Category: Harrisonburg Issues
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As JMU students prepare for spring break, burglaries at off-campus complexes during previous breaks remain unsolved
With JMU heading on spring break next week, area law enforcement agencies are stepping up efforts to prevent more break-ins and burglaries as a result of unoccupied apartments while the university is closed and students are away.
Romero aims to propose council translation services next month
Vice Mayor Sal Romero said he hopes to present a proposal to the rest of council next month to introduce translation services at city council meetings and potentially other city services.
Beneath a political cloud in Richmond, legislators emerged with policy ‘success,’ says Harrisonburg’s delegate
Despite a legislative session that The Washington Post described as “the strangest … in anyone’s memory” amid a trio of scandals in Virginia’s executive branch, Harrisonburg’s state Del. Tony Wilt said it ended up being a “very successful legislative year.”
In the name of history: Should Paul Jennings Hall coexist on a campus with buildings that also honor Confederate leaders?
JMU leaders say the naming of the new residence hall after Paul Jennings is a step toward confronting racism that has been embedded in the history of the campus and its namesake, as well as the Harrisonburg community, the commonwealth of Virginia and the country. But some people, including students and community activists in Harrisonburg, are asking what this might signal about the renaming of other buildings on JMU’s campus — the ones named after confederate leaders.
School board pegs March 5 for superintendent announcement, continues debate over teachers’ sick pay policy
The next superintendent of Harrisonburg City Schools is expected to be named at the school board’s next meeting in two weeks after board members ended their meeting Tuesday in closed session to hash out details of the job’s contract. “We are targeting March 5 for the announcement” of the new superintendent, said Deb Fitzgerald, the board’s chairwoman.
Keys to stemming rising jail population could be in the numbers. The question now is how to find them.
While the local jail population continues to grow, the record-keeping systems used by law enforcement, the courts and other pieces of the local criminal justice system remain stuck in the past, complicating efforts to understand what’s driving that population growth or to begin addressing it. Within a year, however, new insight into local criminal justice trends could be coming from two different sources.
With one nat’l championship in hand and a shot at another, JMU teams successfully ride growing e-sports wave.
On a Friday afternoon, six members of the James Madison University Overwatch team gather around a TV screen, watching tape from a “scrim session” – gamerspeak for scrimmage – earlier in the week. “Look where we are right now. We’re really far back,” says Mark “Sanity” Johnson, the team captain, pointing at the screen. “We should be here right now.”
General Assembly debates mandatory prison time for students who make certain school threats
While some say different circumstances call for different outcomes, a bill now moving through the General Assembly would create a mandatory prison sentence for certain kinds of threats made against schools in Virginia. Though the law is a response to the increase in threats made against schools in parts of Virginia, local school administrators say they have not seen an increase in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County.