Slow the f%$%$5 Down

SLOW THE F%%# DOWN.  Think Samuel L Jackson “Go the Fuck to Sleep.” The current BOV seems to think you can hire a President and a Provost faster than you can hire a postdoc. The “Compact,” which feels like a creepy covenant, does not seem to be slowing them down. UVa today suggested that the presidential search process might conclude by November. The provost search is moving fast as well. This BOV has no trust with UVa stakeholders. Democratic legislators have challenged the legality of their appointment, and we have absolutely no clarity on the circumstances behind Jim Ryan’s forced resignation. Wahoos4Uva argued in their weekly letter that the current BOV may not be in compliance with the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. They based this claim on the letter that State Senator Creigh Deeds sent to Rector Rachel Sheridan. In the letter, Deeds said he spoke to outside sources because he received no viable responses from current BOV members. “What I have learned to date is deeply troubling.”  Among other things Deeds was informed that, “UVA and McGuire Woods were informed by the DOJ that President Ryan must resign immediately and leave office as soon as possible. In exchange, UVA would receive ‘blanket immunity.’” The letter is worth reading in full. It is a rhetorical masterpiece.

Along with 210 of my colleagues I signed a statement urging the BOV to Slow the F%$%$%$ down. “We join Wahoos4UVA and other University stakeholders who have called on the Board not to rush the process of seeking a new president and provost. Until the circumstances of Ryan’s dismissal have been clarified and the Board’s own legal issues have been resolved, care and deliberation rather than speed should be the order of the day. Any president or provost who takes the job under current circumstances will do so under a cloud of suspicion and mistrust that will hobble efforts to recover from, and may even compound, the Board’s ill-considered actions to date.”