Upon the election of Gov. Abigail Spanberger, The Cavalier Daily’s previous Editorial Board argued that Virginia’s leading politicians should prioritize institutional stability in making decisions about Virginia universities. Now, five months later, it appears as though there is the potential for great progress towards this goal of fair and shared stability — and Senate Bill 494 in the Virginia General Assembly is this path forward. The manifold benefits of this bill are clear — reduced political polarization, clearer confirmation processes for Boards of Visitors nominees and strengthened stakeholder access to pertinent deliberations. Yet, while this essential ream of approved law heads towards Spanberger’s desk, it is worth expounding on the greatest promise of this bill — the promise of clear, codified stakeholder governance across Virginia’s universities.
The last year exposed several inadequacies with the leadership of the boards of Virginia universities. These inadequacies were shown by how the board members were appointed and how stakeholders could be displaced from decision-making in moments of peril. At our University, the entirely Republican-appointed Board of Visitors contributed to the ouster of former University President Jim Ryan, and then shrouded the following months in secrecy by sidelining stakeholders from key decisions, thereby eroding shared governance. In addition, multiple universities, including our own and George Mason University, faced the risk of their boards being unable to meet quorum. This risk came as a result of former Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s contentious attempt to maintain board appointments that had been blocked in the appointment process, leading to a protracted legal battle. This threatened to preclude boards from making decisions when expedient action on supporting international students, maintaining educational autonomy and countless other issues was critical.
The bill currently waiting on Spanberger’s approval offers prudent solutions to these issues. The term limits for a board member will be changed from four years to six, ensuring that no single gubernatorial term can wholly alter the composition of a university’s governance in the way that our previous Board did in the past year. Boards will thus, hopefully, become places of consensus-building around actions, rather than places of inconsiderate, one-sided imposition onto university stakeholders. Further, the bill clarifies the process of board appointments, explicitly stating that rejection by the Virginia Senate or House Committee on Privileges and Elections constitutes rejection by the Virginia General Assembly, and thus these nominees could not serve on university boards. This will prevent the controversial and legally incoherent claims of Youngkin from being espoused again. Through this clarified appointment process, there is less risk of failed quorum on university boards and greater assurance towards the security of continued board operations.
Beyond these targeted reforms, however, there is a greater ideal present in this bill — namely, the duty for boards to “adopt and maintain policies defining and implementing shared governance.” While the term shared governance may sound somewhat amorphous at first, it is an essential characteristic to any effective and considerate leadership strategy — it ensures that students, faculty and other key stakeholders are involved in the actions that directly affect them. Shared governance is applied constantly throughout the bill, mandating a “staff representative” on boards and reaffirming the largely self-selecting process of student and faculty representatives. After a year where these stakeholders were repeatedly sidelined from key decisions, this move to codify shared governance is critical to ensuring that the lack of transparency and the extent of stakeholder disregard are never again repeated at our University or others in Virginia.
The bill also requires the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia to produce specific policies on shared governance for boards of Virginia universities over the next nine months, creating an organizational structure that further safeguards the promise of the shared governance principle. In order to truly fulfill this promise, the Council should look to the examples of other universities. James Madison University formed a task force that issued recommendations on shared governance in 2023, which called for faculty to have a “co-equal and substantive opportunity” to work on relevant matters, and ensured that key changes to the university that were passed maintained “sufficient time for collaboration and feedback.” The University of California system similarly has structured guidelines clarifying the delegations to the Academic Senate and how disagreements with the Board of Regents could be healthily mediated. The Council should form recommendations that mirror these examples for all relevant stakeholders, such as students and faculty, thereby securing shared governance across all operations at Virginia’s public universities.
Some would argue that shared governance is a fallacy — that it is ahistorical, self-serving and ineffective. Yet, those who argue this fundamentally misunderstand the current crisis of distrust and disempowerment felt by stakeholders. At our University, students and faculty repeatedly expressed no confidence in a Board that continued to make unilateral decisions affecting stakeholder lives. At Old Dominion University, faculty similarly expressed no confidence in their university leaders after the length of many online classes were cut in half without faculty input. Shared governance does not risk triggering “unilateral entitlement,” as the Jefferson Council claims, but rather it protects against stakeholders being thrown out of University discussions — literally, in the case of a former statute whereby the faculty and student members of the Board could be removed from discussions on any matter. By codifying shared governance, Senate Bill 494 ensures that key stakeholders will be able to participate in and identify with the decisions of their institution.
In this increasingly sclerotic age, it is rare that a period of tumult can result in genuine reflection and change for those harmed. Senate Bill 494 not only responds to some of the specific causes of the crises felt over the last year, but it also holds the potential to clearly shift the culture at Virginia’s public educational institutions towards a model of shared governance. This can only be achieved through the Council using its empowerment in the bill to form deeply considered and clearly structured recommendations over the coming months. Virginia has made the leap — now, it must stick the landing.
The Cavalier Daily Editorial Board is composed of the Executive Editor, the Editor-in-Chief, the two Opinion Editors, two Senior Associates and an Opinion Columnist. The board can be reached at eb@cavalierdaily.com.
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