DRUMline Live! comes to Richmond

Drumline LIVE! comes to Richmond.


DRUMline Live is an exciting theatrical tour based on the 2002 hit movie “Drumline,” which is centered around historically black colleges and universities and their marching bands.

By Santia Nance

Published in The Commonwealth Times
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(Photo Courtesy of Columbia Artists Management Inc.)

"All We Can Do is Hope." (Breaking News Assignment)

How retail stores around VCU are affected by the recession.

By Santia Nance

There is no surprise that the bad economy has been affecting retail stores around VCU and the students that buy things from them.

Since December 2007, the United States has been in a recession and many retail establishments have been hit hard. Some have been closing stores, and others have just been going out of business completely.

As for the Monroe Park Campus, a lot of the stores around campus are still here, but that doesn’t mean they’re not suffering.

“Students don’t have money,” said Mohammed Mohammed, manager of Alawada Discounters, a store at 1313 W Broad St that sells bath and home décor, designer clothing, and snacks.

“People come in, but the issue is them buying cheaper stuff,” he said.

Students agree. Kim Jamilla explained that it was hard for her and her roommates to buy things unless it is a true necessity.

“I have to save up just to buy stuff that I only truly need,” she said. “And since a lot of students, like myself, don’t have jobs, it makes us very limited to what we can spend,” she said.

Michael P’Pool, the operations Manager of the Virginia Book Company, also thinks that people are reducing the luxury.

“Whether it’s waiting to get that book when they absolutely need it, or just not getting a VCU sweatshirt, we can tell that people are more conscious of their spending,” he said with a concerned look on his face.

Not every business around is looking at the recession in a bad way. Rumors, a retail store that sells women’s clothes recently had a big change because of the economy.

“We changed it all!” Casey Longyear, one of the owners of the store, said enthusiastically. “Now everything we sell in the store is pre-selected thrift!” she said with a smile on her face.

According to Longyear, Rumors is a shop that previously sold new name brand designer clothes, but her and her business partner, Marshae Wyche, realized that they weren’t getting many sales because their clothes were priced too high. Therefore, on Jan. 29, 2009, they switched over to a buy-sell-trade store.

Longyear explained that business has been going really well since they changed the store, and thinks that it blends well with the economy.

“A lot of people aren’t used to thrift shopping, but I think with this economy, it’s going to get more widely accepted,” she said.
Overall, stores are doing their best to do as well as they can and grow with the economy and so are the students.

“All we can do is hope,” said Mohammed. “Just hope that it gets better,” he said.

Ridje Chery, a student, thinks that students have to be more innovative with their spending by buying cheaper things.

“If that means going to Dollar Tree to buy socks and food, then that’s what I’ll do!” she said as she showed her socks.

Commons Gets A New Look

The University Student Commons gets remodeled to help better serve the large student crowds.

By: Santia Nance

Thousands of students have returned from winter break to discover that the University Student Commons has been newly renovated.

“I walked in thinking ‘wow, they really did this!’” said Virginia Commonwealth junior Emily Brutout as she looked at the new Commons convenience store.

Construction in the Commons started at the beginning of the fall semester. The $200,000 project mostly involved the front door; which was widened, and the many food services throughout the building.

Louise Kapelewski, marketing manager of the VCU Dining Services, wanted to make the crowds more manageable.

“We recognized that the previous space in which Subway, Bene Pizza and Commons Convenience were located was very small for the number of customers in the space,” she said.

The smallest, most used area Subway, offers subs for meal swipes on weekends. It is the biggest food crowd drawn in the Commons and where the space issue started.

“I’ve had to wait over an hour before,” said another student, John Monroe, “and usually the service was bad because they were in a rush!”

Kapelewski said that the overall flow of traffic needed to be revised.

“Subway’s line backed up into the cashier’s lines, all three venues utilized only two registers – the space simply couldn’t hold the number of people that wanted to use it,” she said.

The driving forces of this decision was the comments and feedback that the Dining Services had received over the last two years.

Taylor Allen, a member of the VCU Monroe Park Campus Student Government Association, claims they got the job done.

“We had gotten a lot of complaints both about the doors and how crowded the commons food area was, so we wrote up a bill to change them both, and voila!” she said.

Those student comments and finding the space to put the convenience store was what really put the entire project in motion and the actual transition took about four months.

Construction began with Bene Pizza moving next to Chick-fila, and the construction of the convenience store, which is where the E2 store used to be before it went out of business.

Then in October, the plan to build a second Subway line began. Also, the construction for the door started, causing students to take an alternate route into the commons for a couple months.
Finally on Jan 5, 2009, the commons opened all of the new facilities to the public.

“So far we have received excited comments from students and the SGA. They greatly appreciate the space that is now available for moving between venues and meeting with friends or classmates,” Kapelewski says.

Student, Syed Moosvi was relieved when he saw the door. “Most students have to go through that door every morning, and it’s so much easier now!”

Monroe agrees. “It was an over all good change, and it really needed to happen.”

In the future, the VCU Dining Service hopes to make it even easier by re-designing the Larrick Student Center on MCV campus.