Brief description of what's happening: a bit over 2 years ago, Teressa Sullivan was appointed the first woman president in the history of UVa, a school that was all male until the 70's.
Suddenly, last week she was forced to resign because of a "philosophical difference" with the Board of Visitors, a group that is appointed by the state of oversee University Affairs and top level hirings. It was later revealed this was the result of a coup by a bunch of Darden MBA's because they wanted "radical" change to the future plans of the University, not incremental change.
The students and faculty are outraged because this was done in secret behind closed doors, which is very much contrary to the way things are typically done at UVa (because of Jefferson's vision or whatever, I find a lot of the Jefferson talk to be crap but let's take it for what it is for now).
There have been protests, yada yada yada everybody is pissed and people are starting to quit.
This is a big damn deal that's only getting worse, and although I'm a UVa alum who for some reason doesn't really care, I suggest taking a look at this if you're interested in the bs that can go on at the ivory tower institutions
A fundamental problem is that university boards have an increasing disconnect from anything to do with merit, and a close enough connect to donating money (in two ways) that it's pretty close to just buying a seat. They're mostly made up some mixture of: 1) large donors to the university, who're appointed to maintain good relations, encourage future donations, etc.; and 2) for public universities, large political donors, who're appointed by governors, sort of in the way that ambassadorships often go to big political donors.
It's admittedly long been common for particularly large donors to be flattered a bit with some role, but over the past 10-20 years this seems to have gone from being a few members of the board, to being almost all of them, with very few members appointed primarily because of non-donation-related merit, like someone thinking they're actually good candidates for overseeing an academic/research institution. Note the lack of accomplished scientists on the board, for example. In addition, the political appointees seem to have decreased in quality: it was once more common to appoint someone who, while they were from your own party, was a late-career "elder statesman" type figure, e.g. a former governor or Congressman.
It's sadly not a partisan issue, either: if you look at, say, the University of California Board of Regents, you have a nice bipartisan mixture of big Democratic donors (appointed by Democratic governors) and big Republican donors (appointed by Republican governors). Their expertise is... not too relevant seeming, including such credentials as "former CEO of Paramount Pictures" and "husband of Dianne Feinstein".
As a current student (undergraduate; CS/Math), and the son of two faculty members (Music/English) I'll agree with this. Every faculty member involved in some sort of administration that I know (both parents, multiple family friends, and people I have had courses for and work for) were in favor of Sullivan's proposed changes: anyone who has spent time around a University can imagine how hard it is to get that level of buy-in from the professors. (Hint: imagine herding irritable, opinionated, and very, very smart cats that are often impossible to fire. Then imagine that some of them have large bullhorns and are willing to write for Slate if they disagree with you, like Siva Vaidhyanathan here: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_m...
Point being, it is hard to get consensus, and I might be understating that.)
The main objection that I and most people I've talked to have is that the BOV hasn't given a good reason for its actions. It may very well be that Sullivan deserved to be fired. It may very well be that there needed to be more drastic changes than she was willing to make (although for an appropriate idea of how hard drastic, top down change is at a top University, see my description of faculty consensus above). But without releasing any concrete reason, backed up by publicly available data, and by essentially saying "shut up and trust our judgment", they showed a fundamental disconnect between their idea of acceptable governance and the rest of the university's idea of acceptable governance. For the record, I think that if you look at them as the board of a corporation replacing a CEO, their actions are totally reasonable (and I wouldn't be surprised if this was, in part, how they viewed themselves; this doesn't really say much for their case, though, because that still shows a massive cultural disconnect between them and the university body).
Also alum, and I concur with your view. This is a high caliber guy who is resigning; he is (from his letter) married to a high caliber woman also on the faculty.
This is huge. This will cause a loss of confidence in UVA if they don't take effective action to recover.
It was later revealed this was the result of a coup by a
bunch of Darden MBA's because they wanted "radical" change
to the future plans of the University, not incremental
change.
Which, as I recall, was revealed in some seriously mustache-twirling e-mails that the main orchestrator had used the Reply All feature for or something to that extent. I can't remember which article I read this in, but this has all the elements of the most interesting and scandalous affair in academia this year.
I don't get your point - the people who are pissed off are the students and faculty of UVA. There are also many Virginians who have no association with UVA who are pissed off (including myself; I attended Virginia Tech and lived in Virginia for the vast majority of my life).
So what's different between the Board of Visitors, and for example, the California Board of Regents? CA BoR is pretty despised by faculty and students alike.
Can you possibly throw in more stereotypes? Not everyone in the South is a white, good ol' boy racist. Not anymore than everyone who thinks it's a true is a complete idiot. You're merely ignorant.
"The university has a troubling history when it comes to matter race..."
"UVa's racial problem is larger than simply a few isolated incidents of bigotry. ... There is still a discernable "Good Ol' Boy" network that heavily influences the Commonwealth's social, economic and political life and holds UVA up as a crown jewel."
What I posted was not just my opinions, and it was not uninformed. Nevertheless I deleted it because the contents or way it was expressed clearly offended a lot of people here.
Forget offense, it didn't make sense - it was a non-sequitur. I have not heard race or gender to be a factor in the current problem at UVA. (Yes, the fired president is a woman, but I have not heard anyone mention her gender as part of the firing.)
UVA is a crown jewel of Virginia's old boy network. The first woman president, well-liked and not an old boy, is fired by the business college for no legitimate reason. This couldn't be any more blatant.
> And he reassured them that sharp, trustworthy people were handling the transition process: “And you should be comforted by the fact that both the Rector and Vice Rector, Helen Dragas and Mark Kington are Darden alums,”
"Old Boy" network indeed. The discrimination is not her gender but her provenance (which is that, not being a Darden alum, she is not under the control of the Darden alum pecking order)
Suddenly, last week she was forced to resign because of a "philosophical difference" with the Board of Visitors, a group that is appointed by the state of oversee University Affairs and top level hirings. It was later revealed this was the result of a coup by a bunch of Darden MBA's because they wanted "radical" change to the future plans of the University, not incremental change.
The students and faculty are outraged because this was done in secret behind closed doors, which is very much contrary to the way things are typically done at UVa (because of Jefferson's vision or whatever, I find a lot of the Jefferson talk to be crap but let's take it for what it is for now).
There have been protests, yada yada yada everybody is pissed and people are starting to quit.
This is a big damn deal that's only getting worse, and although I'm a UVa alum who for some reason doesn't really care, I suggest taking a look at this if you're interested in the bs that can go on at the ivory tower institutions