MountainMornings

Last night the humidity broke and I met three friends on the historic pedestrian mall for shrimp and grits, perfect almost summer evening. As we picked a little, we talked a little about the latest scandal in this university town. On Sunday the UVA Board of Visitors announced a parting of the ways with our beloved President, Teresa Sullivan. Less than 2 years into her 5 year contract, it came as a shock to faculty, students and the community at large. People were talking about how they waited for graduation, for people to disperse around the world on their summer programs, and that fact, that lack of transparency, is what is still setting our little city on simmer.

The official reason, as stated in letters to faculty (full disclosure, Bob got one) was that they were experiencing “philosophical differences.” However, in a bold reporting move our little freebie weekly http://www.readthehook.com/104213/cabal-hall-why-does-darden-trump-carrs-hill dug up some new Albemarle red clay dirt. Her departure was “… less a mutual agreement and more of a palace coup orchestrated by alumni and friends of the Darden School.” Now Darden is the Business School here in Mr Jefferson’s village; it is quite exclusive competitive and sits high on a hill overlooking the university. Needless to say, many of the strings the Board has to pull come from behind the Darden curtain where alums of the $50,000 a year program go on to become 1 percenters in big time financial fields where money and power collide.

What makes a good university president? My brother Mike, the former President and General Manager of an NFL team once told me it takes “ruthlessness.” I may have said this before, but I’ll always remember that. He had dropped out of college to start working in the sports field, and was now teaching a business course at the University of Minnesota. Unlike Mitt, my brother truly was a Horatio Alger story. I was visiting the Flapper who had been relocated to a beautiful lakeside condo nearby for her golden years. In true outlier fashion, Mike said that every great university president has to have the connections and bring in capital; ruthlessness is what it takes to make money. But a media scholar here asks, “What does she (the Board’s Rector) want? … a top flight scholar and administrator with a sterling reputation who’s able to gather support from every constituency in the university?…If she wants that, she just fired her.” So who’s right? And what was Sullivan’s crime? It’s only in the last decade we’ve seen women rise to the very pinnacles of ivy towers, and maybe the formula for educational excellence has to shift.

And in yet another local university news headline, lawyers for the Lacrosse player who beat Yeardley Love’s head against a wall are asking for a change of venue in the civil case her mother has brought against him. He was found guilty in the criminal case if you recall; this is a “Wrongful Death” suit claiming 30 Million in damages from her daughter’s ex-boyfriend’s reckless indifference in leaving Yeardley, after beating her, to die. Love’s mother has recently filed a second law suit for 30 Million naming the “…Commonwealth of Virginia, University of Virginia head men’s lacrosse coach Dom Starsia, associate coach Marc van Arsdale and UVa Athletics Director Craig Littlepage as defendants.” I don’t know, do you think the media frenzy the Lacrosse case has engendered means our fair citizens cannot come to a fair opinion? I think Cvillians want to know the facts. For instance, did the President mishandle this high profile case? I don’t think so. Were her sympathies with the student-led “Living Wage” campaign? And if so, good for her! Philosophical or financial, everyone is agreed, Mr Jefferson’s Academical Village has suffered some major blows. http://www.cavalierdaily.com/