As University of Virginia officials peered out the window’s the Thomas Jefferson-designed Rotunda last Friday afternoon, they looked upon a single-file line of protesters assembling on the Lawn below.
The meeting of the university’s governing Board of Visitors had been running smoothly and without disturbance before dozens of students, faculty and community members organized a protest minutes beforehand, demanding the board respond or resign.
Outside the Rotunda
“We’re here to line up because we deserve a right to speak at this meeting, because we deserve a right to be heard as students,” Eli Weinger, a recent UVa graduate now enrolled at the university’s Batten School of Leadership and Public, said from the steps of the Rotunda. “So I’m going to ask that all of us line up and have our voices heard and make sure that we’re showing the rest of the commonwealth what’s going on here at this university.”
Tension between the board and the university community has only escalated since UVa President Jim Ryan resigned in July under pressure from the Trump administration Department of Justice over his handling of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Students, faculty, staff and community members claim the board, now fully appointed by Trump ally Gov. Glenn Youngkin, has not been transparent about what it knew and when. The board has not helped matters by claiming it is not able to respond to inquiries due to ongoing DOJ investigations stemming from Ryan’s tenure.
As the board prepares to hire a new president, the university’s 10th, many on Grounds say they do not trust university officials to make the right decision.
“We are demanding an apology from the Board of Visitors and a recognition of the wrongdoing and the harm they have perpetrated,” Weinger said. “We are making sure that we have complete administrative transparency in everything this administration is doing, because we deserve to know what’s happening, we deserve to be included in the decisions made about us.”
Since July, votes of no confidence in the board have been passed by the Student Council, Faculty Senate, the UVa chapter of the United Campus Workers of Virginia and the university chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
While the demonstrators protested the Board of Visitors, much of their complaints were aimed at the 28-person search committee tasked with finding Ryan’s replacement.
Student Council President Clay Dickerson said the committee needs changes.
“The protest in itself had a set of demands, including a public apology as well as a call for … the cancellation of the search,” he said. “By calling to cancel the search, we are calling for a change in the search. Things can’t continue as they’re going.”
“An easy first step is a response, and after you respond, we can develop more transparent and open lines of communication and negotiation, and then go from there,” he added.
He would get no response Friday.
Inside the Rotunda
Despite the distraction outside, the Board of Visitors meeting Friday carried on, with interim President Paul Mahoney presenting his priorities.
Mahoney, a former law school dean and current law professor, was named interim president last month and has already started moving into Carr’s Hill, the traditional residence of UVa presidents.
“I have set three priorities for my time as interim president,” he told the board. “The first is to send a clear signal to our community that while political winds may shift around us, the university’s core values, mission and activities remain unchanged.”
Mahoney said his second priority is to “bring the investigations opened by the Department of Justice to a satisfactory conclusion.”
He said the DOJ had closed two of those investigations just in the past week: one into the university’s response to allegations of antisemitic discrimination and another into race-based admission practices at the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the McIntire School of Commerce.
“These investigations were closed based on the information we provided to the department about our policies and actions,” Mahoney said. “We will continue to work hard to resolve the remaining investigations.”
Mahoney’s third priority is to “tee up” three long-term priorities for the next president.
Those priorities: protect free speech, preserve affordability and work to celebrate America’s semiquincentennial.
“I believe we have a duty to expose our students to a wide range of ideas and viewpoints and to always seek the truth while having the humility to recognize that we can be mistaken,” Mahoney said.
He added that students have “expressed low confidence that they could freely express their views and that the administration would back them if they did.”
The 250th anniversary of American independence next year is expected to the a red-letter day for the university, Charlottesville and Virginia, seeing as university founder Thomas Jefferson set it all in motion with his penning of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
UVa Rector Rachel Sheridan did not directly address the protest assembling outside, but did say that the university must chart a new course in order to overcome recent hardships.
“We find ourselves in an inflection point in the commonwealth and our nation. Trust in institutions is low, our politics are partisan to a fault and many have tragically lost humanity in dealing with others,” she said. “For the path forward, we need to look no further than Jefferson’s ideals of displacing passion with reason in order to advance truth, knowledge and the public good.”
Sheridan said principles will help guide the university and the effort to appoint the next UVa president.
Nearing the end of her remarks to the board, Sheridan thanked Mahoney and applauded the work of the search committee recently assembled to vet candidates to fill the president’s seat on a more permanent basis.
“We are excited to continue this work alongside our interim administration and deeply appreciative of those who are participating in the thoughtful deliberations and listening sessions taking place across campus,” she said. “Thank you to so many of you in the community and around the country that have reached out in the spirit of constructive and informed dialogue. We hear you and we appreciate your thoughts and actions.”
Source: www.dailyprogress.com