Del. Robert Marshall, R-Prince William, is tweaking liberal noses again. This time the object of his outrage has nothing to do with sex (except indirectly, if you consider this). He has submitted a bill that would require the College of William & Mary to have a majority of its 17-seat board of trustees elected by alumni, not appointed by the Governor. Reports the Daily Press:
Marshall’s proposal calls for the next nine members whose terms expire to be replaced by members elected by alumni. He said he modeled it after Dartmouth College’s governing board system, which includes members elected by alumni.
Said Marshall: “A board composed mostly of alumni would be on top of things a little better because they’d have an emotional tie to their alma mater.”
Predictably, the W&M administration disagreed: Michael K. Powell, the college’s rector and a 1985 alumnus, responded that “alumni are a critical constituency and letting them have some input in the selection process has merit. … But I do not think having a set number of seats controlled exclusively by one segment of the college community is wise or workable.”
I’m no more a fan of W&M President Gene Nichol than Marshall. I, too, would like to see the guy run out of town on a rail. But I’m not sure that letting politicians tinker with the university’s governance structure is the answer. If a conservative Republican governor were making the appointments, I suspect Marshall would be perfectly happy with things the way they are. Governance structures should be based on underlying principles, not political expediency.
