ACC announces Grant of Rights deal: Realignment coming to an end?

AFP

The Atlantic Coast Conference Council of Presidents announced today that each of the current and future 15-member institutions has signed a grant of media rights, effective immediately. The news might not mean much at first glance, but according to analysts, the deal will prevent the ACC from having its members poached until the 2026-2027 academic year at the earliest, meaning a likely end, for now, anyway, to the ongoing instability that has marked college conference memberships.

Gov. Bob McDonnell to college, university presidents: Limit tuition increases

AFP

Gov. Bob McDonnell issued a letter earlier this month urging college presidents and boards to voluntarily keep in-state tuition increases for the upcoming fall semester to the annual increase in the Consumer Price Index. Virginia colleges and universities worked closely with the administration last year to hold tuition increases to an average of 4.1 percent, the lowest average tuition increase in a decade. Virginia’s colleges and universities are currently determining tuition rates for the upcoming school year.

Bob McDonnell: Wide support for amendments to transportation bill

Chris Graham

Throughout the 2013 General Assembly Session, nearly 60 transportation and business groups representing a diverse cross section of industries and associations in all parts of the Commonwealth endorsed Gov. Bob McDonnell’s Virginia’s Road to the Future transportation funding and reform plan. The organizations listed below have now endorsed the governor’s amendments to make the legislation easier to implement and to address legal concerns about the bill and are urging the General Assembly to move the amended legislation forward.

David Reynolds: The Great Shell Game

David Reynolds

After 27 years the General Assembly finally made some progress towards meeting Virginia’s transportation needs. That is, if you are willing to call the oddest collection of taxes and revenue transfers ever attempted since 1619 “progress.” I call it the biggest shell game to ever come out of Richmond. Or Williamsburg.

Churches hearing, holding and hoping amid mental health challenges

AFP

We tend to see mental illness as something that happens out there, to stigmatized strangers on the fringe of our churches, when in fact mental health issues affect our families, friends, loved ones, congregants, and many of us personally. In short, mental illness is experienced by everyone in church communities – by “us” and our loved ones, not just by “them.”