Aprocession of women marched down Franklin Street yesterday morning to a spot where 100 years ago, the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia was born. Led by a trio of accordionists and a drummer, two granddaughters of one of the voting-rights group’s founders walked with more than 100 cheering women and supporters. “Recognition of this whole situation and for our grandmother was a long time coming, and there couldn’t be two people in the world more pleased than the two of us,“ Warfield Crenshaw Truesdale said. “I was moved to tears.“

Two more Virginia schools yesterday turned to midyear tuition increases in an effort to plug ever-widening holes in their budgets. The College of William and Mary’s board of visitors approved a $300 tuition increase for the spring semester, which will generate $1.9 million to help offset the fourth round of state budget cuts in three years.

Virginia Commonwealth University will celebrate the founding of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia next week with a series of free events commemorating the centennial anniversary. The league, founded in what is now VCU’s Crenshaw House, became the League of Women Voters of Virginia in 1920 after the 19th Amendment was ratified granting women the right to vote.

The state’s community colleges will increase tuition for next semester, and Virginia Commonwealth University plans to eliminate 91 jobs as the schools attempt to absorb multiple cuts in their budgets. The unusual, midyear tuition increase approved yesterday by the State Board for Community Colleges will add about $22 to the cost of a class and generate $10.7 million in revenue. That’s enough to offset about 42 percent of what the system is losing from the state this fiscal year.

Elvatrice Belsches found the evidence on microfilm and Tuesday night presented an enlarged copy to the president of Virginia Union University. What she found, on Roll 15 Frame 0366 from National Archives records, was further documentation “to substantiate the incredible story” of how the university grew from “the nefarious slave trade to become a beacon of hope.“

People might go on rampages for reasons other than mental illness, experts say. “People can be very angry, for example, and do bad things,“ said Dr. Joel J. Silverman, chairman of the psychiatry department at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. “Don’t assume this is mental illness.“ Police say Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, opened fire at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, killing 13 and wounding at least 30 others.

Noting the steep drop in state financial support, yesterday Virginia Commonwealth University alumni launched a campaign to raise $50 million for scholarships and fellowships for the academic and medical campuses. The VCU and Medical College of Virginia alumni associations said the money raised for Opportunity VCU would support undergraduate and graduate scholarships and fellowships for graduate students across all academic units.

More information is
  available at www.
advancement.vcu.edu.

Richmond police have several suspects in one set of robberies in the Fan District and neighborhoods around Virginia Commonwealth University, with three people in custody and two more possibly facing indictment on robbery charges next month. Police have charged two men from Henrico County and one from the city’s East End in six armed robberies in the Fan, Oregon Hill and Carver neighborhoods from late August through mid-September. They said two other suspects may have been involved in the robberies, which were carried out with a driver waiting nearby in a car.

Advertising and new media marketing executive David Saunders has a phrase to describe social media Web sites LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. He calls them “The Holy Trinity of Social Media.“ LinkedIn, the oldest, and Facebook are the father/son, said Saunders, president of Madison + Main Advertising & New Media. Twitter is the Holy Ghost, because “people are still mystified by it,“ he said.

Raised on a tobacco farm near Dungannon that had the first television set in the area, Tazewell County native Frederic David Fraley grew up fascinated by media. He played his guitar with a band on a daily radio show in the 1950s in Norton and was talking to fellow ham radio operators in Morse code by the time he was 15. After retiring from a career in social work in 2005, he started Fraley Family Videography and later produced and was host of a cable TV program called “People Helping People,“ which attracted national attention.

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia will urge the General Assembly to appropriate an additional $58.7 million in undergraduate financial aid over the next two years to offset the decrease in state support that has resulted in higher tuition. Noting the declining fortunes of the state’s colleges and universities, SCHEV yesterday adopted a resolution that set student aid as its top priority for the 2010-12 budget biennium.

Virginia Commonwealth University’s trip to Middlebury, Vt., for Sunday’s Intercollegiate Quidditch Association World Cup III went exactly as expected. “We met a lot of teams and made some great friends,“ said team captain Britni Puccio. On the field of the Harry Potter-inspired competition, the team didn’t fare so well—it lost to host Middlebury College, as well as Louisiana State University and Texas A&M University—but that didn’t dampen anyone’s spirit, Puccio said.

Virginia Commonwealth University’s governing board is considering a change in its bylaws that would let the new president sign off on most hiring and compensation decisions—unless they’re politically sensitive or involve large bonuses. The proposed change taken up by the board of visitors executive committee last week is an effort to streamline the process, said university Rector Anne G. “Panny” Rhodes.

Acouple dozen Virginia Commonwealth University students are off on a flight of fancy this weekend. Kind of. They can’t actually fly, you know—life as a muggle does have its drawbacks—but that’s about the only thing that’ll keep them grounded as they head to Middlebury, Vt., for tomorrow’s Intercollegiate Quidditch Association World Cup III.