<p>The problem at UVA was, and continues to be, structural and not personal or personnel.</p>
<p>UVA has a sub-optimal system for its board governance and that system has not been changed: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>The way the BOV structure is set up, it gets populated overwhelmingly by in-state alumni who happen to have been contributors to the current governor’s campaign. That’s an extremely narrow pool of people to select board members from. What was/is desperately lacking is a seat or two earmarked for a lifelong higher ed professional. None of this would have happened if one of the BOVs was a ex-president of an elite university. Someone who can say (to a Sullivan or a Dragas or both) “well, when I was running Stanford, what we used to do was ________”. The legislature did add a board member seat like this for the medical center (currently filled by an MD from Hopkins). More of that please.</p></li>
<li><p>The open meeting law and FOIA requirements need to be dialed back. The board members need much more ability to confer without having to hold an open meeting. The whole Sullivan debacle, imo, was driven by the need to discuss/decide Sullivan’s future without tripping up on open meetings. Transparency is generally a good thing, but too much is bad. Some sausage really does need to be made in private. How would you be able to do your job if every email you sent was cc-ed to the Washington Post?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>FWIW, imo the right thing to do would have been to can BOTH Sullivan and Dragas.</p>