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CHEBILI: The University fails in educating about sexual assault prevention - The Cavalier Daily - University of Virginia's Student Newspaper

Every undergraduate should be required to attend discussions on healthy relationships, sexual violence and harassment.

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I want to go somewhere new; open a new chapter of my life and be met with a crisp white blank page. I want to tell people about myself. Pick and choose those I want to surround myself with and be met with open arms by those very people. I want to wake up in the morning and do something I love and go to bed excited to pick up where I left off. College please don't let me down.

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Like Watching Something You Love Burn Slowly...

CHARLOTTESVILLE — A week of chaos set off by the removal of University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan led to a showdown Monday on the historic Grounds between the ousted leader and the governing board that took her job.

It came down to this moment: Sullivan appeared on the Lawn, beneath a purple umbrella, and wound through a throng of more than 2,000 demonstrators toward Thomas Jefferson’s Rotunda. Amid deafening cheers, she walked inside to address the Board of Visitors.

Sullivan met, briefly and privately, with the board to deliver a sharp defense of her two-year tenure — her first significant comments since the board ousted her, an action that became public June 10. Then she left the Rotunda, thanked the cheering crowd, and left the Lawn.

“I did not cause this reaction in the last 10 days,” Sullivan said in her statement, “but perhaps the reaction speaks to the depth of the connections I have made in the last 22 months.”

Leadership of Virginia’s public flagship seemed to hang in limbo as the board deliberated for several hours into the night, mulling potential candidates for interim president.

Even Sullivan’s exit wasn’t certain. A group of board members continued to negotiate with her behind the scenes after asking through an emissary Sunday night whether she would consider staying on the job, and under what terms, according to three people familiar with the talks but not authorized to speak publicly. It was unclear which members were behind the reported overture or how Sullivan responded.

In public remarks Monday, the leader of the board, Rector Helen E. Dragas, sought a resolute but contrite tone. She expressed regret — not for removing Sullivan, but for how the transition was executed.

The board sought Sullivan’s resignationwithout a formal meeting or vote, through acampaign waged privately by Dragas, Vice Rector Mark Kington and a few others, according to several people in contact with the board. The episode plunged the campus into turmoil, from which it has yet to recover.

“We certainly never wished nor intended to ignite such a reaction from the community of trust and honor that we all love so dearly,” Dragas read from a prepared statement. “You — our U-Va. family — deserved better from this board, and we have heard your concerns loud and clear.”

But Dragas added: “The Board of Visitors exists to make these kinds of judgments on behalf of all the constituencies of the university. . . . Simply put, we have the responsibility, on behalf of the entire community, to make these important and often difficult calls.”

Protesters packed the Lawn, a mix of students, professors, toddlers and doctors in lab coats. One young man held a sign that read, “Emperor Dragas, Darth Kington don’t speak for me.”

A sharp critique came from John T. Casteen, the revered 20-year president of U-Va. Sullivan’s predecessor arrived on the Lawn to thunderous applause. Casteen had urged the board — in vain — to hold Monday’s meeting in public, saying it was what the public deserved.

“What has happened heretofore has been kept in silence,” he said. “That’s not how Virginia works.”

Behind closed doors, board members reportedly asked Sullivan no questions. One member — medical executive Heywood Fralin — was said to have thanked her for her remarks.

Then Sullivan emerged and acknowledged her supporters. As the crowd chanted “TE-RE-SA,” she said, “I appreciate this so much.”

In her statement to the board, Sullivan defended her administration and its measured pace of change, which Dragas had repeatedly criticized as too slow.

“I have been described as an incrementalist. It is true,” Sullivan said. “Sweeping action may be gratifying and may create the aura of strong leadership, but its unintended consequences may lead to costs that are too high to bear.”

Sullivan said she had worked in collaboration with vice presidents, deans and faculty leaders, building a foundation for “greater change” later. “This is the best, most constructive, most long lasting, and beneficial way to change a university. Until the last ten days, the change at U-Va. has not been disruptive change, and it has not been high-risk change. Corporate-style, top-down leadership does not work in a great university.”

Sullivan indicated that board leaders pressed her to make “deep, top-down cuts,” potentially eroding the university’s portfolio of core programs.

“A university that does not teach the full range of arts and sciences will no longer be a university,” she said. “Certainly it will no longer be respected as such by its former peers.” She underlined the word “former.’’

In a proposed settlement, Sullivan would receive her presidential compensation package, $680,000, for another year of sabbatical, research and consulting after her Aug. 15 departure, according to a person briefed on the document. She could then return to teaching sociology at a salary of $170,000, plus about $360,000 in deferred compensation.

Dragas has hired Hill+Knowlton, a public relations firm, to help the board ride out the backlash from Sullivan’s ouster, two knowledgeable university employees said. The U-Va. Foundation is picking up the tab.

Dragas met privately with U-Va. faculty leaders Monday morning at an undisclosed locale. Afterward, the Executive Council of the Faculty Senate issued a statement asking that Sullivan be reinstated and that the naming of an interim leader be delayed. The faculty leaders also asked that Dragas and Kington resign and that a faculty representative be added to the board.

Major donors to the university also continued to call for a change.

“The whole handling of this thing was outrageous,’’ said Mortimer Caplin, a lawyer and U-Va. alumnus who has donated millions of dollars to the school. He said the makeup of the board needs to change but stopped short of saying who needs to be removed.

Sullivan’s ouster has taken an incalculable toll, according to Casteen and others, in terms of potential for loss of donors, faculty defections and censure from higher education leaders. The action has spawned more than a dozen letters of protest and no-confidence votes from various campus constituencies. Sullivan herself warned that deans at competing schools “are setting aside funds now to raid the University of Virginia” of its stars.

Between Sunday night and Monday morning, a vandal spray-painted the letters “G-R-E-E-E-D” on the six columns of the historic Rotunda. Campus workers painted and repainted them until the letters were obscured.

Dragas had lined up a candidate for interim chief before Sullivan’s departure was announced, according to several officials who have knowledge of the situation but were not authorized to speak. He was Edward Miller, an ex-officio U-Va. board member and former chief executive of Johns Hopkins Medicine. But Miller has since said he does not want to serve, the sources said. Provost John Simon also was said to have taken his name out of the running.

Among potential candidates mentioned were Carl P. Zeithaml, dean of the university’s McIntire School of Commerce, and former Democratic governor Gerald Baliles, who runs U-Va.’s Miller Center, which is devoted to public policy.

Kumar reported from Richmond.

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