chlorite and epidote, and then became greenstones, which cap many peaks in the park. These greenstones produce jagged cliffs composed of very fine grains. The rocks tend to be of a light gray to rusted red color, but if freshly exposed, they appear green.

p. Sedimentary rocks in the park belong to a rock group known as the Chilhowee Group. This group is broken into three formations: the Weverton formation, composed of early river deposits; the Hampton formation, composed of lagoonal deposits; and the Erwin formation, which created beach sand.

p. The North American and African tectonic plates eventually collided with each other, fracturing the sea floor and causing the older metamorphic rock to tilt upward and slide under the younger sedimentary rock. This event created the Appalachian Mountains.
Over the past 250 million years, wind and water have eroded the Appalachian Mountains, transforming them from the jagged peaks of their initial original formation to the rounder peaks common today.

p. Whether you are interested in the complexity of the ecology and the geologic formations of the Appalachian Mountains or would prefer to simply hike or camp around them, the Shenandoah National Park offers a chance for everyone to explore the beauty and wonder of the Appalachian Mountains.

Question: Do you remember the first time you used the internet?
It’s been said that our generation is the first to be fully immersed in the Information Age. Indisputably, we depend on technology far more than our distant predecessors, but even our immediate antecedents weren’t as tech-savvy as we are.

p. Compare, say, students circa 2000 to students circa 2007, and you’ll find that we’re markedly more reliant on electronic devices of all sizes and functions. Likewise, I’m sure the Class of 2018 will be “connected” in ways that will make us feel ancient and out of touch.

p. What’s remarkable is that we haven’t just grown up with the internet; the internet has grown up with us. When I was in fifth grade, the internet — at least as a tool for mass communication — was in its nonage. Now that I’ve matured (relatively), it has too (also relatively).

p. I’ve been struggling for the past few weeks to recall my first exposure, and despite my best efforts, I’ve come up empty-handed. Presumably it was sometime between 1995 and 1997. There must have been a discrete moment when some adult took me aside and said, “Dan: This is the world wide web. Take a look. We think it’s going to be pretty big.”

p. As a result of being introduced so early in our lives, we seldom think about the basic act of navigating through virtual space. We take the internet’s structure — a series of pages, traversable via hypertext links — for granted. Back in the ’70s and ’80s, though, cyberculture theorists were abuzz with ideas as to how the internet might come to look and feel. Perhaps it would resemble reality; maybe it would be entirely text-based; corporations could dominate it.

p. The history of the medium is fascinating, but it’s too complex to pursue without seriously violating my word limit. (In true Information Age style, I recommend that you read the Wikipedia entry “Information Age.”)

p. During the past 15 years, roughly, the terminology and taxonomy has become daunting in and of itself. Capitalizing “internet” is passé; references to the “world wide web” are similarly antiquated, despite the fact that “www” is still a prefix for most major URLs; and if you so much as think the phrase “information superhighway,” you might as well move into a cave and start using your cell phone and laptop as a makeshift mortar and pestle.

p. Despite the unprecedented growth of the web and our inability to function without it, few are able to remember how they got started. A friend of mine recalls feeling uneasy when an older relative designed a personal website for her. It had a pink background with a few other images, and it played a poor MIDI imitation of a hit song. The relative told her that everybody using the internet could view it whenever they liked. He thought this was the paragon of cool; my friend found it frightening.

p. Frightening, indeed: I perceived the nascent internet as a deviant, anarchic place. (But is it a “place,” really? What does it mean to imagine it as such?)

p. Like many of my peers, I would go into chat rooms and pretend to be 18 or 19 — given the prominence of shorthand, it was easy to act older. But the warnings, even then, were myriad. Don’t open any suspicious e-mails. Don’t go to any unrecognizable websites. Don’t speak to strangers or, if you do, don’t tell them who you really are. Even in its comparative infancy, the virtual realm held threats that correlated with reality. The virus and the pervert, two of America’s biggest fears, were alive and well in cyberspace. No one’s identity could be verified, and the precepts of simulated selfhood became continually more amorphous. There was an underlying dread that the internet existed solely to deceive us.

p. Maybe that’s why so few of us remember our inaugural experience: The thrill is gone. Like cars and airplanes, the internet feels safer now, and its increasing popularity will only make it more so.

p. It would be prudent, I think, to be skeptical of its grasp on us. Discerning whether we’re captivated or enslaved by it might soon become impossible. After all, most of us are no longer posing as someone when we go online — another term whose expiration date is fast approaching. At present, we endeavor to be “ourselves” in the parallel universes of Facebook and AIM, and we’re seldom (if ever) disconnected. I’m wary of any system that conflates the public and private spheres.

p. One request: If you can recollect your introduction to the web, please e-mail me at depiep@wm.edu. I’m interested in reading your stories. Our generation’s relationship with technology is unprecedented in scope and complexity. The more aware of this we become, the more we stand to use it judiciously.

p. __Dan Piepenbring is a Confusion Corner columnist. He may not remember his first time, but Facebook notifications remind him of everyone else’s latest moves.__