BoV Insanity at UVa

Here's a statement--printed in the Daily Progress and e-mailed to all UVa faculty and staff--from Helen Dragas, the leader of the coup that is trying to oust UVa president Sullivan. Initially this seemed like a fait accompli, but apparently UVa is fighting back, the vice rector of the Board of Visitors (a co-conspirator of Dragas's) has resigned, and there's going to be another BoV vote on the matter on Tuesday (according to the Mystic).

My favorite part about this PoS statement, to paraphrase: yes, I f*cked up...but perhaps future BoVs will learn from my mistakes.

That's some astounding BS right there.

Dragas needs to be yanked off the BoV immediately and told that she's not welcome on the grounds from here on out.

We've got a big problem here in the OD, and I expect it's not unique to us: our university BoVs are generally made up of business types who know not a damn thing about universities, nor about running them. I'd say that this was a disaster waiting to happen...but it hasn't been waiting. The influence of incompetent BoVs, composed almost entirely of non-academicians, is already dragging us down and has been for some time. This ridiculous episode is just one particularly poignant and obvious instance of the problem.