Last week, this Editorial Board was prepared to applaud Interim University President Paul Mahoney’s decision to reject the Trump administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.
The external, federal challenges we face demand statewide leadership that understands and acts to protect academic autonomy and shared governance.
Losing the U.S. Attorneys for Virginia in such rapid succession destabilizes consistency in our legal prosecutors for leading legal cases, creating gaps in the knowledge and management of daily operations.
This Compact plants the seed for further federal interference in student affairs and free speech, and it threatens to cancel all federal funding should the University sign the Compact and fail to adhere to its demands.
The mire that CCS and other institutions find themselves in as a result of the federal government’s actions will imperil the future operation of these vital programs and bodies if funding is not established on a more predictable basis.
The degree of alumni involvement in the Honor the Future campaign speaks to the importance of shared governance — student involvement in critical governance matters creates a culture of connection to and collaboration with the University that engenders a desire among alumni to support their alma mater.
The destabilizing consequences of the present appointment process have revealed critical and unsustainable fault lines that rest within our political system.
With these recommendations, we wish the University a great and good academic year — a year which will take significant administrative repair to heal this institution after some of its darkest hours.
Honor is still a staple of the student vocabulary — just more often as a facetious justification for leaving one’s backpack unattended than as a true rationale for remaining academically honest.
The self-serving actions of the Board are not just harmful to students and faculty today, but they are harmful to our institution as a whole and the future president who will be invited to lead it.
As it stands, students will be returning to Grounds with no concrete sense of who will be at the helm of this institution and little reason to trust the governing body, which has made no attempt to explain or justify its actions.
The University is the first institution to lose their president as a result of dramatic and unprecedented federal intervention. But we will not be the last.
Youngkin cannot be held responsible for the attacks like that in Culpeper, but he can play a powerful role in preventing this disease of hatred from spreading.
Though these resources are a step in the right direction, the consistent difficulties in attaining work experience for many students serves to show that the Career Center must continue to expand its offerings to students.
The failure to consider Resident Staff, namely SRs, as an integral stakeholder while its system falsely advertises itself as a proponent of student self-governance.
A better method of controlling AI use in classrooms comes with collaboration and communication — the University should set a clear policy-making process for professors.
We hope for greater transparency because for the principles of solidarity in this statement to be enacted and effective, stakeholders must be treated as partners in resistance.
With a longer-term view, it is clear that the College at Wise has held a good track record of growth, and one blip is not cause for concern for the University’s regional campuses.
This has grown into a pattern of failing the rights of noncitizens to due process and overstepping judicial checks and balances on the executive branch.
The bottom line is that an institutional shift has occurred. Today, DEI is done at the University — and we are all worse off because of it.
