Each spring, wide-eyed high school students pass daily through the Academical Village. Parents in tow, these prospective students are trying to get a feel for the University where they may spend the next four years of their lives.
Prospective students, however, are not the only ones getting to know the University each spring. Almost every year, at the same time prospectives take tours around Grounds, a much smaller group of newcomers also visits the University. Though they are much less visible to the average University student, they are, in their own way, just as important as the incoming class: they are the new Visitors.
At the end of May, when the Board of Visitors convenes in the Rotunda, four of the University's most distinguished guests will take their seats around the table for the first time. The Board, which the governor appoints, is the highest governing body of the University and has 16 members (17, counting the one non-voting student member, third-year College student Tim Lovelace). The Visitors - aptly named, as only one currently resides in Charlottesville - serve four-year terms with a few members having their terms end each year.
Board members are eligible to serve up to two consecutive terms. This year, because Gov. Mark R. Warner chose not to reappointment those who were eligible, University President John T. Casteen III and the rest of the administration face the task of acquainting themselves with four new members.
Learning on the Job
For most of the Board members, Grounds are a familiar place. By law, 11 of the members must be University alumni with either an undergraduate or graduate degree. At the moment, all but one of the members are alumni.
Nevertheless, all the new members receive a crash course in the workings of the University, consisting of one or two meetings with Casteen and other administrators, before their first meeting, said Alexander "Sandy" Gilliam Jr., secretary to the Board.
"The idea is that the best way to learn is by doing," Gilliam explained.
The constant turnover can be a difficulty when the Board has to deal with complicated issues such as workings of the University Medical System, Gilliam said.
Some of the members have extensive experience with higher education coming into their jobs. Of the new appointees, Edwin Darracott Vaughan Jr. served on the faculty at Columbia University, while Don R. Pippin has been on the Board of Visitors at the University's College at Wise for years.
The members ultimately are responsible for charting the University's future course. The Board sets University policy and hires - and can fire - the president and other top administrators. In return, the president and other administrators are charged with carrying out Board policy and advising members.
According to the Board manual, the Board has wide latitude with which to do its job: it "largely determines its own internal organization, its procedures of operation and the responsibilities of the administrative officers selected by it to carry out its directives of policy and program."
In practice, the Board deals with a wide variety of issues, from setting tuition and dining rates to authorizing major construction projects to setting up a loan program for fraternities and sororities.
In May, each new member will be appointed by University Rector and Board member John P. Ackerly III - the member who is elected by his peers to preside over the Board - to one or more committees, such as finance, buildings and grounds, or student affairs and athletics.
The full Board generally meets only four times a year, gathering in Charlottesville for around three days at a time, as well as holding an annual retreat. In addition, some of these committees meet as many as six times a year, while others rarely meet outside the full Board meetings.
This schedule allows most of the Board members to hold full-time jobs; most are business executives or attorneys.
Getting on the Board
Some politicians and government officials have said they believe selections to the Board are based on political party affiliation. All of the 16 Board members serving up until this spring's appointments, who were appointed under successive Republican administrations, were known to be Republicans.
Last year's Board appointments were heavily criticized for being partisan in nature, said Jim Murray, former rector of the College of William & Mary.
"In some cases, appointments seem to have been made as political statements, with the goal being to promote a certain ideology rather than to advance the best interests of higher education in Virginia," Warner said in a February press release.
Warner decided to change the selection process this year, appointing a Governor's Advisory Commission on Higher Education Board Appointments to appoint Visitors to universities across the Commonwealth. The commission included Murray, former University Rector Joshua P. Darden and five others with educational and business leadership experience in the Commonwealth. Warner said his commission would take the politics out of appointments.
"The governor was adamant that people be selected on merit," Murray said.
In fact, one of Warner's appointments, Vaughan, is a member of the Republican National Committee, Gilliam said. Warner is a Democrat.
The commission marked an important change, Gilliam said, because the last two administrations in Richmond have made political affiliation a large factor in selection.
Murray declined to say whether Warner stuck to the recommendations of the commission in making his appointments.
However, "in looking for people the governor went beyond the criteria of the advisory commission," Warner Spokeswoman Ellen Qualls said.
"The governor looked for people who had an ongoing commitment to U.Va., and all four that he found did," Qualls said. "He found people who have had diverse experiences with the University," she said, pointing out that two of the appointees graduated from the Darden School, one from the Medical school, and one from the College at Wise (then a two-year school), the College of Arts and Sciences and the Law School.
"I think the governor did an excellent job," Murray said.
Some have expressed disappointment that Warner did not appoint a woman. Only two of the current members are female. However, Warner did appoint one black, bringing the number of black Board members to two (members Elsie Goodwyn Holland is both black and female).
"I think it's a tough argument to make that Governor Warner is not inclusive of women in his administration," Qualls said.
The First-Year Class
"The strength of the University lies in the Jeffersonian tradition and the diversity that is found there," said Pippin, a new appointment.
Pippin, who graduated from the College at Wise in southwest Virginia, praised the decentralized structure of the University, with each school relatively independent.
After graduating from Wise, then a two-year school, Pippin went on in 1960 to graduate from the College of Arts and Sciences in Charlottesville and then later the Law School.
Pippin still lives in Wise. He now is a semi-retired lawyer who does pro bono work and represents the town of Wise. He has served on the Board of the College at Wise for many years.
"The University and the University's work in Wise has been, other than my church, my chief area of public service," Pippin said.
Pippin was involved in the issues facing the College at Wise even while still a student - he became the first Wise student to address the General Assembly when he spoke to the appropriations committee on behalf of the College in 1958.
"I've been a part of practically all of the institutional and legislative successes and failures" of the College at Wise since its founding in 1954 under the name Clinch Valley College, he said.
"In those things progressive and good for the University, yes, I am an advocate for Wise," Pippin said. "But you have to remember I have maintained a strong connection to the Law School and the College."
As highlights of his days at the University, Pippin cites working under the honor system, living on the Lawn and taking classes from his blind law professor and future legal partner, "the late, great T. Munford Boyd."
While at the University, Pippin also found time to write for The Cavalier Daily.
When asked what had changed at the University since his student days, Pippin cited the University's growing size, its admission of women and cultural changes brought about partly by the Vietnam War, such as the dropped tradition of wearing coat-and-tie to class.
"Most changes have been for the best," he said.
Mark J. Kington hails from a different generation and a different corner of the Commonwealth than Pippin.
A native of Tennessee and graduate of the University of Tennessee, Kington graduated in 1989 from the Darden School. Now a resident of Alexandria, he co-founded Columbia Capital Corporation, a venture capital firm, with Mark Warner. Kington contributed over $100,000 to Warner's gubernatorial campaign.
"Many people who attend the University are taken by it and have a special place in their heart for it," Kington said. "When you leave, you take a piece with you."
Kington was involved with the University before he recieved his appointement to be on the Board. He chaired a committee within the Darden School's Batten Institute, which encourages entrepreneurial studies, and recently joined the University's Arts Committee, which seeks to promote arts around Grounds.
Historic preservation, art and architecture are special areas of interest for Kington, who cites the University's physical beauty as one of its great assets.
The University's "focus on excellence" and its ethic of student self-governance are its strengths, Kington said.
Attending the Darden School during the stock market crash of 1987 was one of the most memorable aspects of his years at the University, he said.
"It was an exciting time," he added.
In some ways, the University remains the same as it was when he attended, Kington said.
"In some respects, the University is timeless," he explained.
Edwin Darracott Vaugan Jr., the chief urologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, is the only physician on the Board. He replaces the retiring Charles M. Caravati Jr. in that particular role.
One of the members traditionally has been a physician, Gilliam said. Members oversee the University Medical Center as well as its academic operations.
Vaughan is one of only three members residing outside Virginia, but one of two living in New York City.
Warren M. Thompson, of Herndon, Virginia, is president and chief executive officer of Thompson Hospitality, Inc., one of the largest minority-owned businesses in the nation.
Vaughn and Thompson could not be reached for comment.
Money, to begin with
"Money, to begin with and above all," said Gilliam when asked what issues the members can expect to confront in their four - perhaps eight - years. He explained that the University will soon have to begin another capital campaign.
The Board will have to decide questions about buildings and grounds and the size of the school, Pippin said.
"I think those decisions will be forced upon us," he said.
In addition, the Board will be occupied with perennial issues, Gilliam said. Chief among them are the honor system and the hospital.
How will the new members address those questions differently from their predecessors?
"We'll just have to wait until the May meeting" to see, Gilliam said.
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