In all that has been written dissecting this past June’s tumultuous events at the University, one significant question seems not to have been confronted: Did Rector Helen Dragas lie to President Terry Sullivan during their June 8 confrontation, when Dragas triggered the presidential coup d’etat by telling Sullivan that a near-unanimous Board of Visitors was prepared to fire her, even though the Board had not even met to discuss such a threat?
The evidence strongly suggests Dragas did not tell the truth; in fact, were she still a University student, it’s probable that she would have been confronted and charged with an honor code violation.
Luckily for Dragas, she’s not governed by that code. The rector answers instead to her own sense of moral integrity. The University’s honor system governs only its student body, and excludes all others connected with the University.
Dragas is exempt from the University’s code of honor, but why should she be? As leader of the Board of Visitors, she is expressly charged by the Board’s own operating manual with encouraging and maintaining the honor code. Why should a lesser standard of honorable behavior and consequence apply to members of the Board of Visitors — or University faculty and administrators, for that matter — than to the students in their care?
We believe it is essential to address the concept of honorable conduct as it relates to June’s events, and it would be helpful if key players in the University community stop playing word games. Honor Committee Chairman Stephen Nash gingerly stated afterward that the coup was “inconsistent with the value of trust.” And, at an “honor roundtable” not long ago, Law School professor and Faculty Senate Chairman George Cohen obliquely observed, “the values of open and honest debate had been compromised….”
For some reason, they and others have been hesitant to speak bluntly: Dragas and then-Vice Rector Mark Kington, the third person at that June 8 meeting in President Sullivan’s office, clearly violated the principles of the University’s honor code, at the highest level and with the most damaging consequences. (Kington later quit his position in the face of the wide firestorm of public protest.)
When framing the origins of this tawdry chapter in the University’s history, it’s important to distinguish between underhanded politics and deceitful lying. Dragas and Kington prosecuted their scheme by secret, one-on-one telephone and e-mail communications — far from any public conduct of vital University business — with certain other Board members and several wealthy alumni. That’s a classic case of crass, manipulative politics.
In stark and meaningful contrast, the duo’s conduct degenerated when they entered Sullivan’s office on June 8. Having cleverly played one Board member off another in their private communications — but never having called a public meeting for an open and honest discussion — they bullied Sullivan into resigning by asserting that 15 of the Board of Visitors’ 16 members wanted her axed.
Based on their bold assertion that she enjoyed virtually no Board support, the president agonized and decided to resign in the best interests of the University. Would Sullivan have done so had she known it was only Dragas, Kington and a cabal of wealthy alumni who had engineered her ouster in such a clandestine manner? Would she have done so had Dragas and Kington been truthful?
Remarkably, there was another significant revelation to come. In an email to Dragas three days later, when the public outcry had begun and penetrating questions were being asked within and outside the University community, Kington suggested that “maybe a modicum of candor is called for.”
A modicum of candor? What this reveals is that the two conspirators had not been candid — or its dictionary synonym, honest — in their communications on this matter prior to the time that email was sent. What was in their true agenda about which they felt the need to be so dishonest and secretive?
And, as if more evidence of a breach of honor were needed, when the full Board of Visitors finally did meet on June 18, its debate on this matter lasted until after 3 o’clock the next morning. That’s deadlock, if ever we have sensed it, not the unified, clarion call for resolute action with which Dragas and Kington had confronted President Sullivan.
In the aftermath of June’s ham-handed display of hubris, the denouement of Sullivan’s reinstatement at first seemed a tolerable truce between warring factions: one a blind-sided community of students, faculty, administrators and alumni working together, with transparency and without subterfuge, toward common goals and a shared vision, and the other what one University alumnus has dubbed “the tea party of higher education,” cohorts intent on the radical reconstruction of the University’s culture and governance.
It would be quite easy to accept that truce and move on, as some certainly have, simply recalling June’s remarkable events as a fascinating and informing month in the University’s evolution. But failure to confront the core actions that caused the University community so much damage in June, and well beyond, will have this collateral damage: loss of respect for the very concept of honor, upon which the University was founded and which in many ways defines it above all else to this very day.
Across time, the honor system has been debated passionately, more often than not regarding the single sanction. Today, the attack on President Sullivan invites this question: shouldn’t a community of honor extend to each and every member of that community, not just the students who sign a pledge upon matriculation?
The flagrant double-standard that now exists cannot be allowed to continue if the honor system at the University is to remain credible. And that is why the “tolerable truce” of late June is utterly intolerable.
Clearly, action by the Honor Committee is required now. Its leaders must tackle this issue head-on, not in the weak-kneed fashion that many past Committees have dodged controversial matters.
At the very least, we hope the Committee will actually lead toward reform, taking every step necessary to broaden the honor system to encompass all members of the University community. Especially in this politically charged era where so many people of all ages believe the end justifies the means, we need such a shield to protect us from future deceits like the one that unfolded in June.
Stephen Wells (College ‘73) and Eston “Dusty” Melton (College ‘76) each served as editor-in-chief of The Cavalier Daily.
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