Inside the UVa Firing: A Look at Some Dirty Pool

Teresa Sullivan

The Richmond Times-Dispatch tells us today that the entire Faculty Senate at the University has expressed its lack of confidence in the rector, vice rector and the board of visitors in the explosively controversial firing of popular President Teresa Sullivan.

Meanwhile, Waldo Jaquith (son of my friend Janis Jaquith, one of the best writers I know), gives a thorough, blunt and quite disturbing account of what went on behind the scenes in this blog piece.

Waldo is a noted political commentator in Virginia and a guy with excellent reporting skills. Here's a brief look at Waldo's piece:

Based on all of the latest evidence to come out, here’s what happened. Rector Helen Dragas spent months persuading a majority of the 16-member board to support ousting Sullivan. To circumvent Virginia’s open meetings law, Dragas and vice rector Mark Kington talked with them one by one, apparently only meeting with those members who she thought were most amenable to supporting her plan. (Macdonald Caputo, Heywood Fralin [of Roanoke], and Vincent Mastracco—and perhaps others—were not contacted until the last minute.)

Somewhere along the line the growing group brought in the chair of the Darden School Foundation, Peter Kiernan. In an e-mail to fellow Darden trustees on Sunday, Kiernan made the mistake of telling the truth, describing how he’d worked with “two important Virginia alums” on the “project” to oust Sullivan.