I Needed Help, Not Ostracism

Two days out of the hospital, I traveled to Fredericksburg to give the board of trustees an explanation. The scene was Kafkaesque. I don't believe I told the story very well; nor did the board listen very well. UMW's legal counsel, a representative from the state attorney general's office, instructed the members to say nothing. They listened in preternatural silence without being able to ask any questions to help them understand my story. My attorneys had advised me to limit what I said, so I wasn't able to give a full account, even if I'd had one.

Board members responded to my sincere questions -- "Why would I throw away a 30-year career?" and "Why would I hurt such a good institution?" -- with quizzically tilted heads. I asked them to allow me to begin treatment under a team of medical experts and not to act precipitously.

The university rector came to the president's house the next morning. Standing in the kitchen, I asked him whether I'd be able to preserve my tenure as a distinguished university professor. "They want you out of here," he said. I asked for a medical leave. "They don't want to do that," he replied. I would have to resign all association with UMW or be fired.

Ten days later, I accepted a severance package in exchange for my resignation. But in a surprise move, it was pulled off the table that same day, and I was fired. I was instantly left with no salary or benefits, no severance, no tenure. Our zero-tolerance times have seemingly produced zero tolerance for tolerance.

I spent the summer in a deep depression even as I began six months of intensive treatment at clinics, hospitals and an inpatient rehabilitation facility. On July 13, I accepted another board-approved severance -- this one negotiated by an independent mediator. But in October, I learned that the state attorney general's office had rejected the settlement. The mediator was the only one more flabbergasted than I was.

The DUIs were resolved in September. My attorneys wanted to go to trial, but I insisted on Alford pleas, a form of guilty plea. Justice was not blind to the extenuating circumstances of these incidents: My suspended sentence and fines and the loss of driving privileges in Virginia recognized that the DUIs were the culmination of a long, complicated series of events.

But the public reaction was mixed. Many faculty, students, community members and even strangers wrote to me with sensitivity and expressing support. But many others wrote to the Fredericksburg newspapers suggesting that I had gotten off easy or had been handed a sweet deal. Letter writers compared me to Michael Vick and Virginia Tech shooter Seung Hui Cho. If I read the letters correctly, it seemed that for many my first sin was not the DUIs, but my reported salary as president.

In the push of public scrutiny, many observers cited their "right" to know details about my personal life. To what extent does the public have a right to know a public figure's medical history and personal past? When does the clamoring for personal information become mere prurient interest? The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star questionably dredged up a decades-old incident in which I had confronted a stalker who had harassed my wife for many years. I went from pillar to pilloried, and the debasing revealed a great deal about the community's expectations, social values and public and private faces.

Close on the heels of public humiliation came institutional erasure. I was immediately cut off from the UMW e-mail system and couldn't even receive the e-mail notice of my firing. At the board's summer retreat, the strategic plans I had set in motion -- buying the nearby shopping center for major expansion, building a new facility at the Navy research site at Dahlgren, Va. -- were reaffirmed. But I was told that when someone asked who had recommended the excellent retreat site and my name surfaced, others gestured to silence the speaker. I had become, Harry Potter-style, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

Some in situations similar to mine have outlived their disasters. In 2004, an Emory University vice president faced serious charges. He accepted responsibility, sought help and eventually returned to his position. Wisely, the university allowed him to take leave for treatment. Blessed are the judicious.

Others, like me, have had their fractures brutally displayed. American University President Benjamin Ladner had to resign in 2005 because of alleged financial transgressions; in 1990, Richard Berendzen had also been forced to resign as AU president after being charged with a sexual misdemeanor. The firing and vehement self-defense of Eastern Michigan University's John Fallon -- dismissed this past July purportedly for his handling of a campus rape and murder case -- have reached the "Larry King" show. Yet these institutions, recognizing that trauma involves a whole family, offered severance packages to ease the transition to a new life. Berendzen even returned to his tenured professorship.

But as I endure the vicious new cyber-punishment of permanent exposure on the Internet, I am challenged to remake my reputation while being simultaneously denied the opportunity for redemption that I accorded others.