Category Archives: Administration

Student Veterans Want Their Space Back

Posted on August 11, 2023 by | 5 comments

David A. Sauerwein, assistant dean of students, at the 2021 opening of the veterans center. Photo credit: UVA Today

by James A. Bacon

Student veterans at the University of Virginia are up in arms, so to speak, about a decision by the Ryan administration to carve out space from the Veteran Student Center in Newcomb Hall to make room for an assistant dean of students.

“Our Veteran Student Center at UVA has been encroached upon,” states a Change.org petition launched by the UVa chapter of Student Veterans of America. “Over the summer of 2023, our conference room inside the VSC was reallocated as a Dean’s office without our permission or consult.”

The Center opened in 2021 as a place for student veterans and ROTC students to congregate. The petition characterizes the move as a step in the right direction to “address the shortfalls of UVA in comparison to other military friendly schools.” President Jim Ryan participated in the ceremonial opening, saying, “It’s a place that I hope will help remind you that you belong here at UVA.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Administration

Hadley Departs UVa Without Explanation

Posted on July 22, 2023 by | 2 comments

Robyn Hadley. Photo credit: University of Virginia

Robyn Hadley, the University of Virginia’s dean of students, will leave her job effective Aug. 1, announced President Jim Ryan and Provost Ian Baucom yesterday in a letter to the university community.

The letter provided no explanation for Hadley’s sudden departure. Hadley had served two years in the position, which oversees 300 employees engaged with student life. She supervised key functions such as the Office of African-American affairs, the career center, student housing, student health, fraternity-sorority life, event planning, and facilities operations.

“Since she came to the University in the summer of 2021, Robyn has led Student Affairs with grace and determination, even in the face of enormous challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic and the tragic shootings of Nov. 13, 2022,” wrote Ryan and Baucom. “Through it all, she has demonstrated the professionalism, wisdom, and deep care for our students for which she will be remembered here at UVA. We are grateful to Robyn and her team for all they have achieved these past few years.”

The letter contained no statement from Hadley herself. Continue reading →

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UVa Board Trims Next-Year Tuition by 0.7%. Big Whoop.

Posted on June 2, 2023 by | 11 comments

by James A. Bacon

Responding to a Youngkin administration request for Virginia’s public colleges and universities to curb tuition increases, the University of Virginia Board of Visitors voted this morning to reduce a scheduled 3.7% tuition hike next year to 3.0%.

As explained by Chief Operating Officer J.J. Davis, the shaving of $5.5 million from the budget represents a “good faith” effort to comply with the administration’s request. But in response to a question, she acknowledged that it only “partially” complied.

“This is very late in the budgetary cycle,” which closes June 30, said former Rector and the board’s financial guru James Murray. “We’re supposed to have a budget number in March. It’s very difficult in this point the year to say, ‘Go find millions of dollars.'” He described the partial rollback as “a concession to political reality.”

In other business, the Board also approved a $5.4 billion operating budget for Fiscal 2023-24, which begins July 1. The budget encompasses the academic divisions of the University of Virginia main campus, the campus in Wise, and the UVa Health System. The UVa main-campus operating budget amounts to $2.3 billion.

To an outside observer, the proceedings were remarkable — for the lack of oversight. Board input into what is arguably the most important vote of the year was inconsequential. Aside from praise for the UVa financial staff and a few requests for clarifications, board members had little to say. They offered no substantive questions. They provided zero pushback. Continue reading →

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Posted in Administration, Board of Visitors, Finances, State funding

How UVa Offsets Bureaucratic Bloat

Posted on May 13, 2023 by | 4 comments

by James A. Bacon

College Simply‘s 2023 Best Value Colleges in America ranks the University of Virginia as the 2nd “best value” among public colleges and universities in the United States in 2023. The best-value distinction is conferred upon institutions that provide students the most academic prowess for the money (defined as net tuition after financial aid to the student).

When critics of UVa governance accuse the university of supporting excess administrative overhead, a common response is: If UVa is so bad, how come it’s the second-best value among all public institutions?

That’s a fair retort and well worth exploring. In this column, I suggest that UVa has restrained the highly visible and politically sensitive metric of undergraduate in-state tuition not through budgetary belt-tightening but by pursuing two strategies: (1) maintaining a favorable ratio of students who pay the full freight versus those who require financial assistance, and (2) increasing enrollment for out-of-state post-graduate students who pay higher tuition than in-state students. Much if not all of UVa’s perceived superior value comes from tuition-and-admissions engineering. Continue reading →

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Posted in Administration, Admissions

UVa’s 20-Year Expenditure Explosion

Posted on May 4, 2023 by | 3 comments


by James A. Bacon

Tis the season for Virginia’s universities to announce how much they are raising tuition & fees for the upcoming academic year. Virginia Tech’s Board of Visitors has jacked up tuition by 4.9% and the College of William & Mary by 4.5%. Virginia Commonwealth University is considering an increase of 4% to 5%, George Mason University 3%. After a bout of inflation that peaked around 9% and is still running about 6%, putting both university and family budgets under stress, the pressure on governing boards is intense.

At the University of Virginia a tuition increase has been baked into the cake since November 2021 when the Board of Visitors approved a two-year increase of 4.7% in 2022-23 and 3.7% in 2023-24. Under pressure from Governor Glenn Youngkin to hold down charges, UVa issued a rebate to in-state undergraduate students to offset last year’s increase. But there has been no indication that the Board will reconsider a refund in 2023-24. In-state undergrads could well find themselves paying 8.4% more next year.

UVa officials, like their peers at the state’s other public universities, blame the failure of state support for higher education to keep pace with growing enrollment and the escalating Consumer Price Index. In the past, UVa’s board has rarely questioned that claim. But now some board members want to dig deeper into the numbers. Continue reading →

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Posted in Administration, Finances

Daily Mail Picks up Bettinger Story

Posted on April 29, 2023 by | 12 comments

Protesters harass Morgan Bettinger in her car after rumors circulated that she said they’d made good “speed bumps,” a supposed allusion to the Unite the Right rally three years previously in which a neo-Nazi ran his car into a crowd of protesters, killing one. Photo credit: WUVA News by way of The Daily Mail.

The Morgan Bettinger case is gaining national notoriety. After Reason magazine detailed the travesty of the University of Virginia student who was punished for using the words “speed bumps” in a way that militant leftist protesters construed as threatening, the Daily Mail has picked up the story. The Daily Mail does not add much new information, but it does crystallize the insanity of the episode, in which rumors spreading on social media panicked UVa officials into running Bettinger through a flawed student disciplinary system.

As the Daily Mail summarized the travesty: “Celebrated BLM activist ruthlessly destroyed white student’s life by accusing her of saying racial justice protesters would ‘make good speed bumps’ — only to later admit she may have MISHEARD.” The chief accuser was Zyahna Bryant, who had been awarded numerous honors in recognition of her student activism. She spread vitriol against Bettinger online, and then demanded that UVa discipline her.

Although UVa’s Office of Equity and Civil Rights (OECR) found no evidence to confirm the allegation that she had verbally threatened the protesters, the student-run judiciary committee compelled her to write an apology to Bryant and perform social justice-related community service if she wanted to graduate. Continue reading →

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Posted in Administration, Leftist orthodoxy

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How the Digital Rumor Mill Fed Incoherent Social-Justice Hysteria

Posted on April 27, 2023 by | 2 comments

Graphic credit: Reason Magazine

by James A. Bacon

When Emma Camp was a student at the University of Virginia in 2020, she heard the tale of Morgan Bettinger, another UVa student, who was said to have approached left-wing protesters in downtown Charlottesville and threatened to make “speed bumps” of them.

The story, says Camp, was repeatedly endlessly on social media — group chats, Instagram posts, and viral tweets — and then leaped to local television and print media. Bettinger was criticized, ostracized, made to fear for her safety, and ultimately punished by UVa’s student judiciary committee.

After graduating, Camp became an assistant editor of Reason magazine. In that capacity, she has written an in-depth article in the June 2023 issue demonstrating that the story she’d heard at UVa was a fabrication– the outgrowth of social-media rumor mongering run amok.

The article. “How an Ill-Informed Internet Mob Ruined a UVA Student’s Life,” does a brilliant job of tracing the trajectory of that lie from the actual events through the social-media postings by militant UVa activist Zyahna Bryan, to the amplification of the charges by other local activist groups, local journalists and even UVa faculty.

“This is the story of a rumor mill that rushed to collective judgment, a pervasive climate of anger and outrage, a weak campus administration, and a unique higher-ed justice system that faltered just when it was most needed,” Camp writes. “It’s the story of a woman who was informally ostracized and formally sanctioned for a story that seemingly everyone on campus had heard and believed, but which was never proven.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Administration, Leftist orthodoxy

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New York Times “DEI” Article Prompts Questions About Ryan’s Views

Posted on April 23, 2023 by | 10 comments

Bert Ellis. Photo credit: New York Times

by James A. Bacon

Kudos to Stephanie Saul for her front-page article in The New York Times this morning. She quotes Bert Ellis and me accurately and in context in an impressively even-handed account of the brewing controversy over Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at the University of Virginia.

Followers of the Jefferson Council will find that the article, which explores DEI issues at UVa through the prism of Ellis’ appointment to the Board of Visitors, covers familiar ground. However, it does contain nuggets of news, mainly by putting UVa President Jim Ryan and other university officials on the record on issues about which they have been largely silent so far.

Most astonishing are the quotes from Ryan, who comes across as totally clueless about the aims of his critics.

James E. Ryan, the university’s president, said he believes the majority of alumni feel the way he does — that diversity is desirable and needed.

“I haven’t heard anyone say we should have a community that is monolithic, unfair and unwelcoming,” he said in an interview.

Mr. Ryan said he wonders about the motives of the critics.

“Whether this is an effort to focus on the aspects of D.E.I. that seem to threaten academic freedom and push toward ideological conformity, or whether it’s an effort to turn back the clock to 1965 — it’s hard to know,” he said in an interview.

Continue reading →

10 Comments

Posted in Administration, Intellectual diversity, Race, Equity and Diversity

Apologies Run One Way at UVa

Posted on April 20, 2023 by | 13 comments

Credit: Bing Image Creator

by James A. Bacon

The woke witch trials of the 21st century don’t burn their victims at the stake, but they still do immense harm.

We previously told the story of how Morgan Bettinger, a 4th-year student who ran afoul of the University of Virginia’s social-justice warriors, was vilified on social media, investigated by university authorities, and required to perform social justice-related community service to atone for supposed threats she never uttered.

What we haven’t told before but can now thanks to a lawsuit asking for the expungement of disciplinary sanctions on Bettinger’s college record, is what it’s like for a student to endure the assaults of the Woke Mob.

The question every UVA alumnus, student, parent, professor and member of the UVa community must ask is this: How can freedom of speech and expression thrive in an environment where students are treated this way?

The lawsuit cites the following testimony Bettinger gave in a recorded interview with the university’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights. Continue reading →

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Posted in Administration, Freedom of speech and expression

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The Hidden Costs of DEI

Posted on January 7, 2023 by | 7 comments

by James A. Bacon

According to a new report by the Virginia Association of Scholars, the University of Virginia in 2021 employed 77 people as part of the a vast and growing Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy at a cost of nearly $7 million a year. Many questions arise from this revelation. What do all these people do? What are their goals? Are they improving the university climate? What is the effect of DEI on freedom of speech, inquiry and expression?

We will address these question in future posts. For now, we want to make it clear that the $7 million cost is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

The authors of the VAS study make it clear that they are counting only positions that are explicitly tied to DEI-related programs, and it counts only salaries. Not benefits. Not office overhead. Not outside consultants, speakers, or events. And perhaps most importantly, not the impact on faculty productivity.

The fixation on DEI suffuses every aspect of University life. Not only does the university administration have a DEI staff, not only do each of its 13 schools and colleges have DEI staffs, but the DEI ethic permeates down to the departmental level as reflected in planning sessions, training programs, departmental-level reading groups, the hiring of new employees, and the granting of pay raises, promotions, and tenure decision-making.

An extraordinary amount of activity at UVa is devoted to DEI, and that activity sucks faculty, students, and non-DEI staff into the vortex. Continue reading →

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Posted in Administration, Race, Equity and Diversity

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