Wrecked Rectors
& Busted Boards
Here’s what John G. Rocovich, former rector of Virginia Tech, wrote to Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger last Thursday:
“Virginia Tech deserves better than to be made a political football. I have given too much of my life to this institution to stand by silently while its independence is threatened — regardless of which party holds the Governor’s office.”
That’s the last line in this missive. A political football. Everything that precedes that last line amounts to a primal scream. The letter is easy to find online and worth reading.
Another line catches your attention: “In the 154-year history of Virginia Tech, dating to its founding in 1872, no Governor of the Commonwealth has ever removed a member of the Board of Visitors for cause.”
He’s effectively urging a public discussion. He’s right on that. It’s overdue.
Such letters, by the way, are great fun to write and, if you’re lucky, a friend will tackle you before you make it to the post office.
But, yes, Rocovich is definitely the “former rector” and no longer the current one. The Code of Virginia leaves little doubt. You could test some of the language, but not this: “The Governor is the sole judge of the sufficiency of the cause for removal.”
That’s called “game over” and Rocovich knows that. He sent this four-page letter to the governor in order to exact a political price for her lowering the boom on him. Reportedly, he will not attend the June 2 board meeting.
As intended, there’s been a lot of huffing and puffing by Rocovich’s friends and loyalists in the days following. His contributions to Virginia Tech have been, by most accounts, substantial and admirable. He could have picked up the notion, however, that long service bestows exalted status—or, as an old editor liked to say, you end up being the “Grand Fromage.” Such illusions occur routinely.
The underlying issue—notably unremarked upon in Rocovich’s letter—was the broad belief that the rector had sought and obtained Virginia Tech President Tim Sands’ retirement announcement. While Rocovich insists some explanation must accompany his removal as rector, the governor implicitly asks, “You first.” Let’s hear about that, she says. Why did Sands have to go?
Have we already forgotten those confusing, early summer days of 2012 when UVA rector Helen E. Dragas abruptly escorted President Terry Sullivan to the door? Public explanations were a little thin then, too. There were “philosophical differences.”
What followed was equally remarkable. The university community rallied to Sullivan’s side and the board retreated. A restoration. Overall, the entire incident was regrettable, even embarrassing.
Such transactions and interventions occur more frequently now, but they’re not novel.
In early April, 1993, for instance, Gov. L. Douglas Wilder sought and received the resignations of all 11 board members of Virginia State University. Public concern had grown over the school’s finances and state Treasurer Eddie Moore (a broadly admired and trusted administrator) had been named president in order to fix things.
Wilder just wanted to make sure Moore received, as one person put it, “reasonable support from the board.” Leaving nothing to chance, Wilder rebooted the board.
I doubt anything so dramatic had been engineered previously. But, again, the Virginia Code provides. Resistance was futile. Besides, here was the nation’s first African American governor trying to fix an historically important Black school. Pretty well everyone appreciated the core dynamics and dissent was minimal. Wilder was acting in a meritorious manner. That was the rough reaction.
Things have since become more rambunctious, no question. Eight years following President Sullivan’s jostling, the General Assembly in 2020 tore into Virginia Military Institute and, once again, things happened that had not happened before.
This time, they were happening for decidedly un-uplifting reasons. At that stage of its political evolution, the Virginia General Assembly had achieved peak progressive status. With Gov. Ralph Northam (who had been unfairly mauled over his own racial attitudes) helping, the legislature’s liberal leadership seized an opportunity to knock back a school long regarded by Democrats as culturally reactionary and politically Republican.
The sequence of events is worth repeating:
As President Trump sought reelection in a bitter national campaign, Vice President Mike Pence visited VMI on September 10, 2020, accompanied by Secretary of the Army (and VMI alumnus) Ryan McCarthy and U.S. Rep. Michael Waltz, also a VMI graduate.
Pence praised the honor system, military service, and the “heritage of the Virginia Military Institute,” spoke about national defense and 9/11, and argued that President Trump strongly supported the military.
The next month, on October 17, The Washington Post took reporting published a year earlier by The Roanoke Times (alleging racial discord at VMI) and embellished it. The Post’s coverage immediately thrust VMI into the national spotlight.
Two days later, on October 19, Gov. Northam ordered an investigation of VMI.
Seven days after that, on Oct. 26, retired four-star Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III, VMI’s superintendent and former U.S. Army vice chief-of-staff, yielded to pressure and resigned.
There was a choice at that point. The newspaper articles could have laid the basis for a larger examination of Virginia’s public colleges and universities. That did not happen. It didn’t fit the agenda.
Instead, a million-dollar “audit” was targeted specifically at VMI—which, as intended, fueled additional adverse press coverage—and a media narrative took hold that the problem was VMI’s alone. Not one person, regarding the allegations aimed at VMI, opened their mouth and asked, “Compared to what?”
Welcome to the Culture Wars. VMI offered a target rich environment, you might say. What could have been resolved through the existing governing structure – meaning through the school’s board and its leadership – was circumvented by political sanctions unprecedented in Virginia’s history.
The obvious inference: If you can do this sort of thing to VMI, you can do it to Virginia’s other colleges and universities. You could routinely subordinate established governing procedures and have a political field day.
Which is precisely what happened.
A few years later, another political/media circus, again orchestrated from above the Potomac, led to the resignation of Jim Ryan as president of the University of Virginia. Forces beyond UVA’s grounds were shapping outcomes.
Rectors come and rectors go. Sometimes they come and go in strange ways.
There are at least two Virginia schools where the current rector achieved that high standing not because a majority of other board members wanted it that way (the traditional route), but because a state lawmaker in Richmond intervened and presented offers no one wished to refuse.
Such things may happen in other states. In Virginia, not so much. Unprecedented? The word gets a lot of work these days.
In January, for instance, Gov. Spanberger took time on her first day in office to name 27 new members to the boards of George Mason University, Virginia Military Institute and the University of Virginia.
No Virginia governor, immediately upon taking office, had ever made so many board appointments so early and all at once. Governors usually get their first opportunity to make appointments upon arriving at the midpoint of their first year in office.
Why was Spanberger so fortunate?
Because the Virginia Senate Privileges and Elections Committee appeared in Richmond in the early summer of 2025 and jettisoned a carload of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s appointees to the boards of visitors at the University of Virginia, Virginia Military Institute, and George Mason University.
As a result, Gov. Spanberger, once she took office in January, immediately feasted. She could load up these boards with people more to her preference, as opposed to former Gov. Youngkin’s preference.
The controlling Democrats—a cabal of sorts, not given to explanations other than to mutter “Trump” a few times—engineered this political gift, and Spanberger embraced it. At no point did she ever seem to regard this as unusual.
Virginia is bouncing along incoherently and today VPM (Virginia Public Media) ran a headline saying, “Lawmakers surprised by Spanberger’s veto of higher ed governance bills.”
Reporter Megan Pauly interviewed Pippa Holloway and identified her as a University of Richmond professor and member of the executive board of the Virginia chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
“Holloway, who said she’s been knocking on doors for Spanberger since moving to Virginia in 2020, was furious about the governor’s veto of a bill that would have ended Virginia’s longstanding ban on most public-sector collective bargaining … She has unleashed a bit of a monster here.”
The monster, as it were, is ever present and here sits an obvious example. In this reporting, the AAUP is left undefined. Presumably, you are meant to see its efforts as interested but benign.
Megan may think so, but nobody else does. AAUP tilts decidedly to the left and, if it were a boat, would soon capsize. You kind of hope, anyway. There is no way to get around AAUP’s dogmatic approach to public discourse – unless, of course, you work for VPM.
So, on it goes with no promise of improvement.
Poor Rocovich. He thinks he got special treatment. Not really.