<p>oldUVAgrad. Several things really stood out to me about that Post article if the reporting is accurate:
Things can get nasty when two strong willed women don’t see eye to eye and if one doesn’t get her way.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Dragas and Kington really were downright mean in the way they handled this situation. (see the reference to “Mean Girls” above).</p></li>
<li><p>Dr. Sullivan is retaining counsel.</p></li>
<li><p>Professors at UVA may be leaving various departments. (very understandable but so sad)</p></li>
<li><p>I wonder how much Dragas is willing to allow the university to pay a public relations group to try bend the truth in this.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>And if the things being reported are true, it is very embarassing for the University. How developers/hedge fund/Wall Street types have been allowed to gain this much power is amazing. Behind the scenes machinations, an interim President already potentially in the wings even before the “resignation”, etc. Some of what is being reported is truly disturbing.</p>
<p>I had a very different reaction to the Post article. The board is responsible for the long term health of the university. The board requested that Sullivan identify ways to cut spending. If the article is to be believed her reaction was that there’s no fat to cut. If so, that would definitely cause the board to think that she’s excellent at running day to day affairs but not capable of dealing with the stategic issues facing the university.</p>
<p>All of the board members have a business background. If it’s not working you make the change quickly and move on. In business when any employee (especially a high level one) is terminated they are escorted off the premises immediately. So there’s nothing mean intended when they told her to vacate the UVA house.</p>
<p>Professors don’t usually jump ship over a simple spat. They’ll find that plum jobs are not so easy to replicate at other universities.</p>
<p>IMO the brouhaha from students, faculty and alumni is damaging UVA’s reputation. How ludicrous for posters to say that “this is why I didn’t want to send my kid to UVA”.</p>
<p>I was looking up information on Paul Tudor Jones, reported by The Hook as being “one of the two important alums” that Dragas was working with to oust President Sullivan. By chankce came upon an interesting interview he gave a dozen years ago. Here is the question/answer that I found kind of telling when you think about how he may be involved in all of this:</p>
<p>Q: If you were writing a story about Paul Tudor Jones, what one question would you ask him?</p>
<p>Paul Tudor Jones: If you could do one thing differently, what would you do?</p>
<p>Q: And what’s the answer?</p>
<p>Paul Tudor Jones: When you look at the wealth creation in the Internet in the past decade, it would have required me to literally completely change my stripes and move over in a different world from macro analysis and trading a whole variety of instruments to going into building a business in a brave new world in the Internet. So I look back and I see the wealth creation that we’ve seen the past three years of which we’ve fortunately, derivatively been able to enjoy here at Tudor because we have our whole Boston office that’s dedicated towards private equity and that did an extraordinary job last year. But I guess, everyone that works on Wall Street today, particularly given our industry reliance on computers, knowing that that entire explosion occurred right under your nose, everyone has got to say, ‘My gosh, what if eight or 10 years ago I had made a decision to completely focus and be in the middle of technology? Instead of sitting in front of a screen, what if I had gotten on a plane and gone and played the venture capital game out in California every day’? I’d argue that many of the people that benefited from it probably were in the right place at the right time and got very fortunate and there probably aren’t but a handful of people that actually had the vision to go do it and the ones that actually did, I take my hat off to them and applaud. But I’ve always said, I’d just as soon be lucky as good and there are a whole variety of people that were just in the right place at the right time who did extraordinarily well and I’m happy for them. But I always do play the ‘what if’ game. What if you’d taken your full repertoire of talents and skills and been involved in that from day one? Could you have been Bill Gates or could you have been whatever empire builder there was?</p>
<hr>
<p>Strategic Dynamism…Dr. Sullivan wasn’t willing. Whatever he and Dragas and Kiernan wanted to take advantage of quickly was being stonewalled. For profit online learning? Or something else that they felt could make a lot of money quickly. </p>
<p>In this article, he was asked if he could do something differently what would he do? I think he felt that if he didn’t work to get Dr. Sullivan out, he/UVA may miss out on something very prosperous and he wanted action taken.</p>
<p>That is an interesting article about Casteen,oldUVAgrad. Not sure if another Hook article has been mentioned yet, but there is an article about the transition from O’Neil to Casteen that was handled quite differently than how this is playing out with Sullivan. The article is entitled "Bad form? BOV ignored own president replacing precedent. "</p>
<p>I don’t believe for a minute that a President is unceremoniously hurled out the door because she wouldn’t make cuts. Just like the country, UVA cannot cut themselves out of a hole. The only way is to increase revenue. I’d say it was a combination of her not meeting their fundraising goal and not being completely on board with whatever private opportunities the Darden crew see on the horizon.</p>
<p>"IMO the brouhaha from students, faculty and alumni is damaging UVA’s reputation. How ludicrous for posters to say that “this is why I didn’t want to send my kid to UVA”. </p>
<p>You can thank the BOV for damaging UVA’s reputation. They have handled this whole situation poorly.</p>
<p>Yesterday, theories were printed that a hedge fund billionaire was the force that had pressured the Gang of 3 to force out President Sullivan. Today, that billionaire printed his own op ed column that openly shows that he was the force.</p>
<p>On an admissions and academic perspective, I could dispute most of the points he has raised. UVa has a yield rate that is high compared to most universites. That rate would be higher, except that many top out of state students get huge offers of merit aid from competing universities, while UVa doesn’t offer merit aid. </p>
<p>Read past posts of this website by applicants, and you see over and over again that top students wanted to attend UVa, but couldn’t justify spending twice as much as for a competing university.</p>
<p>Google the blog “Teresa Sullivan and UVA by Doctor Cleveland”. Excellent article into ramifications of monetizing online education, hiring star faculty and such.</p>
<p>My husband and I were at Bodo’s today after the Men’s 4 miler. My husband was wearing a sign during the race that said, “SAVE UVA” and still had it on at Bodo’s. A UVA CLAS Dept Chair came up to us (we did not know him) and mentioned that he hoped the community would turn out for both the Faculty Senate meeting today and the rally tomorrow. He talked to my son and his friend and told them the value of their UVA degree is at stake. I have never publicly protested anything before (silently or otherwise), but I intend to be there tomorrow afternoon.</p>
<p>Daily Progress shut me out, too! Just clear your cookies and you can get back on to read articles. I don’t know if it will let you comment though.</p>