AU's Board Looks to Era After Ladner

People continue to ask why the trustees who left did not stay to carry on the fight.

The board began to split last year over a dispute, led by trustee George J. Collins, to limit Ladner's pay. As the audit of his spending dragged on this summer, some trustees complained that board leaders were heavy-handed and secretive -- especially when they suspended Ladner in August without talking to the full board.

Animosity worsened after reporters wrote about confidential board documents. Opposition to the executive committee, led by then-board Chairman Leslie E. Bains, grew to the point that 13 trustees banded together, calling themselves the ad hoc committee, and hired an attorney.

Bains announced that she was stepping down Oct. 9, the day before the vote to remove Ladner, saying she did not want to be the issue.

Michael D. Capellas, chief executive of MCI, stepped down in mid-October citing the demands of his job. Three other trustees -- lawyer Paul M. Wolff, retired businessman Leonard R. Jaskol and Collins -- quit, criticizing the severance talks.

Many on campus were startled and disappointed. "They were really on our side," said senior Will Mount, head of the Residence Hall Association. "They should have stuck it out, even if they were the minority, and play a part in the process."

Students, faculty and some trustees speculated that those who left may have wanted to limit their liability -- the Internal Revenue Service can impose sanctions on nonprofit boards for overcompensation and other issues, federal agencies had been asking questions and senators were watching.

Bains denied that: "This is not an issue of potential litigation. It is an issue of integrity and doing what's right."

Wolff said that he had been worried for more than a year about sanctions being imposed, and had even warned the board, but that he left because the increasingly mean-spirited majority wanted to help Ladner, not the university.

Now the board looks very different, with Acting President Cornelius M. Kerwin in Ladner's seat and the ad hoc committee accounting for 13 of the other 19 members.

Some of those committee members said the campus community mistakenly views the ad hoc committee as a pro-Ladner group, when nearly all voted that he had to leave.

Abramson said that board members are "hurt" by calls for them to resign and that most people on campus want to move on.

But protests continue, and many activists have been crafting plans to change the way the university operates -- some even asked Congress, which chartered the school, to intervene. Kerwin announced a task force to build on efforts already underway on campus. And student leaders will give the board an exhaustive plan to overhaul AU governance at its meeting tomorrow, including more regular audits, more transparency and rewritten bylaws.

"The current controversy," Kerwin told the AU community in a written message last week, "is not likely to abate soon."

Staff writer Allan Lengel contributed to this report.