Dear Cavalier Daily alumni,
I wanted to give you an update on the activities of the Cavalier Daily Alumni Association, which met earlier this month to elect a new Board and address a few important issues – such as fundraising and reunions – that have been impacted by COVID-19.
First, please join me in welcoming the CDAA Board for 2020-21. You can find their names below. Perhaps the biggest change in Board structure is that we split the vice president role in two, with one vice president responsible for fundraising and another for alumni outreach. You can read more about this decision here.
The newly elected Board also discussed fundraising, which has been hit hard by the pandemic and lags behind previous years. We agreed to explore creative ways to fundraise in the fall and winter, recognizing that the environment will remain challenging, while laying the groundwork for broader fundraising in 2021. We will send additional details about these initiatives later this fall.
The pandemic has also affected the CDAA’s social plans. Steve Wells shared that our annual CDAA Fall Reunion, scheduled for the weekend of Nov. 7, will be postponed for safety and health reasons. Steve says that we’re looking to hold our next reunion in Charlottesville on Nov. 13, 2021, when the already-scheduled UVA-Notre Dame football game will take place. An update is expected in early 2021.
Lastly, we celebrated a lot of good news:
• Ben Tobin (2018-19 Managing Editor and Col. ‘19) was part of a team at the Louisville Courier-Journal that won a Pulitzer Prize for its work examining former Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin’s controversial pardons and commutations.
• Meredith Kopit Levien (a former CD opinion associate editor and Col. ‘93) was named CEO of the New York Times.
• The CD took home a few Virginia Press Association awards this year. Abby Clukey (2019-20 Managing Editor and Col. ‘20) and Nik Popli (current editor-in-chief and Col. ‘21) won a first-place award for Investigative Reporting on racist imagery in UVA’s yearbooks. In addition, Clukey and Gracie Kreth (2019-20 Editor in Chief and Col. ‘20) earned a third-place award for their Investigative Reporting on UVA’s admissions watch-list for applicants connected to donors.
This week marks the start of the University’s fall semester. It will be a unique and difficult semester to cover, but The Cavalier Daily is ready. Look soon for an update from Editor-in-Chief Nik Popli highlighting the paper’s coverage from the summer and initiatives for the fall.
We look forward to supporting their work.
Sincerely,
Matt Cameron
President, Cavalier Daily Alumni Association