At the beginning, there was an e-mail.
At 9:06 p.m. June 7, a Thursday, Dragas sends Sullivan a message that she and Mark Kington, the board’s vice rector, hoped to meet with the president the next day.
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“Are you free sometime after 3 pm?” Dragas writes.
Sullivan attaches no special significance to the request.
As recently as November, 15 months after Sullivan became president, the board had given her a favorable evaluation. In May, the board had applauded at a meeting in which one member praised her leadership.
Everything seemed to be going well.
At 7:01 a.m. Friday, Sullivan responds to Dragas, writing in an e-mail that she would be at a retreat for most of the day but could be in her office by 5 p.m.
“Is there anything you would like me to prepare,” Sullivan writes.
No preparation needed, Dragas responds.
What Sullivan doesn’t know is that Dragas has already begun choreographing the president’s exit. The rector had called Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) earlier that week to say the board was about to force Sullivan’s resignation. Dragas was named to the board in 2008 by McDonnell’s Democratic predecessor, Timothy M. Kaine, and her four-year term was to expire July 1.
At 5 p.m., Sullivan greets Dragas and Kington at her office, offering them cold soft drinks before they sit at a small conference table. Sullivan sits at the head of the table, between the rector and vice rector.
Dragas tells Sullivan that the board is unhappy with her performance and that there are significant problems with her management of the university. Why she has not raised these concerns before is unclear.
Sullivan is a good president, Kington tells her, but not a great one. She is moving too slowly to implement the kinds of changes the board seeks. Dragas cites a move to online education as an example.
The rector tells Sullivan that she needs to resign and presents her with a separation agreement to be signed within 24 hours. Dragas and Kington suggest that she speak with an attorney and her family. They have polled the board, Dragas tells her, and they control 15 of 16 votes.
Sullivan has never faced anything like this in four decades in academia. She remains composed but says little. She is in shock.
At the meeting’s end, she walks across the street to her home, the presidential mansion, and shows the resignation papers to her husband, Douglas Laycock, a U-Va. law professor.
They talk into the night about what to do.
Should she fight? Should she walk away?
What’s best for the university?
Dragas and Kington decamp to the rector’s farm outside Charlottesville. There, at 8 p.m. Friday, June 8, they break the news to Chief Operating Officer Michael Strine and Provost John Simon, whom Sullivan recently hired as her top deputies.
At 10 a.m. Saturday, Dragas and Kington sweep into the president’s personal conference room to meet with a handful of top officials. They tell the group that Sullivan will be stepping down and have them sign confidentiality agreements.
“It’s going to rock the university,” university spokeswoman Carol Wood says.
- Spam
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