Dear Commons Community,

I don’t mean to steal any of Brian Foote’s thunder but The Washington Post is reporting that  the University of Virginia governing board voted unanimously yesterday to reinstate Teresa Sullivan as president, more than two weeks after board leaders had forced her to resign and unleashed a storm of campus upheaval.  The article states:

“The two women at the center of the conflict, Sullivan and the board leader, Rector Helen E. Dragas, walked into the historic Rotunda in tandem for the meeting, a gesture of unity after a fortnight of division at Virginia’s public flagship university.

“We have both come to the conclusion that it’s time to bring the U-Va. family back together,” Dragas told the Board of Visitors. It was a startling reversal for a board leader who had been steadfast in her insistence that Sullivan was moving too slowly to address fiscal and academic challenges.

The board, pilloried for the ouster Dragas engineered in a campaign of secrecy and exclusion, reversed course in a brisk half-hour session open to the public.

After the vote, Sullivan stepped outside to deafening applause. She told the crowd that everyone involved — including Dragas — had the best interests of the university in mind.”

Glad to see that a governing board can admit it made a mistake.

Tony