"University of Virginia reinstates ousted president; Trustees vote unanimously to bring her back" by Richard Pérez-Peña | New York Times, June 27, 2012
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Facing a torrent of criticism, the University of Virginia trustees made a stunning turnabout Tuesday, voting unanimously to reinstate the president they had forced to resign over concerns that the university was not adapting fast enough to financial and technological pressures.
The decision by the governing Board of Visitors capped an extraordinary 16 days since the ouster of President Teresa A. Sullivan was made public. One of the nation’s pre-eminent universities suddenly and unexpectedly forced out a popular leader after only two years and with little explanation, and students, faculty, administrators, and alumni united in her defense, demanding that the board reverse itself. They held protests that at times drew thousands of people to a verdant campus where most students have gone home for the summer.
Even the interim president selected by the Board of Visitors said he disagreed with Sullivan’s removal, and then, as protests grew louder, he said he would not fill his new role as long as there was a chance she might be reinstated. After insisting for days that the affair did not involve him, Governor Bob McDonnell was also drawn into the fray, first criticizing the board’s secrecy — though not its decision — and then, Friday, demanding that it resolve the matter one way or another, or he would ask all of its members to resign.
Most remarkable of all was Tuesday afternoon’s unanimous vote to keep Sullivan on. The dispute reflected the strains on public universities as they grapple with sharply declining state subsidies, fast-rising tuition, competition from private schools with much larger endowments, pressure to shift resources from traditional liberal arts programs to business and technology, and the growing availability of college-level courses online.
Sullivan, 62, has said in recent days that she perceived all of those threats but favored addressing them in a collaborative, incremental way, rather than the more drastic, top-down approach favored by the university rector, or head of the board, Helen E. Dragas, and the former vice rector, Mark Kington. They were the driving forces behind the president’s ouster.
The board called a special meeting Tuesday to reconsider Sullivan’s status, raising a set of difficult options. She could return to work with trustees who had wanted to be rid of her, possibly blunting the changes they had hoped to make in the university. Or the board, by sticking to its guns, could have continued to weather the protests, while risking the defection of disaffected professors to other universities, and begin a difficult search for a new president.
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Also see: Lack of beds in Va. communities leaves mentally ill languishing
Update: U.Va. Donations Double After Debacle
