Resignation hurts college community

Following a tumultuous and controversy-exhausted two weeks trailing the abrupt resignation of William and Mary President Gene R. Nichol, the Board of Visitors is making futile attempts to repair and restore the school’s now tarnished reputation.

The board dedicated an entire day to activities intended to mend the college community member’s confidence in the school board by holding separate multiple hour assemblies for faculty, staff and then students where the audience was invited to ask members of the Board of Visitors questions concerning Nichol’s widely publicized resignation.

Nichol’s resignation immediately followed news that his contract as president would not be renewed for the next school year. While the Board of Visitors claims otherwise, many students say that Nichol’s demise as president should be attributed to many of his groundbreaking ultra-liberal decisions that angered conservative alumni and college-board members and legislators. 

While Nichol’s actions reeked with controversy and paid no attention to the conservative campus community with which he should have molded his decisions to accommodate, I, for the most part, agree with his decisions. I disagree, however, with the aggressive manner that he executed his decisions in and I strongly disagree with the reasoning he gave for those choices.

For example, when Nichols became determined to remove the brass cross on display at the campus church, it was a commendable yet possibly over-trying attempt to make the building which was also used for non-religious events to be more secular and therefore more welcoming to non Catholics and Christians. However, as a non-Christian myself, I doubt that any one non-Christian was truly offended simply by the cross symbol and I feel his actions were extreme. A far better decision would have been to simply drape the cross so as to make it not visible for non-religious events or create a removable cross symbol for the church.

The other significant example occurring during Nichol’s time as president is when the touring Sex-Workers Art Show, a presentation of real-life prostitutes and strippers and other sex-workers telling stories and experiences onstage, was allowed by Nichols to perform on campus. Nichols defended his widely unpopular decision by claiming that show’s right to free speech did not allow him to prevent the show from appearing on campus.

William and Mary legislators have their hands full. It’s will take more than a day-long session of “healing,” as the Board of Visitors put it, to mend the effect of their decision to not renew Nichol’s contract. For a few minor disagreements with his liberal decision-making, his successes creating a more racially diverse student population, creating a scholarship program aiding all students from low-income families and doubling the amount of racial minorities in the school faculty were ignored.